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A review by katie_effing_kloss
Black Wolves by Kate Elliott
3.0
(before anything else, I want to warn that there's a fairly graphic rape midway through that some people may want to skip over (and can without missing anything)).
I marathoned the last 300 pages after waffling over it for a week or two, and really tried harder to like it more than I did. It felt like more of a stage for the sequel than a book by itself, although there was a lot to it. The sheer amount of political maneuvering was hard to track at times, and some parts dragged because of it. Despite the back cover and description here, Kellas was my least favorite of the main characters; he seemed pretty one dimensional until the very end, and very much the image of the "legendary elite soldier" type. I did enjoy his flashbacks, however, which were much more substantive to me than the present.
Now for the good parts: the eagle-reeve relationships were definitely my favorite, and I enjoyed the scenes where the eagles' connections to their reeves were made almost tangible. Dannarah definitely made up for Kellas's lack of substance, and it was interesting to have the perspective of someone who saw the entirety of her family's rise and fall, and is constantly in conflict with younger, more ignorant characters (mostly reeves and marshals).
I do wish that the demons' subplot had been explored a little more, instead of being explained indirectly and in passing. I particularly would have liked to have the scene with mean essentially anything to the rest of the book, but again, more of a setup for the next book.
Overall I enjoyed it, and will probably read the next, but definitely not for Kellas.
I marathoned the last 300 pages after waffling over it for a week or two, and really tried harder to like it more than I did. It felt like more of a stage for the sequel than a book by itself, although there was a lot to it. The sheer amount of political maneuvering was hard to track at times, and some parts dragged because of it. Despite the back cover and description here, Kellas was my least favorite of the main characters; he seemed pretty one dimensional until the very end, and very much the image of the "legendary elite soldier" type. I did enjoy his flashbacks, however, which were much more substantive to me than the present.
Now for the good parts: the eagle-reeve relationships were definitely my favorite, and I enjoyed the scenes where the eagles' connections to their reeves were made almost tangible. Dannarah definitely made up for Kellas's lack of substance, and it was interesting to have the perspective of someone who saw the entirety of her family's rise and fall, and is constantly in conflict with younger, more ignorant characters (mostly reeves and marshals).
I do wish that the demons' subplot had been explored a little more, instead of being explained indirectly and in passing. I particularly would have liked to have the scene with
Spoiler
Sarai exploring the demon coil in the Assizes TowerOverall I enjoyed it, and will probably read the next, but definitely not for Kellas.