R.M. Tembreull’s Long Leg: From the Blighted Earth: Book II is an ambitious work of environmental fantasy that blends mythic adventure, eco-fiction, and climate fiction into a sweeping speculative tale. Set in a damaged world where the Natural Order struggles against Chaos and the Force Corrupted, the novel moves north into the Great Plains and centers its conflict on drought, water, ecological collapse, and the fragile bonds that connect all living things. It’s a book with large stakes, but its emotional pull comes from small, unlikely heroes carrying the fate of the world on their shoulders.

At the heart of the story is Long Leg, a Gifted burrowing owl whose loyalty to the earth elemental Okaraxta gives the novel both intimacy and purpose. Through Long Leg’s journey, Tembreull turns animals, elementals, fungi, water, wind, and land into active participants in an ongoing struggle for balance. The result is a richly imagined mythic fantasy world where the natural world isn’t just scenery; it’s alive, wounded, watchful, and capable of resistance. The book’s use of Lakota-inspired themes, especially the idea that all beings are related, gives the story a spiritual framework that feels central to its identity.

The novel’s strongest quality is its sense of scale. Tembreull writes with the scope of epic fantasy while grounding the story in recognizable environmental concerns: drought, wildfire, overuse of water, disappearing habitats, and humanity’s troubled relationship with the planet. Water becomes both a sacred presence and a force of renewal, which gives the adventure a clear emotional and thematic current. The prose is often expansive and philosophical, but that style suits a story designed to feel like a legend, a warning, and a quest all at once.

Readers who enjoyed Richard Adams’s Watership Down may find a familiar appeal here: animal protagonists move through a dangerous world shaped by forces larger than themselves, and their courage matters because they’re vulnerable. Tembreull’s book is more overtly supernatural and environmental in its focus, but it shares that sense of small creatures becoming central to a vast struggle. The journey also carries the feel of an eco-fantasy quest, where survival depends not on domination, but on cooperation, memory, sacrifice, and respect for the living world.

Long Leg is a thoughtful and imaginative speculative fiction novel for readers who appreciate mythic worldbuilding, animal-centered adventure, and environmental themes woven into epic fantasy. It’s not simply a story about a broken world; it’s a story about connection, responsibility, and the possibility of restoration. Tembreull delivers a distinctive continuation of the Blighted Earth series, one that invites readers to care deeply about the smallest beings and to see the natural world as a powerful, sacred community.

Pages: 338 | ASIN ‏ : ‎ B0GVPT5DMM