Reviewed by Asher Syed for Readers' Favorite

Nomad by Andrew Montante follows the titular character, out to find his missing mother, Jeebel, after surviving a brutal conflict in Ponworld, where his father Neebus calls him an abomination. Wandering Inner Earth, Nomad moves through dangerous lands and strange portals guided by the Old One, Enoch, and his mystical hounds Lycan and Speckles. Along the way, he meets various tribes, creatures like Graxens and Fangworms, and individuals like Theseus and Deborah, a warrior who urges him to join a looming battle threatening their world. Nomad finds himself up against hostile cultists, exploring alien ruins with eerie technology, and juggling his own shifting identity and powers, all while wading through a plethora of fractured memories and shifting realities in a realm where time and space blur.

Andrew Montante’s Nomad delivers an extraordinary journey through a bright and brilliantly imagined world filled with memorable characters and unusual discoveries. From the perspective of Nomad, readers are taken into some remarkably imaginative places, like Ponworld’s Great Hall, the Lost Tribe’s domain, and the oracular Valley. I love that every scene is absolutely bursting with detail, and we get a true sense of what Montante has built. There is quite a lot of philosophical discussion in the book, so while it is definitely speculative fiction, it is equally comfortable in the genre of bildungsroman and even contemporary mythology by working in ancient legends. Overall, this is an intelligent read that invites the reader to lose themselves in a tightly constructed universe, with an ending that promises more to come. Recommended.