This is the sequel to The Book That Wouldn't Burn. I love how unique the world of this story is, and Mark Lawrence creates some amazingly relatable characters. This is a beautifully woven story that I can't wait to read the next installment of.
The second volume in the ground-breaking Library Trilogy, following THE BOOK THAT WOULDN'T BURN.
We fight for the people we love. We fight for the ideas we want to be true.
Evar and Livira stand side by side and yet far beyond each other's reach. Evar is forced to flee the library, driven before an implacable foe. Livira, trapped in a ghost world, has to recover her book if she's to return to her life. While Evar's journey leads him outside into the vastness of a world he's never seen, Livira's destination lies deep inside her own writing, where she…
Gemmel has such a distinct writing style where he has this fast pace and surprisingly detailed story. So much happens with few words and you don't feel like it could be so few words. Like a magic trick. He makes you like characters and root for them but isn't too worried about making them do awful things or even die.
Fierce and proud, the Rigante dwell deep in the green mountain lands, worshiping the gods of air and water, and the spirits of the earth. Among them lives a warrior who bears the mark of fate. Born of the storm that slew his father, he is Connavar, and tales of his courage spread like wildfire.
The Seidh--a magical race as old as time--take note of the young warrior and cast a malignant shadow across his life. For soon a merciless army will cross the water, destroying forever the timeless rhythms of life among the Rigante.
A fine book. Set in alternate reality modern(ish) times with TVs, aircraft etc but with the power in the hands of clans that have personal combat magics that make them the dominant force in the setting.
Constantly engaging with a great portrait of "crime family" dynamics in a non-western setting. Shades of The Godfather and other Mafia tales, but also very much its own thing.
The jade-based magic system is both simple and interesting.
I wasn't particularly moved on an emotional level but the story with exciting, entertaining, and had lots of fascinating detail both on the small scale (street fights, family arguments, training school scenes) and the large (nations vying for power, government vs clan interactions etc). And the story has great potential to expand.
This will have to be a brief review - finished the book while sitting up all night with my daughter in A&E. But definitely…
'An epic drama reminiscent of the best classic Hong Kong gangster films but set in a fantasy metropolis so gritty and well-imagined that you'll forget you're reading a book' KEN LIU
'Gripping!' ANN LECKIE, author of Ancillary Justice and The Raven Tower
'Lee's astute worldbuilding raises the stakes for her vivid and tautly-described action scenes' SCOTT LYNCH, author of The Lies of Locke Lamora
*****Shortlisted for the Nebula Awards, the Locus Awards, the Aurora Awards, the Sunburst Awards and an Amazon.com Best Book of the Month*****
I fell in love with Christopher bhuelman's writing when I chanced the Blacktongue Thief which forced me to go and read his entire catalogue.
I had to read The Daughter's War as soon as I could and was not disappointed. The prequel story follows a character from Thief and even though it's set in the same world the voice is so different and original.
You learn a lot about the back story of this character and the world the story is set in and I just couldn't put it down.
The goblins have killed all of our horses and most of our men. They have enslaved our cities, burned our fields, and still they wage war. Now, our daughters take up arms.
Galva - Galvicha to her three brothers, two of whom the goblins will kill - has defied her family's wishes and joined the army's untested new unit, the Raven Knights. They march toward a once-beautiful city overrun by the goblin horde, accompanied by scores of giant war corvids. Made with the darkest magics, these fearsome black birds may hold the key to stopping the goblins in their war…
Azetla has served the Maurowan Army for thirteen years. There are seven left to pay. A pariah and a debt soldier, he is a commander with no rank, a soldier without citizenship, and wears a sword that it is unlawful for him to either own or use. He has learned to hold his tongue or risk losing everything.When Azetla’s battalion is sent into the desert to catch a Sahr devil—one of the famously brutal inhabitants of the region—his tenuous position is threatened. He discovers that there is far more to this mission than catching a fiend. For the Emperor of…
Buehlman is an excellent writer - in my opinion he's a cut above the great majority of successful writers out there. I love his prose and the way he animates his story. He's an efficient writer who leans into (wonderful) dialogue to do a lot of the heavy lifting. He can do in 10 words what many writers will waffle for a paragraph to do half as well.
His extraordinary debut, Those Across the River, was hailed as “genre-bending Southern horror” (California Literary Review), “graceful [and] horrific” (Patricia Briggs). Now Christopher Buehlman invites readers into an even darker age—one of temptation and corruption, of war in heaven, and of hell on earth… And Lucifer said: “Let us rise against Him now in all our numbers, and pull the walls of heaven down…” The year is 1348. Thomas, a disgraced knight, has found a young girl alone in a dead Norman village. An orphan of the Black Death, and an almost unnerving picture of innocence, she tells Thomas that…
This was a LONG book - 774 pages, with a fairly small font.
I thought it was excellent. Really enjoyed it.
I've known about the book for a long time but was put off by knowing that there are a great many (20?) point of view characters. I tend to prefer a small number of (often singular) points of view, and to get to know that/those character/s very well.
Contrary to expectations, the large field of points of view worked very well for me. The eponymous Red Knight's point of view gets a significantly larger number of pages than any of the rest, and helps glue it all together, as does the fact that all of the points of view are involved in the same drama, many of them in the same place, the rest converging on it.
I guess part of the reason I had such a good time…
Forget George and the Dragon. Forget Sir Lancelot and tales of Knightly exploits. This is dirty, bloody work. This is violent, visceral action. This is a mercenary knight as you've never seen one before. Twenty eight florins a month is a huge price to pay, for a man to stand between you and the Wild. Twenty eight florins a month is nowhere near enough when a wyvern's jaws snap shut on your helmet in the hot stink of battle, and the beast starts to rip the head from your shoulders. But if standing and fighting is hard, leading a company…
This is a collection of stories involving characters from Mark Lawrence's Broken Empire series. It was full of short stories about characters (often despicable ones) I got to know in that series, and I had a fantastic time revisiting their lives. This isn't for everyone, as many of the characters are truly awful people in a lot of ways, but Lawrence does a surprising job of making you want to know what happens to them in his Broken Empire series.
This is a collection of fourteen stories of murder, mayhem, pathos, and philosophy, all set in the world of the Broken Empire. Within these pages, you will find tales of men such as Red Kent, Sir Makin, Rike, Burlow and the Nuban, telling of their origins and the events that forged them. There is Jorg himself, striding the page as a child of six, as a teenage wanderer and as a young king. And then there is a tale about Prince Jalan Kendeth – liar, cheat, womaniser and coward. The new reader should be warned that there are spoilers for…
The Fury of the Gods is the earth-shattering final book in John Gwynne's bestselling Norse-inspired epic fantasy series, packed with myth, magic and bloody vengeance
THE FINAL BATTLE FOR THE FATE OF VIGRID APPROACHES
Varg has overcome the trials of his past and become an accepted member of the Bloodsworn, but now he and his newfound comrades face their biggest challenge yet: slaying a dragon.
Elvar is struggling to consolidate her power in Snakavik, where she faces threats from within and without. As she fights to assert her authority in readiness for the coming conflict,…
The story of Penelope, wife of Odysseus, having to use all her cunning and wiles to keep the suitors at arm's length while she awaits the return of her husband.
'Claire North brings a powerful, fresh and unflinching voice to ancient myth - darkly fascinating, raw and breathtaking' Jennifer Saint, author of Sunday Times bestseller Ariadne
***A Sunday Times Historical Fiction Book of the Year***
This is the story of Penelope of Ithaca, famed wife of Odysseus, as it has never been told before. Beyond Ithaca's shores, the whims of gods dictate the wars of men. But on the isle, it is the choices of the abandoned women - and their goddesses - that will change the course of the world.
