This one was an assorted bag of fabulous, and some odd, not quite sure how I feel about it stuff. It’s a slow building world that relies on the MC Richard, to tell the story through a combination of flashbacks – partly through sharing stories with his daughter Ana (who is mute for the most part), combined with present day events.
As military fantasys go, I found a lot to like in this one. There’s a lot of battles which get progressively bigger until the finale. There are organising troops, gun use, and marching – some of my favorite parts were the parade row marching and just any of the scenes where they had to keep or use a tempo. I especially loved the use of sound combined with the visuals to bring the scenes alive.
We thought it would be fun to do a little something in recognition of Pride Month here at Rockstarlit BookAsylum. So, I went through and picked books that I had enjoyed that had some LGBTQ content, and matched the pride flag to the dominate color of the covers, with varying degrees of luck.
This opens with a bang, befitting the title but it’s weird bang – kind of like small town fireworks with the reload time between the bursts of color, as this stops mid-action to give us a bit of catch-up. Once we are caught up though, it’s go-time, and the rest of the book is an easy, quick, and fun read.
We thought it would be fun to do a little something in recognition of Pride Month here at Rockstarlit BookAsylum. So, I went through and picked books that I had enjoyed that had some LGBTQ content, and matched the pride flag to the dominate color of the covers, with varying degrees of luck.
There were a few things I was unsure of – like why just being from Ordshaw made Tova a special interest to anyone in the first place, and some of the ending was a bit unclear to me. But this did what I think these extended series novellas should do – and that is get me interested in the world, give me a taste without giving me everything, and do it while being a ton of fun. In that, this book succeeded on all levels.
This is a very dark book/series all around – you know how Hell gets depicted as this scary screwed-up place full of intense horror images, and nasty stuff happening to good people… well, that’s the main world in this book.
If you enjoyed Ivanna in Banebringer and want to know more about her past, Sweetblade is going to be right up your alley. If you liked the world and magic and are looking for more of that then you’ll need to wait for Banebringer’s sequel. If none of that matters then this is just a good solid read and has me even more excited for the sequel to Banebringer.
The characters were awesome, a neat and easy to digest world, and I will be looking for the next in this series because it was an enjoyable story all around.
The final book in the Wardens of Issalia series, jumps right back into the action following An Imperial Gambit, where unfortunately, not everyone will make it to the end. But don’t worry, the author isn’t cruel enough to take our favorites out of the running (depending on who your favorites were that is).