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kiwi_fruit 's review for:
Blood Song
by Anthony Ryan
I enjoyed reading this book but it didn’t blow my socks off. The plot follows a typical fantasy vein: the development and training of a young man into a great warrior through a set of tests and challenges accompanied by a number of loyal companions.
I liked the religious aspect in the book, the different orders and the mystery surrounding a secretive seventh one; while it is not an original concept I think Ryan did a good job in describing the different skills and goals. The “blood song” gift is a bit puzzling, it serves different purposes, lie detector and warning system, communication between similarly gifted individuals, a gut feeling but also a weapon. Vaelin is strong, dutiful and loyal to a fault, perhaps too perfect to be completely credible.
In general, I found that the women are weakly portrayed; there is some very chaste romance, Valelin’s mother had potential but her character is not well developed; sadly two-dimensional female characters is often a fault of the genre.
The narration is not always fluid, I was left confused by the author jumping forwards and backwards a couple of times; however despite being a long book I was never bored. The twist at the end did not wow me. If it was meant to entice me onto reading the next book, it failed and if fact it put me off a bit.
On the other hand, there are a number of characters that I would like to hear more about: Erlin, Sella, Nortah, Caenis, princess Lyrna and of course I’d like to know the identity of “the one who waits”, so I might read the second book in the series but at present there are other books that I’d like to read first.
I liked the religious aspect in the book, the different orders and the mystery surrounding a secretive seventh one; while it is not an original concept I think Ryan did a good job in describing the different skills and goals. The “blood song” gift is a bit puzzling, it serves different purposes, lie detector and warning system, communication between similarly gifted individuals, a gut feeling but also a weapon. Vaelin is strong, dutiful and loyal to a fault, perhaps too perfect to be completely credible.
In general, I found that the women are weakly portrayed; there is some very chaste romance, Valelin’s mother had potential but her character is not well developed; sadly two-dimensional female characters is often a fault of the genre.
The narration is not always fluid, I was left confused by the author jumping forwards and backwards a couple of times; however despite being a long book I was never bored. The twist at the end did not wow me. If it was meant to entice me onto reading the next book, it failed and if fact it put me off a bit.
On the other hand, there are a number of characters that I would like to hear more about: Erlin, Sella, Nortah, Caenis, princess Lyrna and of course I’d like to know the identity of “the one who waits”, so I might read the second book in the series but at present there are other books that I’d like to read first.