Take a photo of a barcode or cover
4.29 AVERAGE
4.29 AVERAGE
dark
mysterious
tense
slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Yes
Diverse cast of characters:
No
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Complicated
Absolutely amazing. The only reason this didn’t get the full five stars is because of some inconsistencies that pulled me out of the story. Bring on the sequel!
overall good book. if you like your fantasy a little more medieval you could do worse than this book. its close to greatness but doesn't quite hit that mark for me. I lobed the character if Vaelin and I found the Blood Song quite interesting, but lacking originality. Maybe it grows in the later books. Fun read that floats somewhere in the middle of the road for me.
Actual rating: 4.5 stars
First off, I'm going to clarify that I only lower my rating to 4.5 because of the grammar and punctuation mistakes. Some your/you're mix-ups, a shit-ton of compound words without the hyphen to join them, a lot of missing commas when a character addresses another by name or title, and a lot of commas where there should've been periods or at least semi-colons. Since I found this book online, I can't know for sure, but I'm quite certain that I read the self-published edition. I see here on GR that since then it's been published by an actual book publisher, so I imagine (and truly hope) that the book has gone through the hands of a proofreader to fix all these small but quite annoying mistakes.
However, it might be the first time in my life I was actually completely willing to ignore the terrible punctuation, even though it slowed my reading considerably, because the story is too great to be passed up just because of grammar. I'm a proofreader myself, so it's extremely hard to enjoy a book with grammar mistakes because I keep correcting them in my head instead of actually reading the story, so the fact that I was able to look past that says a lot. Although I would seriously recommend the author to know his own language better, as it would undoubtedly improve his writing.
I'm still quite new to the High Fantasy and Epic Fantasy genre. I picked up this book because some people compared the writing to that of Patrick Rothfuss, who is my favorite author. So I felt almost obliged to read it to see if it was true. And, in a way, it was. After I managed to look past the grammatical errors, I saw Anthony Ryan's writing for what it was: pretty fucking good. Different from Rothfuss, though. Whereas Pat is a poet who paints gorgeously-detailed pictures with music between each word, Anthony is a writer who shows things as they are because there's no place for adorments and decoration in a story about war. He's no romantic. But there is something there, I'm not sure what, that makes the writings feel similar even though the stories are so different. He describes very clearly and with great vocabulary, which made it all the easier to ignore the punctuation.
Despite the clear difference between the tone of both books, there is one major similarity between The Name of The Wind and Blood Song: the main character is a living legend fallen to somewhat disgrace who, for whatever reason, tells his epic life-story to a scribe. The biggest difference is that Kvothe is an intellectual smart-ass with a god-like talent for music and trouble, while Vaelin is a sad man, seemingly without any control over his fate, deprived of his childhood to be raised as a soldier.
The story of this book is epic, to say the least. It is also brutal, violent, intriguing, sad, and heart-breaking; there's hardly any happiness found in the pages of this book. I cannot tell you how much I hurt while reading it. I know it's because I'm not used to reading stories in which warriors and soldiers are protagonists.
I found Blood Song to have so much injustice, to be so brutal. For me, it didn't have enough fantasy elements by a long mile, which would've made it more bearable for me. It seems all of them were all crammed in the last 120 pages or so. Until then, the fantasy elements were a handful of small scenes that roused the mysteries of Vaelin's power. The rest was about a boy abandoned by his father, raised in a cruel and violent environment and forced to take part in a useless war. It was harsh and painfully realistic, and it hurt to read it. But don't get me wrong: I loved every minute of it. Despite the harsh reality, it was still so good, so well-written, that I somehow enjoyed it greatly. The pacing is fantastic. You can see and hear the difference between Vaelin as a little boy and Vaelin as a man, you can see how much of what he goes through ages him.
There were a few times when there were unexpected flashbacks scenes that threw me off track, but I always found my way back when the context was explained, although I felt that the context could have been mentioned at the beginning of the flashback and the momentary confusion would've been avoided. The names sometimes confused me as well, because they are all pretty similar and there are a lot of them. It took me a while to remember the names of Vaelin's group of friends and to remember which name belonged to which character (sidenote: how amazing is the name Vaelin Al Sorna? It truly sounds like a warrior, I love it.). Other than that, everything was perfect. The book could've used some more world-building perhaps, but it was detailed when it needed to, so I don't really have any complaints there. I like that the book doesn't end in a cliff-hanger and doesn't have loose ends, which bother me greatly. Of course not everything is explained because we haven't been told the entire story yet, but what is presented at the beginning is resolved at the end, and you finish the book content.
I look forward to reading the rest of the series to know how everything unfolds now that we know the answers to the biggest mysteries of the story.
First off, I'm going to clarify that I only lower my rating to 4.5 because of the grammar and punctuation mistakes. Some your/you're mix-ups, a shit-ton of compound words without the hyphen to join them, a lot of missing commas when a character addresses another by name or title, and a lot of commas where there should've been periods or at least semi-colons. Since I found this book online, I can't know for sure, but I'm quite certain that I read the self-published edition. I see here on GR that since then it's been published by an actual book publisher, so I imagine (and truly hope) that the book has gone through the hands of a proofreader to fix all these small but quite annoying mistakes.
However, it might be the first time in my life I was actually completely willing to ignore the terrible punctuation, even though it slowed my reading considerably, because the story is too great to be passed up just because of grammar. I'm a proofreader myself, so it's extremely hard to enjoy a book with grammar mistakes because I keep correcting them in my head instead of actually reading the story, so the fact that I was able to look past that says a lot. Although I would seriously recommend the author to know his own language better, as it would undoubtedly improve his writing.
I'm still quite new to the High Fantasy and Epic Fantasy genre. I picked up this book because some people compared the writing to that of Patrick Rothfuss, who is my favorite author. So I felt almost obliged to read it to see if it was true. And, in a way, it was. After I managed to look past the grammatical errors, I saw Anthony Ryan's writing for what it was: pretty fucking good. Different from Rothfuss, though. Whereas Pat is a poet who paints gorgeously-detailed pictures with music between each word, Anthony is a writer who shows things as they are because there's no place for adorments and decoration in a story about war. He's no romantic. But there is something there, I'm not sure what, that makes the writings feel similar even though the stories are so different. He describes very clearly and with great vocabulary, which made it all the easier to ignore the punctuation.
Despite the clear difference between the tone of both books, there is one major similarity between The Name of The Wind and Blood Song: the main character is a living legend fallen to somewhat disgrace who, for whatever reason, tells his epic life-story to a scribe. The biggest difference is that Kvothe is an intellectual smart-ass with a god-like talent for music and trouble, while Vaelin is a sad man, seemingly without any control over his fate, deprived of his childhood to be raised as a soldier.
The story of this book is epic, to say the least. It is also brutal, violent, intriguing, sad, and heart-breaking; there's hardly any happiness found in the pages of this book. I cannot tell you how much I hurt while reading it. I know it's because I'm not used to reading stories in which warriors and soldiers are protagonists.
I found Blood Song to have so much injustice, to be so brutal. For me, it didn't have enough fantasy elements by a long mile, which would've made it more bearable for me. It seems all of them were all crammed in the last 120 pages or so. Until then, the fantasy elements were a handful of small scenes that roused the mysteries of Vaelin's power. The rest was about a boy abandoned by his father, raised in a cruel and violent environment and forced to take part in a useless war. It was harsh and painfully realistic, and it hurt to read it. But don't get me wrong: I loved every minute of it. Despite the harsh reality, it was still so good, so well-written, that I somehow enjoyed it greatly. The pacing is fantastic. You can see and hear the difference between Vaelin as a little boy and Vaelin as a man, you can see how much of what he goes through ages him.
There were a few times when there were unexpected flashbacks scenes that threw me off track, but I always found my way back when the context was explained, although I felt that the context could have been mentioned at the beginning of the flashback and the momentary confusion would've been avoided. The names sometimes confused me as well, because they are all pretty similar and there are a lot of them. It took me a while to remember the names of Vaelin's group of friends and to remember which name belonged to which character (sidenote: how amazing is the name Vaelin Al Sorna? It truly sounds like a warrior, I love it.). Other than that, everything was perfect. The book could've used some more world-building perhaps, but it was detailed when it needed to, so I don't really have any complaints there. I like that the book doesn't end in a cliff-hanger and doesn't have loose ends, which bother me greatly. Of course not everything is explained because we haven't been told the entire story yet, but what is presented at the beginning is resolved at the end, and you finish the book content.
I look forward to reading the rest of the series to know how everything unfolds now that we know the answers to the biggest mysteries of the story.
DNF @ 55%/336p
I can't for the life of me understand the hype around this book. Each chapter is promising. Each plot turn is promising. But nothing comes out of it. The whole plot seems like a continuous improvisation and not a well-thought construction.
Except for very few exceptions, characters are shallow and don't have clear goals, intents or conflicts, including Vaelin, the main character, who never seems to want, regret, like or-god forbids-fear anything. He's forced to become a kind of fighting-monk enduring a life-threatening the the age of 10 and even after learning that is never angry/sad/conflicted about it. It's one of the main things that make Vaelin not feel like a flesh-and-bones human and more like a robot. He never fails and ONCE doesn't succeed at first at something as has to train for two weeks (omg, so long), described in one sentence, and becomes really good at it.
The world building is also vert shallow and does not attract the curiosity of the reader, which is should do !! The back story of the realm is blurry and does'n really make sense politically. Even after meeting the King, the reader can't tell what the strengths, weaknesses and interests of the kingdom are, except chasing heretics because... Reasons ??
I've heard this being compared to Patrick Rothfuss and sorry but it's nothing alike. Plot is basic. Characters are flat. Worldbuilding is-to me-lazy and doesn't make you want to discover anything about it.
Meh.
I can't for the life of me understand the hype around this book. Each chapter is promising. Each plot turn is promising. But nothing comes out of it. The whole plot seems like a continuous improvisation and not a well-thought construction.
Except for very few exceptions, characters are shallow and don't have clear goals, intents or conflicts, including Vaelin, the main character, who never seems to want, regret, like or-god forbids-fear anything. He's forced to become a kind of fighting-monk enduring a life-threatening the the age of 10 and even after learning that
Spoiler
his dad did it to reunite with his mistress, and then discovering that it was actually his deceased mother who chose this for himThe world building is also vert shallow and does not attract the curiosity of the reader, which is should do !! The back story of the realm is blurry and does'n really make sense politically. Even after meeting the King, the reader can't tell what the strengths, weaknesses and interests of the kingdom are, except chasing heretics because... Reasons ??
I've heard this being compared to Patrick Rothfuss and sorry but it's nothing alike. Plot is basic. Characters are flat. Worldbuilding is-to me-lazy and doesn't make you want to discover anything about it.
Meh.
adventurous
challenging
slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Complicated
Diverse cast of characters:
N/A
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Complicated
Well written, like how it follows one person through the years and you’re able to get to know him, no hero in the story, but you still sympathise with the main character. Book is separated in parts. There are two stories being told - one in the present and the main one in retrospect.
This is one of the best fantasy novels I have read in a long time. I'm not even quite sure what I want to say about it. I quickly fell in love with the character of Vaelin Al Sorna, and I loved all the twists and turns that happened throughout the story. Even now, after I've finished it, I almost want to pick it up and start again from the top, and re-read all the things I clearly missed during the first read through. I have to say though, my favorite character was definitely Sister Sherin. She was so amazing and strong, and I found myself shipping Vaelin/Sherin pretty early on. Not only that, but the brotherhood, and how deeply the bond between the brothers went. Another thing that I loved, was that, almost like a mystery novel, you can't really trust any of the characters in the book. Even though Vaelin felt deeply for his brothers and other supporting characters, the eventual betrayal of several characters were hard to predict and really awoke my emotions. Seriously not over at least one of them. I was on edge reading the entire story, and found that I couldn't put this book down until I had finished it.
I've read some not so great things about the sequels, which makes me a bit nervous to continue, but I've found that absolutely have to find out what happens, even if it makes me mad. I absolutely need to continue on in this universe! And so, I will.
I've read some not so great things about the sequels, which makes me a bit nervous to continue, but I've found that absolutely have to find out what happens, even if it makes me mad. I absolutely need to continue on in this universe! And so, I will.
adventurous
medium-paced
dark
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
No
Loveable characters:
Complicated
Diverse cast of characters:
No
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes