Jen reviews Drown Deep, the second book in Phil Williams‘ military fantasy series, The Blood Scouts.
An e-copy in exchange for review was supplied by the author. Thank you goes out to Phil Williams!
| Series: | The Blood Scouts #2 |
| Genre: | Fantasy/Military |
| Publisher: | Self-Published |
| Date of Publishing: | October 21, 2024 |
| Trigger Warnings: | war related death, injury, torture etc, |
| Page count: | war-related death, injury, torture etc, |
Where armies won’t go, the Blood Scouts must…
Wild Wish has reluctantly left the front line behind. No more fighting. No more friends. But she’s about to get an invitation to a fight no one else dares touch.
There’s trouble in the Saints Mire, a strictly neutral land with deep religious history. Here, the secrets of the Prophets are preserved by the foreboding Ten Priories – isolated for centuries, steeped in myth, and now under attack.
A rogue Drail army of veterans, criminals and goblins has invaded, and a reckless company of Comity partisans are itching to stop them. The top brass want nothing to do with it, so it’s up to Wild Wish and her new band of ragged misfits to keep things from escalating.
She must brave the heart of a nightmare land harbouring great, hidden power – and even greater hidden threats. Secrets millennia in the making may be exposed – with the potential to change the very shape of the war.
But if Wish can find an opportunity to rebuild The Blood Scouts, maybe it’ll be worth it?
Drown Deep is a breakneck return to the Rocc and its epic global get ready for more heart-pumping action and enthralling characters from this unforgettably unsettling world.
Lost One saw no sign of life, though. The bigger dwellings, like huge knotty hornet nests, appeared empty, with no fires burning, no food or belongings around. And seeing as he’d made it this far, the area wasn’t being guarded. But that didn’t make it safe.
“I want more men up here,” Lost One said, not looking back.
“How many?” one of the soldiers asked.
“Many as we can. These paths go a good distance through these trees, we need to make sure they’re clear.”
“Right you are.” The soldier moved to the edge of the platform and inhaled to shout, but Lost One whirled around with his rifle raised.
“Are you fucking stupid? If we haven’t been spotted already you’re not giving us away.”
Even though Drown Deep is quite actiony and moves along at a quick pace, for me there was kind of this underlying sadness in seeing Wish lose some of that young and hopeful shininess of her persona (maybe only because I can see so much of my younger self in her) so my song choice today is very mellow.
Anyway, all that to say; I heard this song, I loved it and the chorus fit, and the tone fit, and after 5 years of matching songs to books- if I find a song with even the remotest vibe of what I am looking for- I run with it!
The Town by Park Jun Ha
I adored Wild Wish in However Many Must Die (HMMD) and was thrilled to come back to the series and spend more time with her and the remaining Blood Scouts. That said, I was unsure how Phil Williams would pull off that same magic of HMMD without having Drown Deep, his newest entry in the series, feel like a clone of the first book, but no problem because the story is quite a bit different all-around, while still maintaining all the things that made the first one special to me.
Wish, up until now, has been spending her time away from the frontlines training new recruits to be better marksmen- she’s a little bored, has way too much thinking time, and misses her fellow Scouts fiercely. All that changes with a request from her late commander, Four Skills, to take a team and go to the boggy region at Saints Mire to find out the what’s and why’s of the Drail Army’s presence in the area- which is a long way from anything important in the grand scale of things in this ongoing war.
The plan is for Wild Wish to lead a newly rebuilt team of Blood Scouts for this venture into the mire and while Wish has serious doubts about her skills as a leader, she secretly hopes with this opportunity she’ll find some of her missing friends along the way. Her team may not be made up of all women like before, but it is of course, the best ragtag group of misfits the army has to offer.
We do have a few faces from last book in Captain Drade, the Dirtminder Emi, and Sergeant Caracker (the Ogre) but there are a lot of new faces joining the party with a couple fresh-faced recruits, and a group of rough around the edges soldiers from the coast called the raw boys.
Wild Wish, is still that hopeful character that I fell in love with last book, but the world is wearing her down and I’m starting to see her rose-coloured glasses beginning to fade. She feels a little more mature here too, as she grows into her role of command. But the dreams of her farm, while still there are feeling a little further away in her thoughts and goals than ever before.
I really just enjoyed all the cast; they each added something special and I’d love to talk about every one of them but I’ll just mention a couple others outside of saying how happy I was to have Brade and Emi back.
Harvidare really grew on me. She is someone that grabs your attention right away- she’s smart, personable, and half nuts and I want more of her.
And Bleacher was the one that I never expected to grow an attachment to… what a fun character.
There are so many others but finding your favourites in the story is half the fun.
*
So, you thought those giant spiders in the mountain foothills in HMMD were dangerous? Well just wait until you see what the bogs have to offer.
I loved how different the battles were in Drown Deep and how this world is totally unpredictable and dangerous. There are a wide variety of situations in the first book, but the bogs offer a whole new set of problems and you just never know when some giant creature is going to slurp a person up, with its big sticky tongue (this had to be was one of most horrifying (but fun) moments in the whole book for me. I think this even beat out the scary people-sized spiders from HMMD).
I’ll wrap things up before I start spoiling too many goodies by saying that Drown Deep is a solidly entertaining follow-up. It’s just pure fun! I love the characters, I love the setting and world, and I can’t wait to see what upcoming adventures Phil Williams has to offer us in The Blood Scouts series.
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I live in the northern part of BC, where it’s winter for more of the year than I’d like. The plus side of not liking to be out in the cold, means I get to cuddle up under a blanket next to a fireplace and read.
My husband and I have a few horses, free run some chickens, and of course there are bunnies… a lot of bunnies. The horses are his and the bunnies are mine, but he’s a good man and tries to love them too-even when they eat all his newly transplanted saplings.
When I’m not reading, or doing farm and animal chores - I love listening to music, painting, tv and movies, and walking.
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