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The Binding Tempest (The Luminance Saga) Paperback – May 23, 2021

by Steven Rudy (Author)

4.5 38 ratings

Book 1 of 3: The Luminance Saga

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★ Winner of the 2022 Independent Press Award for Distinguished Favorite in Epic Fantasy ★
★ 2022 SPFBO8 Semi-finalist ★

A fallen empire, a failed republic, a frontier of alchemy, airships, magic, & machines...
When the Peace King of the Free Cities goes missing, an aging former war hero Ellaria Moonstone uncovers a plot to overthrow the tenuous republic. Fearing that a powerful being called a Sagean Luminary has returned to reclaim the old empire, Ellaria sends for help from old allies and expatriates scattered across the chaotic frontier.

Now three aging war heroes, long past their prime and haunted by their pasts, are all that stand against a dark entity threatening the future. In their quest, they find themselves unwittingly mentoring a new generation to fight alongside them. But trust between the once inseparable veterans is not what it once was and the evil they face has allies hiding in every shadow.

The Binding Tempest is the start of an award-winning Epic Sci-Fi & Fantasy series that's a High Fantasy Adventure injected with Steampunk science. The saga that proves Heroes get better with age.

For fans of Mistborn and The Wheel of Time series.

Start the Saga today!

Praise For the Luminance Saga Series:

“OMG! This epic book is one of my favorite books of the year!”
–Asiel R. Lavie, #1 Bestselling Teen & Young Adult Sci-fi Mystery author of The Crossing Gate

“A dazzling, powerhouse… Fans of intricately crafted, sophisticated high fantasy won’t want to miss this.”
– The Prairies Book Review

“A blend of steampunk, fantasy, and epic adventure, this is quite the tale.” – Goodreads Reviewer

“I’m sure this one will occupy my thoughts for a long time! Steven Rudy is an incredible writer. His words draw you in and hold you tight—every page is intense, intelligent, and entirely gripping, and I was hooked from the first line! This series will take the world by storm!” – Goodreads Reviewer

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Editorial Reviews

Review

"OMG! This epic book is one of my favorite books of the year!"

-Asiel R. Lavie, #1 Bestselling Teen & Young Adult Sci-fi Mystery author of The Crossing Gate

"A dazzling, powerhouse... Fans of intricately crafted, sophisticated high fantasy won't want to miss this."

- The Prairies Book Review

"A blend of steampunk, fantasy, and epic adventure, this is quite the tale." - Goodreads Reviewer

"I'm sure this one will occupy my thoughts for a long time! Steven Rudy is an incredible writer. His words draw you in and hold you tight-every page is intense, intelligent, and entirely gripping, and I was hooked from the first line! This series will take the world by storm!" - Goodreads Reviewer

Product details

Publisher ‏ : ‎ MysticHawk Press LLC (May 23, 2021)
Language ‏ : ‎ English
Paperback ‏ : ‎ 428 pages
ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 1737065215
ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-1737065210
Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 14.1 ounces
Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 5.25 x 1.07 x 8 inches

Best Sellers Rank: #3,792,247 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #2,245 in Gaslamp Fantasy (Books)
- #3,432 in Steampunk Fiction
- #39,456 in Fantasy Action & Adventure

Customer Reviews:
4.5 38 ratings

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Steven Rudy

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After graduating from the University of Colorado at Boulder, I pursued a career in architecture and design that has now spanned twenty plus years. However, for as long as I can remember I have loved writing and creating stories. About 10 years ago, I started to write down character ideas, world ideas, names of places and people and ideas for scenes for a book I was growing serious about writing. These story ideas only bloomed brighter when my wife and I had children. My children have an endless well of creativity and I found inspiration from them.

My debut novel, The Binding Tempest is a lifetime’s creation finally come to fruition. I will admit most of my storytelling influences are derived from movies and TV. Though I have had many impactfully novels in my life too; Nightshift, The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, East of Eden, and the Eye of the World. With the Eye of the World and the entire Wheel of Time series it was like I had finally found the immersive fiction I had always seen in my mind.

Like all things that are created, my gaslamp / steampunk fantasy series the Luminance Saga comes from a place that is both uniquely me but also an amalgamation of all my great influences. My hope was to craft a story that was part Indiana Jones, part Eye of the World, and part pure Sci-Fi.

Now that I have written my first novel I can’t wait to continue. I have a lot of ideas swirling around in my brain like specters awaiting to be plucked and brought to life

You can find me online at https://stevenrudybooks.com/

on Instagram at http://www.instagram.com/stevenrudyauthor

or Twitter at https://twitter.com/MysticPeddler

& Facebook at https://www.facebook.com/EpicFantasySeries

Customer reviews

4.5 out of 5

38 global ratings

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Jeff H. - Kindle Customer

Captivating!!

Reviewed in the United States on October 29, 2023

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This is probably the best fantasy / epic novel I have read in quite a while. It is a well written start to this adventure that delivers enough to get me hooked, yet leaves enough of the bigger story untold to demand my return to grab the follow up so I can satisfy my desire to know what happens to these characters I've come to feel invested in. I can't wait to read the next one!

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Gjohncoe

It was a very very good read, I will get the next in the series.

Reviewed in the United States on February 11, 2022

Verified Purchase

Loved the characters, loved the plot, loved this make up of the world and magic. Anyone looking for a book/series in the SciFi Fantasy genre will love this book, all most 60 years of reading this genre and this is a good one. Get it and enjoy.

Reviewed in the United States on July 23, 2021

Verified Purchase

This is my first high fantasy read in s while
Steven Rudy did an excellent job in making this story come to life A story of coming into ones own power as an alchemist. I loved this story and hope to see more works from Steven Rudy in the future

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Andrew Hindle

Genre-nonbinary fiction!

Reviewed in the United States on October 1, 2021

I felt for this book, I really did. I identified with it. This book ... this book is me. Complete with the arguably unnecessary padding. More of us to love, that's the justification.

There's more of us to love.

Okay, this started weird, so let's get into it. The Binding Tempest is not a science-fiction story, but then it's not a fantasy story either. It's kind of a steampunk outing but that's just because of the New World and Revolutionary War theme, not to mention the horses and guns and zeppelins. Don't be misled by the horses and guns and zeppelins, as the old Aztec saying goes. They exist only to lead you into strange rooms where men with odd facial hair-

This is not getting any less weird. Sorry. I blame the Aztecs. My point is, this is a distinctly genre nonbinary story and I love that. It's inspiring. When I read a book and it makes me want to get back to my own writing, it's either because the book is terrible (this wasn't) or because the book reminds me of why I love to read, and love to write. This was that.

So, there was magic and early industrial stuff as well as high energy weapons and portals and automatons. Awesome! There were different lands and histories and relics and politics and the whole tapestry was so incredibly rich. And the maps! I loved them. Extra credit for the maps, I want an A3 glossy print edition of this book just for the maps, the Kindle really didn't do them justice (who zooms? Not me).

There were a couple of great characters in it. Qudin, from the moment he first does his quantum magic thing and bleeds from the ears, absolutely charmed me. The setup of his backstory with the Sagean Emperor felt a little bit like Szeth in the Stormlight books by Sanderson, but so what? Tali, and her magic pressure-blowouts, well she's just purely epic. Loved it. And Ellaria Moonstone, aka Ms. Moonstone, is amazing (in fact compared to her, most of the other characters were a bit run-of-the-mill and she could have been edited into being the most central, perhaps even lone, point of view). And she's in her late fifties! Mature female protagonists, represent.

So what was the problem?

Okay, so I have to say there was a bit of clumsy language throughout, that made it difficult to engage with. The story had a lot of exposition and description, and you have to combine that with readability or it's going to be really obvious there's pages and pages of exposition and description. Take it from a known waffler. It's nothing a round of good hard editing couldn't improve, but this is a very big and very dense book so said edit would be a large undertaking. The story needs the exposition, because ultimately this book is an exploration of a world and its history set against the backdrop of a motley hero group on a quest, rather than the other way around. But that means a lot of it needs to be stripped and cut down and washed out.

I am a big fan of the Massive Worldbuilding Infodump metagenre, so keep in mind that I suspect my tolerance will be higher than average. This book is a very deep, very loving tour of a world that obviously took a ton of creative effort. Our heroes seem to do a lot of treasure hunting and digging up of old knowledge, which to me was quite enjoyable to read for its own sake - but it does tend to leave the overall plot feeling messy and difficult to quantify. The [REDACTED]ular Binding Tempest is the result of the Quantum Man and the Sagean fighting, which generated the power to unleash the Wrythen, and I think that's what they were trying to do something about? Considering that the action keeps clipping along, it is at once busy and aimless. Also it's a part one, so the ultimate story arc is incomplete anyway.

I had a smile at the Hex-like computer and I definitely enjoyed the big old guard robot thing towards the end, that was when it really started to feel like a science fiction story (the epilogue was almost entirely sci-fi) but like I say - I don't believe in stories having to be one thing or another. Stories don't work that way. Sorting machines do.

After all the build-up, the final showdown and revelations seemed strange and abrupt. Not that this is necessarily a bad thing, but it is a symptom of the Massive Worldbuilding Infodump metagenre. Overall, I quite enjoyed this but I think maybe the best way to tell the story would be to just have the characters exist in that world, and let the reader know the author is intimately familiar with it rather than attempting to upload the same level of familiarity to the reader. That will happen organically over time and (I hope) many books.

[REDACTED]-o-meter

This, again, wasn't that sort of story. Stop trying to have [REDACTED] with me, we're in the middle of a deep dive through an entire science fiction / fantasy atlas, history book and encyclopaedia here! Goodness, there's a time and a place, okay? Anyway yeah, you get the point. The Binding Tempest gets an atlas, a history book and an encyclopaedia out of a possible one [REDACTED]ual intercourse.

Gore-o-meter

There was some good action, some thrilling and violent wolverack attacks (loved the critters in this book!), some blood and fighting. But overall there wasn't much more gore than there was [REDACTED]. It was fine, one flesh-gobbet out of a possible five.

WT[REDACTED]-o-meter

A rich, heavy vein of WT[REDACTED] runs through this story, as it should when we're talking a genre-defying spray of unconstrained creative juicery. Most of the WT[REDACTED] is explained, of course, so T[REDACTED] is quite solidly quantified by the time we've explored Rudy's impressive world. We know exactly WT[REDACTED] T[REDACTED] is all about, if we've paid attention while T[REDACTED] is being outlined for us. So stop asking. The WT[REDACTED]-o-meter gives this a Spearpoint / Godscraper out of a possible Dark Tower.

My Final Verdict

I can only admire the scope and ambition of this story, and reiterate how great the maps and illustrations were. Ultimately there was just so much worldbuilding and exposition to fit into the story, the story itself got lost in the woods. And that's saying something, coming from me! Three stars on the Amazon / Goodreads scale.

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Jessica Belmont

The Binding Tempest

Reviewed in the United States on February 17, 2022

The Binding Tempest by Steven Rudy is book one in a new-to-me epic fantasy saga that I will be obsessing over until the end. A blend of steakpunk and high fantasy, this blew me away.

I’m loving the older characters in this series. I feel like the majority of the fantasy I’ve read lately has been from the point of view of younger people. It was unique. Ellaria is an excellent main character. Aside from focusing on her age, she is such a well-rounded character. I really enjoyed reading about her. The rest of the cast is exceptionally well done.

Detailed world-building but still fast-paced enough to keep the reader’s attention. The information is a bit hard to keep up with in the beginning but after a few chapters, I had everything down, and was able to fully immerse myself in the story.

Overall, this is a great start to this sage. Don’t miss out.

Thank you to R&R Book Tours for the free review copy. All opinions are my own and unbiased.

Reviewed in the United States on September 6, 2021

Verified Purchase

This book drew me in and kept me hooked. The characters and world building were so well thought-out. I cannot wait for the next book in this series.

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Seraphia

Slow Start But Engaging Novel

Reviewed in the United States on February 22, 2022

The Binding Tempest is the first book in Steven Ruby’s Luminance Saga series. This epic fantasy novel combines fantasy with steampunk scifi to create a novel that will be intriguing to the end.
It’s been 40 years since the Sagean Empire ruled and was brought to its knees in defeat. But a new power is stirring and seeking the old powers once again. Ellaira will be the first to see the stirrings of danger to come, but soon many others will come to understand just how dangerous the world is about to become.
The Binding Tempest piques my interest with the prologue, but shortly thereafter the story rapidly slows down. It’s a bit sluggish for my liking, but there are moments in the beginning that the story gets really interesting with the introduction of various characters. The storyline gradually builds, and piece by piece the author pulls me further into it so that I’m eager to learn more. Once the groundwork has been set the story really becomes engaging.
I love the attention to detail throughout this book. There are moments of where it’s a bit much, in my opinion, but it serves it’s purpose. I also love the maps as the locations shift throughout the story. I also like how they are utilized in a more focused perspective at the beginning of each chapter. So you not only know who the chapter is focusing on, but also their specific location.
This book has lots of drama, danger, and twists that you just won’t see coming. There are quite a few questions that arise throughout this story. Some get answered, but quite a few are left unanswered. I’m hopeful that book two will answer at least a few. For those who hate cliffhangers, this book doesn’t have one. At least, not in my opinion. The epilogue will leave you with quite a few questions though. I’m choosing to rate this book 4.5 out of 5 stars.

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