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A review by willrefuge
With Blood Upon the Sand by Bradley P. Beaulieu
4.0
I'll have to read this again later. I think I'll like it more.
4.4 / 5 stars.
Twelve Kings in Sharakai was one of my favorite books of all time. With Blood Upon the Sand is a departure from the original book in more ways than one, but keeps the tone of the series. There’s more sand, more Çeda, and more Sharakai. However, in WBUtS, we finally venture outside the desert city of Sharakai, from the surrounding caravanserai of the Shangazi down to the sun-washed shores of Qaimir. All the POV characters return from the first book, with one additional (but not necessarily new) character joining the cast.
While TKiS was one of my all time favorite books, I really think I made a mistake in reading these two back-to-back. I read the first Song of the Shattered Sands back in 2015, and since I start or continue maybe a dozen plus new series a year, I thought I could use a refresher. But… well, this turned out to be problematic. WBUtS didn’t have the same pacing as TKiS; it was slower, more complex, more measured. It’s unfair to compare the two—no matter that they’re in the same series, no matter that one precedes the other—but that’s what I found myself doing. And this kept me from getting into WBUtS, kept me from racing through it quite as quickly.
4.4 / 5 stars.
Twelve Kings in Sharakai was one of my favorite books of all time. With Blood Upon the Sand is a departure from the original book in more ways than one, but keeps the tone of the series. There’s more sand, more Çeda, and more Sharakai. However, in WBUtS, we finally venture outside the desert city of Sharakai, from the surrounding caravanserai of the Shangazi down to the sun-washed shores of Qaimir. All the POV characters return from the first book, with one additional (but not necessarily new) character joining the cast.
While TKiS was one of my all time favorite books, I really think I made a mistake in reading these two back-to-back. I read the first Song of the Shattered Sands back in 2015, and since I start or continue maybe a dozen plus new series a year, I thought I could use a refresher. But… well, this turned out to be problematic. WBUtS didn’t have the same pacing as TKiS; it was slower, more complex, more measured. It’s unfair to compare the two—no matter that they’re in the same series, no matter that one precedes the other—but that’s what I found myself doing. And this kept me from getting into WBUtS, kept me from racing through it quite as quickly.