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laku 's review for:
The Road of Bones
by Demi Winters
adventurous
medium-paced
My track record with fantasy romance hasn't been the best, but this book was a lot of fun.
It starts slowly, setting up the world and characters, but once the stakes are established it really held my attention. It certainly helped that it was in third person and with multiple POVs, which is my preferred kind of narration.
There are a lot of mysteries and plot points introduced from the start, but they are all juggled together without breaking the tension for almost 500 pages and even at the end only a few of them are completely solved, which makes sense considering this is supposed to be a five-book series.
The setting was less Viking-esque than I was led to believe. A lot of Norse terms are used, but actual Vikings—as in raiders and mercenaries to foreign courts—do not appear at all. There were some anachronisms (Silla mentions a possible "misprint" of a map) and the period was not clearly set: The book is obviously inspired by the Icelandic sagas, but most of the people seem to live in medieval-esque cities rather than the isolated farmsteads of the time. This didn't bother me too much, though. There were so many fantasy elements that made the world unique, like vampire deer and burning butterflies and magical metals, and so many cultural details that I loved exploring.
Silla is a very refreshing protagonist to follow. She's an easy-going woman, kind and sweet and eager to please, but she never looks down on those qualities even if she lives in a violence-prone world that regards them as weaknesses. She's not too proud to ask for help and accept it, even after her trust has been broken. There is some miscommunication on her part, but it's completely reasonable considering her circumstances, and I always felt I would be making the exact same choices in her shoes.
Her romance had too many twists to comment on without spoilers, but suffice it to say that the author executed it brilliantly. The signs were there from the start, but ambiguous enough that the ending could have gone a different way. I'm curious to see what her romance will look like in the sequel.
Which I'm definitely reading, because judging by the epilogue it's going to add another POV, and I'm excited to get to know her better!
It starts slowly, setting up the world and characters, but once the stakes are established it really held my attention. It certainly helped that it was in third person and with multiple POVs, which is my preferred kind of narration.
There are a lot of mysteries and plot points introduced from the start, but they are all juggled together without breaking the tension for almost 500 pages and even at the end only a few of them are completely solved, which makes sense considering this is supposed to be a five-book series.
The setting was less Viking-esque than I was led to believe. A lot of Norse terms are used, but actual Vikings—as in raiders and mercenaries to foreign courts—do not appear at all. There were some anachronisms (Silla mentions a possible "misprint" of a map) and the period was not clearly set: The book is obviously inspired by the Icelandic sagas, but most of the people seem to live in medieval-esque cities rather than the isolated farmsteads of the time. This didn't bother me too much, though. There were so many fantasy elements that made the world unique, like vampire deer and burning butterflies and magical metals, and so many cultural details that I loved exploring.
Silla is a very refreshing protagonist to follow. She's an easy-going woman, kind and sweet and eager to please, but she never looks down on those qualities even if she lives in a violence-prone world that regards them as weaknesses. She's not too proud to ask for help and accept it, even after her trust has been broken. There is some miscommunication on her part, but it's completely reasonable considering her circumstances, and I always felt I would be making the exact same choices in her shoes.
Her romance had too many twists to comment on without spoilers, but suffice it to say that the author executed it brilliantly. The signs were there from the start, but ambiguous enough that the ending could have gone a different way. I'm curious to see what her romance will look like in the sequel.
Which I'm definitely reading, because judging by the epilogue it's going to add another POV, and I'm excited to get to know her better!