The Last Seal (The Praesidium Series) [Kindle Edition]

The Last Seal by Richard Denning is a historical fantasy book set in 1666 around the Great London Fire. The story follows the struggle of the Praesidum in their quest to keep the Liberati from freeing the demon lord Dantalion.

The Praesidum consists of Ben, Freya, Tobias, and Gabriel though only Gabriel knows the truth of what is happening. Ben is a schoolboy whose parents were killed in a fire before explaining his birthright to him. Freya is a streetwise thief who runs into Ben through chance and gets sucked into an adventure she could never have seen coming, and Tobias is a doctor whose father was killed by the Liberati in what he thinks of as a pointless struggle based on superstition.

The Liberati consists of Artemis and the men he has tricked into following him. The most important of those is Matthius, a disillusioned street preacher who believes they are freeing an Angel to clean the city of the taint of sin. Artemis has had the story of Dantalion passed down to him by his father and wishes to free the powerful demon in order to advance his own status in the new world that will be created. Everyone else is a tool to help him or an obstacle to be destroyed.

Dantalion is kept trapped by a series of magical seals set by Cornelius Silver, the founder of the Praesidum, that the current members strive to protect. Artemis however has learned the best way to destroy them is intense fire. Once all of the original seals are destroyed the last seal will be revealed and Dantalion can be summoned back to Earth.

The Last Seal is an interesting story and being set with a major historical event adds a bit of realism to the story. The magic system used by Richard is solid and well explained with a very nice glossary explaining the terms used in the spellcasting. Artemis served as a fairly standard bad guy whose only concern is his own well being. The character I most enjoyed was Freya, her streetwise ways and smart mouth really made her an asset to the dialogue of the group. Gabriel and Tobias were decent characters with good backstories, but I really never identified with them. Ben was a solid character dealing with the tragedy of his past and discovering more about himself and his family than he ever knew. He also has to battle his personal demons in order to come to terms with the events that are happening around him.

Overall the story was enjoyable, though I did find a few parts a little slow. This is a very good book for people who are looking for younger characters playing large roles and works well for a YA book. The descriptions of the devastation of a large fire are well done and the way the fire is spread adds a terrible element to the brutality of the event.

I loved Richard Denning's Tomorrow's Guardian, so when he contacted me asking to review The Last Seal, featuring on his Blog Tour, I didn't think twice.

While on Tomorrow's Guardian we were dragged to pieces of history by Tom's trips throught time, The Last Seal takes place in history. Ben's parents died in a fire that somehow didn't kill him as well. He feels guilty about it and that's putting him in trouble at school.

Ben suddenly sees himself thrown in the middle of an adventure, he seems to be the only one capable of reading an old scroll that reveals the seals that keep a demon locked beneath London. With the help of Freya, a thief girl who happens to cross his path, he finds out the story of the Liberati and the Praesidum, two rival groups. The Liberati are trying to free Dantalion, while the Praesidum are giving their lives to protect the secret location of the demon.

Althought this may sound like a normal fantasy plot, Richard Denning made sure to incorporate historical facts on this book to give it some touches of reality. The background is the Great Fire of London, that destroyed the city in September 1666. Denning came up with his own explanation to how the fire started on The Last Seal while talking about themes as such friendship, good against evil, and dealing with the consequences of our own acts.

Full of action and suspense, The Last Seal is the first book on The Praesidium Series. I received the e-book version of it for review and I loved the character sketches at the beginning of the book. If you like historical fantasy, don't miss it! You're gonna be dragged to this history and won't be able to put it down until you're done reading it.

This is book one of the Praesidium series set in 17th century London.

This story starts in 1380 when a demon is summoned by a warlock inside the Cathedral and who then runs amok in central London ........ when a sorcerer manages to put him back in his prison the warlock vows to discover how to bring him back again, thus the battle between good and evil begins.

We are then taken to the year of the Great Fire of London, 1666, and introduced to the main characters of Ben, an orphaned school truant, Freya, the thief who lives on her wits, Tobias who wants the scroll that Ben finds and the bookseller Gabriel, member of the Praesidium.

There are some vivid descriptions including this of the Shambles in London where blood and offal from freshly butchered meat dripped on to the ground and ran off downhill. All round the market, hawkers sold candles, beer, mussels, honeyed nuts and cane rods............beggars, prostitutes and pickpockets plying their trade.

This is such an exciting read, with lots of suspense and believable characters which I thoroughly enjoyed. I loved the way the author weaved elements of fantasy around the historical facts of the Great Fire, all obviously meticulously researched.