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A review by mimie7ea4
Bloodring by Faith Hunter
4.0
3.5 stars but rounding up for the apocalyptic ice age setting... which sounds pretty nice right about now, what with the last election we're ever gonna have coming up and the world ending shortly thereafter. Just kidding?
Anyhow.
This book is a unusual blend of almost everything I like to see in urban fantasy with the exception of angels and biblical tie-ins. Am not a fan of angels and even less a fan of angels + biblical things. Though, here, they aren't too heavy-handed.
The writing is decent, albeit slow in the beginning, but you get used to it as you read on. The characters are okay, as are the plot and mythology. There's a good amount of government conspiracy theories to give the story a futuristic, sci-fi feel, and everything else is decent and interesting enough that I'll most likely finish the trilogy. It'll take some time getting there, but as I've learned, this book, and most likely this whole trilogy, is meant to be taken slowly, with frequent breaks in between.
The one thing that made this book stand out among the hundreds (or hundreds of thousands?) of urban fantasies of its kind--many of which I passed on simply because they looked too much like something I'd seen or read before--is the setting. It's an endless, bitterly cold winter. A refreshing break from the usual dark and dank magical urban settings.
This is a world buried under a ton of snow and hasn't seen any seasonal changes since the apocalyptic ice age hit. No one alive remembers the seasons changing. They speak of warm weather as though it's a myth because all they know is winter. I find that most intriguing because the way things are going, we might one day speak of cold weather the way these people speak of the myth that was summer.
Overall, a good story with a slow burn, though not one I'd recommend unless you're looking for something fairly different (but still somewhat the same) on the urban fantasy shelf.
Full(er) review at https://covers2covers.wordpress.com/2017/01/13/review-bloodring-rogue-mage-series-1-by-faith-hunter/
Anyhow.
This book is a unusual blend of almost everything I like to see in urban fantasy with the exception of angels and biblical tie-ins. Am not a fan of angels and even less a fan of angels + biblical things. Though, here, they aren't too heavy-handed.
The writing is decent, albeit slow in the beginning, but you get used to it as you read on. The characters are okay, as are the plot and mythology. There's a good amount of government conspiracy theories to give the story a futuristic, sci-fi feel, and everything else is decent and interesting enough that I'll most likely finish the trilogy. It'll take some time getting there, but as I've learned, this book, and most likely this whole trilogy, is meant to be taken slowly, with frequent breaks in between.
The one thing that made this book stand out among the hundreds (or hundreds of thousands?) of urban fantasies of its kind--many of which I passed on simply because they looked too much like something I'd seen or read before--is the setting. It's an endless, bitterly cold winter. A refreshing break from the usual dark and dank magical urban settings.
This is a world buried under a ton of snow and hasn't seen any seasonal changes since the apocalyptic ice age hit. No one alive remembers the seasons changing. They speak of warm weather as though it's a myth because all they know is winter. I find that most intriguing because the way things are going, we might one day speak of cold weather the way these people speak of the myth that was summer.
Overall, a good story with a slow burn, though not one I'd recommend unless you're looking for something fairly different (but still somewhat the same) on the urban fantasy shelf.
Full(er) review at https://covers2covers.wordpress.com/2017/01/13/review-bloodring-rogue-mage-series-1-by-faith-hunter/