About the author

Amy Neftzger is the author of fiction books for both adults and children.  She has also been published in business and academic journals, as well as literary publications.

A few of her favorite things include traveling, books, movies, art, the Oxford comma, and gargoyles.

About the book

Sometimes there’s no better way to understand reality than through fantasy, and the best way to find truth may be in a book—if you can find the right one.

Battles against darkness, a quest for truth, and a search for the book that no one can read are all part of the fantasy adventure in The War of Words.  As an evil sorcerer wages war by using mysterious shadows and seeks to gain control by confusing the residents as to what’s real and what isn’t, the fate of the kingdom rests in the hands of Kelsey and Nicholas.

As the youngest officer in the king’s army, Kelsey fights the evil sorcerer’s shadows on the battlefield as she explores the kingdom searching for the key to winning the war.  Nicholas, a young sorcerer in training who is mastering his craft, discovers how the right words can change the course of the future.

Explore an enchanted maze, uncover the power of words, and learn about friendship in this whimsical tale.

Book Review

Words are such an important part of, well, everything.  Man’s thoughts, after all, are his reality.  If two people are looking at the same thing, their personal reality of this thing will vary according to the words they have to explain it, and any work they attempt to do together on said thing will be affected by their explanations of this thing.

This book was a very obvious metaphor of sorts on the effects that distorting the meaning of words can have on a society.  The evil sorcerer’s spell is casting a veil on the people of Kelsey’s land which prevents them from grasping the true meaning of even the most basic of words.  One can imagine the stress on a general leading his troops into war when he doesn’t realise his orders are not being understood, or on the soldiers when the orders they were sure they were obeying are not quite the ones that were being given in the first place.

It doesn’t take much of a leap to apply these concepts on the way things are heading around us these days, at least in North America.  Be it on a personal level, on an interpersonal level, or at the level of the local, regional, national, or international community, we are bombarded with words—but which ones are we actually understanding?  Our vocabulary has been inexorably shrinking over the last years as we are increasingly exposed to very different traditions and belief systems.  This means that on the one hand, we are less able to converse about things, while on the other, it is more important now than ever for us to dig into our vocabulary to be able to understand and live harmoniously within the increasing complexities of our world.

This doesn’t make The War of Words a very heavy book; quite the contrary, in fact.  One of the strengths of this work is that it reads very easily.  It is a fantasy story set in the middle of a war, well-written, engaging, and entertaining.  One can easily go through it without paying attention to its deeper meanings.  But that would be a shame.  I would encourage groups of friends to read this book together and discuss the application of the concepts in our day-to-day life.

Thank you to iReads Book Tours for providing a
copy of this book for me to review!

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