Eoghann Mill Irving reviewed Blood Song by Anthony Ryan
Review of 'Blood Song' on 'Goodreads'
4 stars
This is another of those series where you're not going to get a wholly satisfying conclusion to each book. That doesn't mean it's a bad book, I just like to warn people about that sort of thing up front. It does reach a logical pause point of sorts, but there's clearly a lot of unresolved issues.
91v3dsu+CmLApparently Blood Song was originally self-published. I don't know if it was re-edited before being published by Penguin but there's certainly none of the stereotypical self-published weaknesses on display here.
Certainly there are plenty of familiar fantasy elements at play including some sort of supernatural nameless evil lurking in the background and our hero with a destiny. It also has that modern fantasy feel of dirty, gritty, gosh isn't life horridness. But it's extremely well executed.
I was a little worried when the book started with our hero narrating his life to a chronicler. …
This is another of those series where you're not going to get a wholly satisfying conclusion to each book. That doesn't mean it's a bad book, I just like to warn people about that sort of thing up front. It does reach a logical pause point of sorts, but there's clearly a lot of unresolved issues.
91v3dsu+CmLApparently Blood Song was originally self-published. I don't know if it was re-edited before being published by Penguin but there's certainly none of the stereotypical self-published weaknesses on display here.
Certainly there are plenty of familiar fantasy elements at play including some sort of supernatural nameless evil lurking in the background and our hero with a destiny. It also has that modern fantasy feel of dirty, gritty, gosh isn't life horridness. But it's extremely well executed.
I was a little worried when the book started with our hero narrating his life to a chronicler. If ever there is an overused trope in fantasy that has to be one. It's also one tha ttends to set my teeth on edge. Fortunately the story doesn't jump back and forth very often and when it does there's some clever hinting at how the story being told is not the story that we are reading.
Since we really only have one viewpoint character for the bulk of the book the enjoyability pretty much hinges on him and fortunately Vaelin Al Sorna proves to be very engaging. He is a lightly flawed character, but neither a tortured hero nor so crippled with character flaws that you end up hating him. There's a nuance to him and his behavior that rewards reading about him.
It would be fair to say that the characters surrounding him do not fair as well. They are comparatively shallow. To the extent that betrayal when it happens feels more like the next plot beat than an actual knife in the back. In part this is again because of that narrative style of re-telling a story to a chronicler. What you end up with is a series of sequences from Vaelin's life. The big action moments if you like. And some of the character moments that should support those are missing.
But somehow that doesn't matter because the book just keeps you moving along with it. There's always a problem to be resolved. Some underlying tension to worry about. Or another larger mystery to get your attention. It's what they call a page turner.
There's also a good amount of solid world building going on in the background. We get a lot of information about the society that Vaelin was born and lives in, but also glimpses of other parts of the world too. These aren't radically new societies, but they're believable ones and they do give the reader the feeling that there's a larger world happening around the events that they are reading about.
If you enjoy solid modern fantasy then I'd say the Raven's Shadow series is worth a read.
