[Review] Blood Song - Anthony Ryan

Titel: Blood Song

Series: Raven's Shadow

Author: Anthony Ryan

Publisher: Penguin Audio

Format: Audio, english

Synopsis: GoodReads

Review: 4*, GoodReads, LovelyBooks, Amazon

Buy: Amazon

The Sixth Order wields the sword of justice and smites the enemies of the Faith and the Realm. Vaelin Al Sorna was only a child of 10 when his father left him at the iron gate of the Sixth Order. The Brothers of the Sixth Order are devoted to battle, and Vaelin will be trained and hardened to the austere, celibate, and dangerous life of a Warrior of the Faith. He has no family now save the Order.

Vaelin’s father was Battle Lord to King Janus, ruler of the unified realm. Vaelin’s rage at being deprived of his birthright and dropped at the doorstep of the Sixth Order like a foundling knows no bounds. He cherishes the memory of his mother, and what he will come to learn of her at the Order will confound him. His father, too, has motives that Vaelin will come to understand. But one truth overpowers all the rest: Vaelin Al Sorna is destined for a future he has yet to comprehend. A future that will alter not only the realm, but the world.

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Another Epic-Fantasy adventure that I listened to on audio. In this case I was slightly disappointed with the narration, as I had trouble distinguishing between the different characters and it always took me some time to realize a time-jump had happened, because there was no pause in the narration.

Other than that, the book was great. The writing doesn’t come up to the same level as Rothfuss’ in ‘The name of the wind’, to which I’ve seen this one compared, but it’s still great.

What the book ‘lacks’ in lyrical prowess it makes up with plot and story-telling.

This is only the second book/series I’ve read that has a narrator. In this case it is our protagonist who tells his story to a historian.

As I said, there are quite a few time-jumps, which helps keeps the story fast-paced, yet spanning more than a decade.

The plot is very interesting and kept me engaged the whole time. It had quite a bit of adventure, some magic mixed in and a whole lot of fighting.

Because of the time-jumps and my problems with distinguishing the voices I had some trouble keeping the plot straight time-wise, but it wasn’t that much of a problem.

The structure of the order and it’s diffrences to the more ‘worldly’soldiers was interesting to see and I loved seeing out hero juggle his roles in both the fate and as a Sword of the Realm.

While we learned a lot about Vaelin, our main character, I didn’t feel like we got to know him very well, most of what we learned about him or his feelings and motivations seemed a bit superficial. I still liked him and enjoyed witnessing his journey.

What I also liked was that while he certainly has skills that go beyond those of most men, he wasn’t without flaws. Especially during the early years and his training with the order it was clear that he wasn’t simply the best in everything he did. He is a born leader, very powerful, cunning and almost unbeatable with a sword, but there are other skills in which his brothers outshine him.

He is also capable of doing magic, but as it is considered ‘dark’ he hardly uses it consciously.

I really hope we’ll see more of it in the future books.

In the end I only rated it 4 out of 5 stars, but I’m pretty sure the rating will rise with the other books on the series.