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).
This book was a real mixed bag for me, as a whole I liked it – it’s quick, very readable and fun but there were also things that maybe didn’t work as well for me, as they may for others.
I did enjoy the journey and I quite liked a lot of the ideas in this story. And the fights. I really enjoyed the fights, and after my recent binge of fight movies, I felt I knew some of the moves they were pulling off, which is always cool. I will be curious to see where things go in later books, if there are any.
This book made it to the semi-finals in this year’s SPFBO and with good reason. It had to be one of the more interesting takes on the undead that I have read in a while.