Daughter of Lies and Ruin by Jo Spurrier

Daughter of Lies and Ruin by Jo Spurrier is the second book in the Tales of the Blackbone Witches, following on (in an episodic way) from A Curse of Ash and Embers, which I previously reviewed and which introduces the main characters. Although the second book follows on from the first, the stories in both are entirely self-contained.

There's something strange brewing in this tinder-dry forest - a girl with a sword and a secret, a troupe of vicious bandits vanished without a trace, beasts that don't belong and a witch with a macabre plan.

Elodie hasn't been learning witchcraft for long, but she knows enough to be worried, and the fact that her mentor Aleida wants to pack up and leave in short order isn't helping to settle her nerves.

Elodie just hopes to get everyone out of this mess unharmed, but it's looking more unlikely with every passing hour. And when the strange witch's ire falls on her, Aleida's wrath sparks a fire that threatens to scorch the earth itself ...

In Daughter of Lies and Ruin we see Dee and Aleida on the road, tending to some business in another region, when they start noticing strange magical things happening around them. When Aleida says they shouldn't get involved... well what stories would there be if protagonists could ignore trouble when they stumbled upon it?

In this book the dynamic between Dee and Aleida is very different to the first book. They are no longer getting to know each other and have fallen into a stable teacher-apprentice relationship, wherein both characters influence the other. So while Aleida teaches Dee magic, it's also nice to see Dee's empathy starting to rub off (a tiny bit) on Aleida. I also appreciated the aspect of magical worldbuilding whereby different witches have different strengths and Dee does not have the same strengths as her teacher so can't necessarily be taught directly in all forms of magic.

And then there's the new characters we meet in this book. We get another spunky teenaged girl, but one who is spunky in a different way to Dee (and introduces her to the concept of trousers on women), there's a surprising number of bandits, and an antagonist who isn't even doing it out of malice. I won't say more for fear of spoiling too much, but the combination made for an enjoyable read.

I enjoyed Daughter of Lies and Ruin and I recommend it to anyone who enjoyed the first book or who enjoys epic fantasy. I believe this series is being marketed as YA, however, although the protagonist is sixteen, it feels more like a BFF (big fat fantasy) book to me than a YA book (lengthwise it's probably somewhere between BFF and YA). Jo Spurrier continues to be one of my favourite Aussie fantasy writers, and I will continue buying every book she writes.

4.5 / 5 stars

First published: 2019, Harper Voyager
Series: Tales of the Blackbone Witches book 2 of ?
Format read: ePub
Source: Purchased from Kobo

Penric's Mission by Lois McMaster Bujold

Penric’s Mission by Lois McMaster Bujold is the third Penric novella that I’ve read, after Penric's Demon and Penric and the Shaman. I haven’t read any of the novels set in the same world. I mistakenly thought Penric’s Mission was chronologically third in the Penric series and then was very confused when it was set about ten years after the previous Penric novella I’d read. Turns out it was the third to be published, not the third chronologically. Whoops! Bujold’s non-chronological writing strikes again!

Learned Penric, a sorcerer and divine of the Bastard’s Order, travels across the sea to sunlit Cedonia on his first covert diplomatic mission, to attempt to secure the services of a disaffected Cedonian general for the Duke of Adria. However, nothing is as it seems: Penric is betrayed and thrown into a dungeon, and worse follows for the general and his kin. Penric’s narrow escapes and adventures — including his interest in a young widow — are told with Bujold’s remarkable energy, wit and humor. Once again, Bujold has created unforgettable characters and a wondrous, often dangerous world of intrigue and sorcery. Third novella in the Penric and Desdemona series.

Aside from my confusion as to what number book I was reading, I mostly enjoyed Penric’s Mission. I didn’t love it, though, and it’s probably my least favourite Penric book so far. It felt like it was bridging two parts of Penric’s life, but without much knowledge of the earlier part, I suspect some of the significance was lost on me. Last time I encountered Penric, he was still new. Now, ten years later, not only does he better know what he’s doing, but he’s coming from a bunch of history unfamiliar to me. We get some reminiscences which do explain how Penric got to where he was at the start of the story, but they come later in the story. I felt like more context at the start would have been helpful (and maybe would have existed if I read a chronologically earlier book first).

Penric’s Mission follows Penric while he’s been instructed to recruit a general who had been corresponding with the duke Penric is currently working for. But as soon as Penric arrives in the city, he’s arrested and, it turns out, the general has been arrested too. The questions of who betrayed Penric and why are less pressing than his immediate survival. By the time we find out the answers, they don’t seem that relevant anymore. I didn’t feel there was a very satisfying answer to “why is any of this happening?” especially since we learned Penric’s motivations so late in the story.

None of which is to say I didn’t enjoy the book, just that it could have been more enjoyable. I still fully intend to keep reading Penric stories and I especially hope we can fill in some more of the ten years that got skipped between this novella and the last.

I actually don’t think this novella is a terrible place to start reading Penric, for all that I said above. A new reader coming to it wouldn’t have much less information than I did and is likely to be less frustrated by time jumps they know nothing about. The story does not rely on any prior knowledge to work as a stand-alone. The only reason I’d particularly suggest starting with the earlier books is because I liked them more, but otherwise I wouldn’t hesitate in recommending Penric’s Mission to fans of fantasy who are looking for a shorter read.

4 / 5 stars

First published: 2016, self-published (my edition: November 2017, Subterranean Press)
Series: Penric and Desdemona, #3 in publication order of 6ish so far
Format read: eARC (PDF)
Source: Publisher via NetGalley

Sourdough and Other Stories by Angela Slatter

Sourdough and Other Stories by Angela Slatter is a collection of linked short stories — or a mosaic novel — similar to The Bitterwood Bible and Other Recountings, but written earlier and set later in the same world.

Welcome to the beautiful magic, restless passion and exquisite horror of Angela Slatter's impeccably imagined tales.

In the cathedral-city of Lodellan and its uneasy hinterland, babies are fashioned from bread, dolls are given souls and wishes granted may be soon regretted. There are ghosts who dream, men whose wings have been clipped and trolls who long for something other. Love, loss and life are elegantly dissected in Slatter's earthy yet poetic prose.

As Rob Shearman says in his Introduction: 'Sourdough and Other Stories manages to be grand and ambitious and worldbuilding-but also as intimate and focused as all good short fiction should be . . . The joy of Angela Slatter's book is that she's given us a set of fairy tales that are at once both new and fresh, and yet feel as old as storytelling itself.'

As always with Slatter's work, the writing in this book is gorgeous and the stories women-centric. I have to admit, I read it over the course of a several weeks so I lost some sense of continuity. As a result, towards the end I found myself flicking back to earlier stories trying to remember who that character with the familiar name was. I suspect this is partly to blame for my feeling that the stories are a bit less deliberately linked than those in The Bitterwood Bible and Other Recountings. That said, I also think Slatter's writing has improved in the interim.

Nevertheless, Sourdough and Other Stories was a wonderful read. I loved... too many of the stories to list them all. There were only one or two that I didn't absolutely love and, looking over the list now, only one I don't immediately recall from what I wrote about it straight after reading. Overall, a memorable collection that I highly recommend to all fantasy fans. As always, some brief thoughts on each story are below.

~

The Shadow Tree — A woman with a secret and knowledge of herbs punishes bratty royal children, tempting them with fairytales.

Gallowberries — A young witch dealing with losing her mother and finding a substitute. Took me until the end to realise the familiarity of the characters was from a link with the novella Of Sorrow and Such.

Little Radish — An unexpected Repunzel retelling. Really, there was no part of this story that I saw coming.

Dibblespin — Told from the point of view of the daughter of a troll-woman, partly about her half sister and mostly about the strange goings on in their forest and the nearby town.

The Navigator — A different kind of story to those preceding it. Set at sea, featuring a siren who has lost his wings and the one who loves him. A different take on sirens than others I've read.

The Angel Wood — A teenage girl meets her family legacy in a story that put me in mind of the Green Man (but on a smaller scale, maybe).

Ash — A short story of a witch and her revenge. I like how prone to vengeance so many of Slatter's characters turn out to be.

The Story of Ink — A story of a precocious eleven year old and the questionable task she's been set by her master. An unexpected ending which I'm sure is significant but which I don't immediately know what to make of. More part of a whole than a standalone story.

Lost Things — Surprisingly a kind of direct sequel to the previous story. I don't think the two stories should be read separately.

A Good Husband — A story about a water sprite and a woman who sort her help. A story of cleverness and domestic violence, and the jaded sprite's response.

A Porcelain Soul — The story of a girl about to graduate from a doll-making academy. But they don't make ordinary dolls, but rather infuse them with their souls to animate them. Things go wrong when the girls are working on their final projects. Definitely one of my favourite stories in this collection.

The Bones Remember Everything — I saw echoes of a few different fairytales in this one, but none that it was particularly based on (as far as my limited knowledge goes). Not sure what to make of it overall. A bit dire, in a good way as far as story telling goes. A familiar name makes an appearance in the historical backstory section.

Sourdough — A story about a young bread maker. Once I started reading, I was reminded of another story (by a different author) which turned out quite differently. That coloured my reading somewhat but this was still a good, solid, Slatter yarn.

Sister, Sister — A little bit of what happens after the fairytale, when things aren't quite just happily ever after and another fairytale intrudes. Featuring a fallen princess, a troll-wife and chosen family. I quite enjoyed this story as well.

Lavender and Lychgates — A story directly linked with "Sourdough", telling a later part of the same family's story. I was surprised at how many connections there were in this one... One of my favourite stories in this collection.

Under the Mountain — Another sequel, this time to "Sister, Sister", following the daughter's story. I'm not sure I can say more about it without spoilers. An unsettling note to end the collection on.

4.5 / 5 stars

First published: 2010, Tatarus Press
Series: Sort of? Same world as The Bitterwood Bible and Other Recountings, also the novella Of Sorrow and Such
Format read: ePub
Source: Purchased from publisher
Challenges: Australian Women Writers Challenge

King Breaker by Rowena Cory Daniells

King Breaker by Rowena Cory Daniells is the conclusion to the King Rolen's Kin series. The first three books came out in 2010, so it was a bit of a wait until the last one. Especially since, although the third book in the series could almost be taken as a conclusion to a trilogy sort of, oh my goodness there were a lot of things left entirely unresolved! So of course, I was very eager to read this last instalment, particularly after the tantalising novella released last December, The King's Man.

Speaking of, this is a book four in a four book fantasy series. The series is excellent, but I expect that someone picking up King Breaker without having read the earlier books will be a bit lost (and would not have the same investment in the characters, of course). Start with book one, The King's Bastard. On the other hand, someone picking this book up three years after having read the previous one — as I did — should have no trouble getting back into the story. Maybe it's that the earlier books burned into my brain through sheer excellence, but I think the deft way in which Daniells included reminders about past events definitely contributed.

Although this book picks up shortly after book three, The Usurper, left off, it also follows Gazrik, the main character of The King's Man novella, alongside the three children of old King Rolen and Florin the Mountain girl of the earlier books. I would suggest that Gazrik's storyline is a completion of the arc begun in The King's Man and those not reading the novella first would be missing out. It's not strictly necessary, unlike the earlier books, but I would recommend it. If you disagree, you could always read it afterwards to fill in his back-story. (And another reason to read it is because it's good. If you enjoy Daniells' work, why wouldn't you?)

Daniells is particularly good at writing characters that behave in irritating, yet entirely plausible ways. The group of point of view characters and their friends are all intelligent and well-educated (which makes sense since most of them are royalty) but their minor antagonists (as opposed to Cobalt the usurper) tend to be frustratingly short-sighted, ignorant or just horrible people. The utterly believable way in which Daniells wrote them had me heckling the page on several occasions and cheering when they were defeated — and a satisfying number of annoying characters got punched in the face, so that was also quite gratifying. I have said many times before that a mark of a good writer is the level of emotional investment they can get the reader to place in their characters, and Daniells has proved herself, once again, to be more than adept at doing so.

Readers worried about being left in the lurch again, as with the ending of The Usurper, need not worry. Although Daniells leaves the world open for a possible revisiting, the ending is quite settled. I won't reveal any spoilers, but I will say that it was ultimately satisfying, and some characters even got happy endings. (gasp!)

The King Rolen's Kin series is an excellent read. I highly recommend it to all fans of Big Fat Fantasy, especially the grittier kind. It's probably fair to say that Daniells' books generally are not for the faint of heart (there is violence and rape). But they are excellent. To readers who have read the earlier three books and didn't hate them, I can think of no reason not to go on to read King Breaker.

5 / 5 stars

First published: September 2013, Solaris
Series: Yes. Book 4 of 4, King Rolen's Kin
Format read: ebook
Source: Review copy from author and publisher
Challenges: Australian Women Writers Challenge

The Griffin's Flight by KJ Taylor

The Griffin's Flight by KJ Taylor is the second book in the Fallen Moon series. You can read my review of the first book, The Dark Griffin, here. I can't discuss what The Griffin's Flight is about without mentioning spoilers for book one. So be warned, while this review doesn't contain spoilers for The Griffin's Flight, it does contain major spoilers for The Dark Griffin. Seriously, don't read on if you don't want key events at the end of book one spoiled.

At the end of book one, our main character, Arren, dies and is magically revived with a caveat: he talks, he breathes, he heals, but his heart does not beat. It's an interesting choice for a main character since, generally speaking, bringing the dead back to life is seen as evil. He's kind of a thinking zombie and while the few people who are aware of the situation agree that whatever necromancy brought him back is evil, I like that Taylor didn't use it as an excuse for more people to hate him. (Not that lots of people don't have other reasons to hate him.)

The other major character is Erian, the bastard son of Rannagon, who Arren killed in book one. In another novel, Erian might have been the hero and Arren the villain. Instead, Erian is annoying and a bit of an idiot with an overbearing, ambitious and controlling griffin dictating to him. The reader is very much set up to sympathise with Arren. Although Erian seeks revenge for his father, much like Arren sought revenge earlier, I didn't feel very much sympathy for him at all. Mostly, I thought he got a bit more page-time than entirely necessary. However, I'm quite into the idea of swapping the roles of hero and villain as Taylor has done. I've always been a big fan of moral shades of grey.

A new character, Skade, is introduced. I didn't hate her, but I suspect her potential wasn't entirely realised in this book and will hopefully come to fruition in the concluding volume. I was also a bit disappointed that Arren's friends from book one didn't feature very much. Bran and Flell feature only in the opening and the ending, however I'm confident they will play a bigger part in The Griffin's War, so I'm looking forward to that.

The Griffin's Flight moves away from the exploration of racism that was The Dark Griffin; it's still there, but it's much less the main theme. In fact, thematically there isn't a single overarching theme tying everything together in The Griffin's Flight, which partly makes it feel a little middle-book-syndrome-y. Which isn't to say I found it boring or pointless, just that it was linking two disparate parts of the story: Arren's life as it falls apart in the first book, and the coming titular war of book three (The Griffin's War).

I very much enjoyed the continuation of Arren's story in The Griffin's Flight. I recommend the series to all fans of "big fat fantasy" books. I don't recommend reading book two without having read book one, however. It's definitely the kind of story that should be enjoyed sequentially.

4.5 / 5 stars

First published: 2010, Harper Voyager AU
Series: The Fallen Moon, book two of three
Format read: paperback
Source: a real-life Australian book shop
Challenges: Australian Women Writers Challenge 2013

The Dark Griffin by KJ Taylor

The Dark Griffin by KJ Taylor is an excellent fantasy book, which came out a few years ago and which I can't believe I've only just read. A slightly pedantic note about the cover before I get on with my review. The cover image available just about everywhere online, including on Harper Collins' website, is slightly different to the actual published cover, with a different border and the series text in a different spot. The only proper cover images I could find were too small, so I took a photo of my own book. Which is why it's a bit crooked — sorry about that but I hate having the wrong cover.

Anyway, The Dark Griffin is a story about a griffin and a human. The griffin has an unfortunately difficult life, fighting to survive from the time it's born. I was a bit surprised when I started reading, actually, that the first two chapters are told entirely from the point of view of griffins with humans barely featuring on the periphery. Taylor pulled it off, however. In a section that had the potential to feel like a drawn-out prologue, I was captivated the entire time.

In Taylor's world, griffins are as intelligent as humans, have varying magical powers and can talk. The humans that ride them are called griffiners and learn to speak the language of the griffins. Arren is a griffiner, despite being of Northern descent. His people were, until recently, slaves in his city and he looks a bit different to the Southerners he lives among. The only reason he's allowed to be a griffiner is because his griffin bonded to him when they were both and there was nothing to be done about it.

Arren's story is very much one of racism and ostracism. Once Arren's position in society becomes slightly less assured, he quickly finds out how thin the veneer protecting him was. A lot of bad things happen to Arren and almost all of them are thanks to racism against his people. After a comfortable life as a respected citizen with some status, denying his heritage out of shame, it all comes as a bit of a shock to him when he loses (ostensibly only some of) that status. Suddenly people no longer respect him and constantly use dismissive language against him ("Oh, but he's only a member of the slave-race"). (Possibly not a book to read if you're particularly sensitive of/triggered by racism and oppression generally.) In the end, Arren's actions, taken out of a desperation the reader can entirely understand, appear to be increasingly erratic to the people around him, giving them more ammunition to use against him. There were some gut-wrenchingly tragic moments.

I also liked how the racism was not based on skin colour. The small world Taylor created was based loosely on Britain and so there wasn't room, geographically, for wildly different ethnic characteristics. It's nice to be reminded that an ethnic group doesn't have to look completely different to be oppressed. And of course, the themes of racism/oppression explored in the novel are widely relevant to modern culture.

The Dark Griffin is a compelling novel. Both the griffin and Arren suffer due to unfair circumstances they cannot be blamed for, and their parallel stories intertwine to powerful effect. Another brilliant fantasy read by a brilliant Australian author. I have read few run-of-the-mill fantasy novels (particularly BFF — big fat fantasy) by Australians, and The Dark Griffin certainly doesn't buck that trend.

I highly recommend The Dark Griffin to all fantasy fans. In particular fans of any or some of Jennifer Fallon, Glenda Larke, Rowena Cory Daniells or Naomi Novik's Temeraire books will probably probably enjoy this book. Having foreseen a burning desire to read the whole series, I already have the rest of the trilogy on my TBR shelf and intend to pick up book two straight away.

5 / 5 stars

First published: 2009, Harper Voyager AU
Series: The Fallen Moon, book one of three
Format read: paperback
Source: a real-life Australian book shop
Challenges: Australian Women Writers Challenge 2013

Bridge of Swords by Duncan Lay

Bridge of Swords is the first book in Duncan Lay’s second trilogy, Empire of Bones. It is set about three hundred years after the Dragon Sword Histories (The Wounded Guardian, The Radiant Child and The Risen Queen), however you definitely need not have read the first series for this one to make sense. Given the large time gap, there are no common characters and in the interim the face of the world has changed significantly so that even those who have read the first series will find it relatively unfamiliar at the start.

There are three central characters in Bridge of Swords: Sendatsu the elf, Huw the bard and Rhiannon the dancer. Sendatsu found himself inadvertently at the centre of a conflict among his secluded people and travelled into the human world to help resolve it. Throughout the story, he misses and pines for his young children whom he was forced to leave behind. The focus on the relationship between father and young children is not something that is often a strong element of fantasy writing, perhaps to its detriment — in fact the only other example I can think of is in Lay’s Dragon Sword Histories. Lay’s writing shows that positive father figure and heroic fighter need not be mutually exclusive characteristics.

Huw, the bard from Vales, travelled to the Forlish king’s court to play the lute. While there he became enamoured of the talented dancer Rhiannon and also learnt about the king’s plans to subdue and conquer Vales. Compelled to leave court and warn his homeland, he convinces/tricks Rhiannon into coming with him. In the course of events, they team up with Sendatsu and find themselves helping Velsh villages mount defences against the Forlish.

I liked that none of the main characters were perfect people and enjoyed watching them grow throughout the book. As I’m one for moral shades of grey characters, I enjoyed the two men more than Rhiannon. Although she definitely grows during the story, she goes from naïve to more worldly without really doing anything morally ambiguous, unlike the other two.

Something Lay does well is write about the minutiae of battles. I don’t mean the blow by blow account — although that’s good too — I mean the details of the preparation and organisation. I noted in in the Dragon Sword Histories and it shone through again in Bridge of Swords. I really appreciate the attention to detail and the research that obviously goes into the world-building.

All in all, I definitely recommend Bridge of Swords to fantasy lovers, especially those that enjoy fight scenes. And enjoyable read which left me hanging for the next book — especially after that cliffhanger ending, yeesh.

4.5 / 5 stars

Besieged by Rowena Cory Daniells

Besieged by Rowena Cory Daniells is the first book in the Outcast Chronicles, which is being published around now (Solaris likes to release trilogies over three months). It’s set in the same universe as her Last T’en trilogy (which is out of print and difficult to find) but in that world’s distant past. You definitely don’t need to have read The Last T’en first (I certainly haven’t, what with being unable to get a hold of it). A copy of Besieged was given to me by the author for review.

I absolutely loved Daniells’s previous (and completely unrelated) trilogy, King Rolen’s Kin. The Outcast Chronicles (judging by the first book, anyway) is quite different in the way the story is told. Where KRK followed a few characters closely over a relatively short period of time, Besieged has a much larger cast of point of view characters and spans a much longer period of time — about 25 years. I felt it was as much the story of kingdoms/their equivalents and ideas as it was the story of the individual characters. They all play important parts, but the real story is in the overall tapestry, not each thread.

Of course, spanning 25 years means there need to be some time jumps and I was fascinated by the way Daniells managed them. Among other things (such as just jumping forward a handful of years when nothing happened), all the literal journeys are skipped. Given how much the travelling from A to B journey is a staple of fantasy, it was interesting to see them skipped. Of course, there was no reason not to skip them (the interesting things all happened after people got wherever they were going), but I found it unusual enough to warrant a mention.

The societies in this world were fascinating. There are the T’en who have magic powers and who live in a very structured society. Female T’en have stronger magic than males do and so their society is mostly controlled by women and men and women live segregated lives. Men are forced to give up their pure blood children (which might result from a couple consisting of a half T’en half human and a full T’en) to the women, who raise them and then return the boy-children when they come of age. Many of the men fear and resent the women for the power the wield over their lives.

Half-breeds, if they’re lucky, live with full-blooded T’en. They have no magic of their own but can sense it. They also look different (like T’en they have six fingers or toes on each limb) and copper-coloured hair. They are accepted as sort of servants in T’en society.

Then there are the ordinary humans who are old fashioned in their attitudes towards women and fear anything to do with magic. Occasionally a genetic throwback causes a half-breed to be born to two human parents and then the child is lucky if it’s given to the T’en and the mother is lucky if she isn’t killed.

The different power dynamics, especially the gendered ones, are in stark contrast between humans and T’en. But at the same time, there’s not that much difference in how the male T’en view women to the humans, they just can’t express it properly. Honestly, it’s an interesting read for the gender politics alone, but there is much more to the story than just that.

Like the characters! Although there was a large cast, I didn’t have any trouble keeping them straight in my mind. Even the few longish “fantasy” names used were distinct enough to avoid confusing. Each character was well drawn and realistic. Because there were time jumps, we got to see very clearly how the characters changed over several years, which added to their depth. In real life people do change, sometimes unpredictably, sometimes only to become more who they were always going to be.

My favourite at the very start was Vittoryxe but that quickly changed as her intended path unfolded. Not that I now hate her as a character, but she’s not a very nice person. Very few of the characters are particularly “nice” people, really, thanks to the societies they’re born into.

My favourite character was Sorn. Born the king’s unacknowledged half-breed son, he is taken away by the former high priest, Oskane, to be raised by the church in the hopes of one day using him as a spy against the T’en. I liked Sorn because he does what he needs to to survive even as his perception of what surviving means, and what price is too high, changes as he matures. I’d say he’s the character that grows the most from teenager to man (although he book starts with his birth) by the end of book and I really enjoyed his journey and his ability to make the best of things.

I also enjoyed Oskane’s character, partly because we have his as a viewpoint character and as seen through Sorn’s eyes. What I found particularly amusing is there’s one scene where Oskane and someone else are talking about how half-breeds always end up turning on their human masters, no matter now well they are treated, and siding with the T’en. They’re completely oblivious to the fact that not killing or maiming them is a) different to treating them well and b) doesn’t make up for the rest of society hating them. So there’s a bit of racial commentary thrown into Besieged also.

And then there’s Imoshen, who is a T’en born to a male brotherhood and kept secret from the sisterhood she was supposed to be surrendered to. The brotherhood’s plans were to use her to gain power. Unsurprisingly (because nothing is easy) it backfires. Imoshen is practically impossible to dislike as a character. There was many a moment when I thought she was going to do something silly, but every time she manages to make the sensible choice based on what she knows. It seems like she’ll be quite prominent in the next book, Exile, and I definitely look forward to reading more about her, especially since she only came into her own in the second half of Besieged.

I said before I started reading that I suspected this would be a book that would leave me pining for the sequel and I was right. While it doesn’t exactly end on a cliffhanger, it definitely leaves much to be resolved.

I highly recommend this book to lovers of high/epic fantasy. If you like vast scales, lots of characters and intrigue, pick up Besieged.

4.5 / 5 stars