“Oathbringer” by Brandon Sanderson

Spoiler warning: This post contains spoilers for the following books by Brandon Sanderson: The Way of Kings, Words of Radiance, Edgedancer, and Warbreaker.


If you’re a frequent reader, you may have picked up on the fact that Brandon Sanderson is one of my favorite authors and that the Stormlight Archive is my favorite series written by him (see my reviews of The Way of Kings and Words of Radiance). So to say that I was eagerly awaiting the release of Oathbringer would be a gross understatement. Tor.com had been releasing preview chapters every few days until the book was released but I managed to stay away from reading them because it would have been slow torture not to be able to read on. I was so happy to finally get my hands on the book.

The world of Roshar changed irrevocably at the end of Words of Radiance – the Everstorm sweeps the world heralding a new Desolation, the Parshendi are transformed into monsters, Radiants publicly reveal themselves, and the lost city of Urithiru is discovered at last. Now that everyone knows that the world may be about to end, they have to figure out what to do about it. Dalinar tries to bring together the nations of Roshar via diplomacy, an initiative that is unlikely to succeed because of his reputation. Shallan tries to hold herself together after the revelations that she comes to terms with and jumps into helping any way she can at Urithiru. Kaladin travels home to warn his family of the Everstorm and scout out the Voidbringers.

Every Stormlight Archive book features the flashbacks of a single character and this is Dalinar’s turn. We finally get a look into how his reputation as the Blackthorn was made, and it’s more horrifying than we can imagine. We see everyone around Dalinar treat him like he’s some kind of ticking time bomb even though he seems perfectly reasonable whenever we see the world through his viewpoint. Well, it turns out that there are legitimate reasons for why people are so wary around him. The longstanding mystery of his visit to the Nightwatcher is solved and ties in beautifully to his character arc. This is his book to shine and he does so magnificently.

There were a few threads at the end of Words of Radiance that I wasn’t really looking forward to picking back up because I was anticipating all sorts of melodrama from them: Shallan’s lack of knowledge of Kaladin’s involvement in her brother Helaran’s death, the brewing Shallan-Adolin-Kaladin love triangle, the murder of Sadeas, among others. I should have had better faith in the author, though. None of these issues are ignored but they get resolved naturally and without compromising the integrity of the characters.

In general I was impressed by the characters in this book. I usually associate Brandon Sanderson with amazing worldbuilding, intricate plotting, and truly cinematic action scenes, but I’ve found his characterization unremarkable. That was not the case with this book. I’ve talked about Dalinar’s arc already but it’s Kaladin and Shallan that I found the most surprising. The first two books have seen them struggle against their personal demons and win, but as Kaladin says to Teft in this book, becoming a Radiant doesn’t change who you are. Kaladin and Shallan are both incredibly broken people that have not yet learned to live with themselves in peace, and they don’t have much to distract them away from that fact anymore. Kaladin continues to grapple with his depression and Shallan is in the process of fracturing her personality into various personas so that she does not have to deal with herself as a complete and complicated person. I don’t think I’ve related to any of Sanderson’s characters before, but I certainly understood exactly how Kaladin and Shallan felt from various points in my life and it made me feel a lot more invested (no pun intended) to them. The other characters all feel more fleshed out as well as well, especially Adolin who just keeps getting better.

It seems like the Cosmere and other planets in the shared universe are taking a bigger role in events; the book was prefaced with an explanation of the Cosmere. Of course we see Nightblood whenever we’re seeing Szeth’s viewpoint but we also run into Vivenna from Warbreaker and she is a major side character! I figured out who she was almost immediately and was thrilled. I was also glad to have read the Lift POV novella Edgedancer beforehand because she has graduated from just showing up in interludes to being part of the main story, and it also helps explain Nale’s behavior towards the rest of the Skybreakers.

There were some genuinely sad and moving moments in the book, which I can’t really talk about since they would spoil things. Not everyone makes it out of the book alive, and some people make it alive that I really, really wish didn’t. The interior art is beautiful, I think there’s more of it than the previous books had. The endpapers have in-world representations of the Heralds that were especially pretty.

I could go on forever about things I loved. This series just keeps getting better and I can’t wait for more.


Oathbringer by Brandon Sanderson (The Stormlight Archive, #3)
Tor Books, 2017 | Buy the book
I received a free review copy of this book from the publisher or author.


“The Core” by Peter V. Brett

Spoiler warning: This post may contain spoilers for the first four books of the series.


I’ve been following the Demon Cycle series for a few years now ever since my husband surprised me with the first book when I was going through a reading slump. The Core is the fifth and final book of the series and I was eager to find out how it all wrapped up.

Ahmann Jardir and Arlen Bales are preparing to do the unthinkable: lead an assault on the demons’ home deep underground in an effort to put an end to constant war. They must do it quickly since the demon queen is about to hatch and turn a single hive into many more, but they also need to make sure that their own people don’t tear each other apart in their absence. Meanwhile, the people of Thesa, including Hollow County’s new countess Leesha Paper and Jardir’s wife Inevara are preparing for an all-out attack by the demons.

I thought The Core did a good job of wrapping up the story and providing resolutions to most arcs. It almost felt a little too neat but it was fulfilling so I don’t mind. Unlike the earlier books, there are no flashback sequences so the book is fully devoted to resolving the current conflict. Significant portions of the narrative were told through the viewpoint of some of the newer characters which I thought was refreshing because the main characters are significantly overpowered and don’t have much conflict or growth left. We get to see the war from the points of view of various parts of Thesa through these characters. We even get some perspectives from the demons.

This book isn’t perfect, the pacing seemed a little off. We don’t get to the journey to the Core until hundreds of pages have passed, and what we do get instead with Ahmann and Arlen seems a little too much like fanservice. Abban’s viewpoint is extremely uncomfortable to read and I’ not sure why he was such a big part of this book given his role (or lack thereof) in the book’s events. And there are things about this series that annoyed me from the very beginning and they continued to annoy me – the way that Arlen, Renna, and other Hollow County people’s accent is translated, the Krasian language with its extremely similar sounding words, the occasional crassness, but I knew all that going in so I don’t think it’s fair to complain too much about it.

Even though this book concludes the story satisfactorily, it’s blatantly obvious that there will be a new series (I’m calling it Demon Cycle: The Next Generation in my head) since pretty much every woman is pregnant and we’re introduced to about eight babies towards the end. We’re also reminded that this is only one hive of demons and there are probably more out there. I am looking forward to seeing the world of the books expanded and meeting the new characters.


The Core by Peter V. Brett (Demon Cycle, #5)
Del Rey, 2017 | Buy the book


“The Bear and the Nightingale” by Katherine Arden

Set in medieval Russia, The Bear and the Nightingale follows Vasalisa (Vasya) Petrovna, the young daughter of a country noble. Vasya was born with a destiny; her mother sacrificed her own life so that she could inherit her family’s magical heritage. She can see and communicate with the household and woodland spirits around her. However, when her father marries a new devoutly Christian woman, her arrival puts an end to the traditional offerings to the spirits and their protection weakens just as an ancient evil is breaking free of his bonds.

The Bear and the Nightingale is quiet and slow, focusing on Vasya’s domestic life for the first two-thirds, but it’s never boring. It completely immerses you the atmosphere of the place and time that it’s set in in a way that few other books do. There’s the obvious comparison to Hild by Nicola Griffth, another story that takes real-life historical figures who are dealing with the advent of Christianity pushing out indigenous religious beliefs and tells their story with an incredible amount of detail about their day-to-day life. But the book reminded me most of the movie Whale Rider in tone, the protagonists of both are young women who know who they are and the world around them must eventually give up trying to contain them and instead bow to their convictions. Vasya is a remarkable protagonist, she acts and thinks like a woman of her time but she’s still almost a force of nature.

The other characters in the book are just as rich as Vasya, even the antagonists. You can’t bring yourself to despise Vasya’s hysterical stepmother Anna or the overzealous village priest Father Konstantin despite the awful things they do because their actions are so obviously motivated by their fear and unhappiness with parts of their life that they could not control. Vasya’s family loves her, but they are people of their time and their adherence to tradition stifles Vasya just as effectively as the more antagonistic characters. But they are still characters you grow to love.

I’ve always been captivated by Russian folklore with its guardian spirits that are an inseparable part of daily life. This book perfectly captures the feeling of living in a such a world and it’s hard to tell where the real world begins and what’s magical because it’s all reality to Vasya. It mixes medieval slice-of-life with fairy tale conventions effortlessly. Morozko the winter-king says to Vasya at some point that magic is just choosing to believe that the world is the way you want it to be and I think that conveys the tone of this book rather well. The worldbuilding is only enhanced by the author’s beautiful prose that conjures up vivid imagery from very few words.

The Bear and the Nightingale was one of my favorite books of the year. I particularly appreciated that this book tells a satisfying story by itself. If I didn’t already know there was a sequel, I would have assumed it was a standalone. But I’m so glad that there is a sequel and I have an early copy of it because I can’t wait to spend more time in this world.


The Bear and the Nightingale by Katherine Arden (Winternight, #1)
Del Rey, 2017 | Buy the book
I received a free review copy of this book from the publisher or author.


“An Echo of Things to Come” by James Islington

Spoiler warning: This post contains spoilers for the first book in this series, The Shadow of What Was Lost.


An Echo of Things to Come is the second book in James Islington’s Licanius trilogy. I loved the first book of this series when I read it last year so I was impatiently looking forward to this one.

We pick up fairly soon after the events of the previous book; our heroes are settling into their new roles working against the impending invasion. Davian is at Tol Shen where he hopes to gather Augurs to help repair the spells protecting the Boundary, Wirr, the new Northwarden, is fighting an uphill battle to convince a resentful Administration that he can be trusted as their leader. Asha advocates for the failing Boundary to be taken seriously at court, and Caeden uses his portal box to finally get some answers about who he is and what his plan was before wiping his own memory.

All the characters have good arcs in this book, although Caeden’s is the most interesting for the same reason that Memento is such a compelling movie (and an arc in a certain anime that I don’t want to name since it would be a spoiler). The trope of a character making plans that involve them losing all knowledge of the plan but still succeeding has been done before but it’s executed skillfully here. It goes well enough that we appreciate Caeden’s foresight but there are a lot of variables involved and it would have been hard to suspend disbelief if it had been realized perfectly. The slow reveal of his flashbacks gives you just enough to be satisfied to wait until the next one happens but still eagerly anticipating the continuation.

The previous book had many scenes that were reminiscent of the Brandon Sanderson and Robert Jordan books it’s so clearly inspired by, (much like how The Eye of the World borrowed heavily from Tolkien). This book steps out of their shadow and feels considerably more original while still maintaining the comforting classic fantasy tone that made the last one so good. It’s a slower book than the first, though; it’s clearly setting up plots and characters for the third book. Some subplots dragged on for a little too long, especially Davian’s difficulties with a new Augur at Tol Shen, but it was a well structured book otherwise. And it answered a bunch of open questions about the world and its history which I wasn’t expecting until the last book, so that was great.

Now I get to wait impatiently all over again for the third book, The Light of All That Falls.


An Echo of Things to Come by James Islington (The Licanius Trilogy, #3)
Orbit Books, 2017 | Buy the book
I received a free review copy of this book from the publisher or author.


“Paradox Bound” by Peter Clines

I’ve been in a bit of a reading slump lately because I’ve been really busy at work. I hadn’t read anything by Peter Clines before, but when Paradox Bound showed up in the mail one day billed as an “outrageously fun time-travel adventure”, it seemed like the perfect book to get me out of my slump.

Eli Teague lives in the small, dead-end town of Sanders in Maine. He has an uneventful life working as the IT manager for the local bank and he’s fairly content except for one thing – he keeps thinking about Harry, the mysterious stranger he met twice years and years ago. When Harry shows up in Sanders a third time, he wants answers. But that conversation doesn’t go anything like he planned and he finds himself pulled into a whole new world beyond his wildest imaginations – a hidden society of time travelers, faceless (and murderous) men, and the truth behind the American Dream.

This book lived up to its “outrageously fun” marketing; it’s fast paced, it has an interesting world, and the characters are entertaining. I enjoyed the mechanics of how time travel works. Magic systems that are based on deriving power from the identity of objects or places are fascinating (one of my favorite authors, Brandon Sanderson, does this a lot) and pretty much everything magical in this book fits that description. Most fantasy books I read derive their inspiration from ancient or medieval cultures and myths so it was refreshing to see America’s own mythos come to life, complete with folk heroes like John Henry.

I would love to see a movie version of this book, it reads like a sci-fi action movie (one of my favorite genres). I kept imagining how scenes from it would look like, which is pretty rare for me. I’m not sure how to explain why a book felt like a movie – I think part of it was that its structure. It tells a simple story with only a few characters, but it’s tight and cohesive and almost everything you learn becomes relevant later in the book. The characters aren’t too complicated but Eli has a solid and satisfying arc.

I’ll definitely be checking out more of Peter Clines’ work. I’ll also be posting an interview with Peter Clines and giving away two copies of Paradox Bound soon, so keep your eyes out. I’ll link it here once that post is up.


Paradox Bound by Peter Clines
Crown, 2017 | Buy the book
I received a free review copy of this book from the publisher or author.


“The Stone Sky” by N.K. Jemisin

I’ve been looking forward to the release of The Stone Sky ever since I read the previous books in the series, The Fifth Season and The Obelisk Gate, (both of which have now won the Best Novel Hugo!) earlier this year. I devoured it as soon as I received it and it’s just as good as I thought it would be.

I don’t want to say too much about the story, it’s the third book of the series so pretty much everything is a spoiler. The Stone Sky does add a new viewpoint and it’s probably the most fascinating one so far. We explore the history of the world and how exactly it ended up being the way it is. We see things from the perspectives of Essun and her daughter Nassun, of course, they are the heart of the book.

The end of The Obelisk Gate had mother and daughter on a collision course (somewhat literally) and I wasn’t sure how the book would wrap up the story in a satisfying way because both characters were equally sympathetic, they’d both been through more than their fair share of horrible things. The conclusion was completely satisfying though, now that I’ve read it, I can’t imagine how else it would have ended.

Like the previous books, this book is sometimes agonizing to read, Much of fantasy focuses on the best things about people (honorable, idealistic, heroic, etc.) but this book does the opposite. It shows people at their worst, but not unrealistically so (I wouldn’t call it “grimdark”), and some of things that Essun and Nassun do and have done to them is quite unpleasant to read about. But there are still uplifting moments, and that’s even more hopeful than always seeing people as good because you see humans do good things even when everything around them is terrible.

N.K. Jemisin’s next project is apparently a contemporary Lovecraftian fantasy series set in New York, and I can’t wait for that to come out.


The Stone Sky by N.K. Jemisin (The Broken Earth, #3)
Orbit Books, 2017 | Buy the book
I received a free review copy of this book from the publisher or author.


Book series review: Raven’s Shadow by Anthony Ryan

I’ve been meaning to read Anthony Ryan’s Raven’s Shadow series for a long time but kept putting it off because so many people said the second and third books didn’t live up to the promise of the first one. After reading The Waking Fire (the first book of his new series), I wanted more so I decided to finally make the plunge.

The first book, Blood Song, follows Vaelin Al Sorna from his initiation into the religious/militaristic Sixth Order at the age of ten through his meteoric rise to become the most famous (or infamous, depending on who you’re talking to) warrior in the known world. I have a bias towards fantasy books about school/training/coming of age and this is a great example of that sub-genre, similar to Red Sister by Mark Lawrence. Vaelin is a terrific protagonist, he’s a natural leader but works hard for what he gets, he never seems like a Mary Sue character despite the accolades he receives. The plot is fine but it is dwarfed by the great characterization and emotional arc.

The next two books, Tower Lord and Queen of Fire are a total change of pace, the story shifts to being about the events happening across the entire world and we get a bunch of new viewpoint characters. Vaelin is still among them, but he’s done most of his growing in the first book so his viewpoints are more boring – his role is now just being the wise mentor figure and/or fearsome enemy to everyone else in the story.

I’m conflicted about how I feel about this changed structure, it makes sense that the author wanted to tell a broader story about saving the world, but that makes the book seem more generic because the wonderful character arc of a single viewpoint character is what made it stand out in the first place. The new viewpoint characters are fine but they suffer in comparison to Vaelin because we can’t spend as much time with them – Vaelin got a whole book to himself – and so they seem much less fleshed out.

The way the story wrapped up in Queen of Fire definitely had problems, significant characters from previous books were dropped with no resolution of their fates, the main plot with the war felt more and more improbable and much too easily resolved, and overall, it just didn’t offer enough satisfaction. Knowing that this was the conclusion that was being set up made me like the previous books less. I think the series is worth reading for Blood Song, though.


Blood Song by Anthony Ryan (Raven's Shadow, #1)
Ace Books, 2013 | Buy the book


Book series review: The Dresden Files (1-15) by Jim Butcher

I’ve owned the first eight Dresden Files books for a couple of years now and I kept meaning to read them and never getting around to it. I did read the first book, Storm Front, a few years ago but didn’t love it enough to continue (I didn’t dislike it either, I just kept getting distracted by other books). I also haven’t been compelled by most urban fantasy that I’ve read so I figured the genre just wasn’t for me. One of my colleagues at work is a huge fan of the series, though, and talking about it with him nudged me into finally reading those eight books on my shelf… and then buying the next seven, and the anthology of Dresden stories, and all the Dresden graphic novels.

The Dresden Files is a series of novels featuring Harry Dresden, the only professional wizard in Chicago. He’s basically a private investigator but he can do things that ordinary people can’t do. The world of the books is superficially identical to our own, but there is a thriving community of magic users and/or non-humans under the surface (faeries, werewolves, vampires, ghouls, gods, dragons, and so on, pretty standard for its genre). Of course all the cases that Dresden gets ends up involving magic in some way, and many of them come from his work as a consultant for the Chicago police department.

I stand by my original assessment of the first book – Storm Front is decent but it definitely feels like a debut novel. In comparison to the later books, Dresden’s character seems a little rough, like the author was trying out a couple of different personalities for him but hadn’t figured out who exactly he was yet. It’s a stereotypical pulpy police procedural – guy with special powers partnered with a spunky female cop solving a series of murders involving (among other things) gore and wild orgies. But I was prepared for that since I’d read it before and people on the internet said the series really hit its stride a couple of books in, so I kept reading.

The second book, Fool Moon was better than the first but didn’t quite have me drawn in yet (all the different types of werewolves showing up in a single story seemed contrived, among other issues). I don’t think I was eager to read more until the end of the third book, so far the series had just seemed like a run-of-the-mill procedural, but Grave Peril didn’t have Karrin Murphy (the female cop) in it much at all, showing that it wasn’t going to keep following the same format. And the ending showed that the series wasn’t afraid to take risks and change things up. I felt like I was actually getting to know the characters and that they were realistic and would grow over the books.

After that I was pretty much hooked. One of the things I didn’t like about previous urban fantasy that I’ve read was that they seemed to take more inspiration from mystery novels than fantasy. I love Agatha Christie, for example, but Miss Marple or Poirot don’t change very much over the course of their stories, the fun of the books is in the solving of the crime. My favorite genres are epic fantasy and science fiction and a large part of why I love them is that they build interesting worlds and have characters that often have to come of age or rise to the occasion; their emotional growth is an integral part of the story. The Dresden Files has the best of both worlds, it does have investigative elements, but Harry and all the supporting characters all change in response to the events around them and not always in good ways.

Harry is not a perfect character, he’s got serious flaws and he’s aware of some of them. He’s not an anti-hero but he doesn’t always do the right thing (there often isn’t even a right thing) and the books don’t sugarcoat that. The people around him seem just as real, I can’t think of a single character who hasn’t made a serious mistake. Even characters that seemed stereotypical when they were first introduced (e.g. the tough female cop, the perfect Christian knight, the organized crime boss) are completely altered now.

I’ve mentioned that the series isn’t afraid to change things up, but it takes it to a (good) extreme in the twelfth book, aptly titled Changes. It turns Harry’s life upside down and the books after it breathe new life into the series while still being familiar enough to be cozy. And it’s not just the characters that change, the world gets more dangerous over the course of the books (and not just because Harry learns more and becomes a stronger wizard), it’s clearly building up to a larger conflict. This makes sense given what the author has said about the series – there are going to be around 20 standalone “single case” books and then a “big apocalyptic trilogy” at the end.

The only downside to these books is that the series is probably not going to be finished for at least a decade or more, I’m glad I got into it after 15 of the books were already out. But it’s not like there’s a shortage of books to read while waiting.


Storm Front by Jim Butcher (The Dresden Files, #1)
Roc, 2000 | Buy the book


“The Witchwood Crown” by Tad Williams

I was really looking forward to The Witchwood Crown after I got back into the world of Osten Ard earlier this year with Tad Williams’ excellent short novel The Heart of What Was Lost. It’s properly doorstop-sized and it follows a bunch of characters from the original Memory, Sorrow, and Thorn trilogy!

It’s been about thirty years since the events of the previous books and Osten Ard, ruled by High King and Queen Simon and Miriamele,  has been enjoying peace and stability. Things have been growing steadily worse as the terrible war of the Storm King begins to fade from memory – several kingdoms are facing internal political strife, contact with the Sithi has been lost, and Utuk’ku, the dark queen of the Norns, has woken and once again plots the destruction of humanity.

We follow several protagonists across Osten Ard as events come to a head: Osten Ard’s monarchs (and our old friends) Simon and Miriamele, their grandchildren Prince Morgan and Princess Lillia, other people from the Hayholt including the chancellor Lord Pasevalles, court members (and also old friends) Tiamak and Count Eolair, Norn engineer Viyeki (who we last met in The Heart of What Was Lost), his human concubine Tzoja and half-human daughter Nezeru, a couple of characters from the grasslands of Thrithings, a servant of the Duchess of Nabban, a mysterious Norn-hunter named Jarnulf… I might be forgetting some. This is an epic story affecting the whole world and it’s told through people living through events in a bunch of different places, and only the readers know the whole story of how they may all be connected.

I expected to plow through this book and stay up all night reading it but it was actually slow going. For the first few hundred pages of the book, it didn’t seem like anything was happening, I felt like I was reading a slice of life story, except not as interesting because it was actually about twenty different slice of life stories and we didn’t stick with any viewpoint for enough time for me to develop a real investment in the characters. The last third of the book is much better paced; things start to change rapidly, we get answers to burning questions, and we start to see all those disparate threads come together.

Another thing that disappointed me was how the characters from the first trilogy had aged and how that impacted the plot. Simon and Miri are old and grief-stricken from the loss of their son a few years prior to the events of the book, they seem almost unforgivably gullible to have not noticed all the trouble brewing around them – not a good quality for monarchs. Their grandson and heir Prince Morgan is utterly insufferable, he’s spoiled and petulant, and Simon and Miri don’t seem to know how to deal with him at all – everything they do is obviously going to fail, and I don’t know how they don’t realize that. I’m not saying this is bad writing, in fact it’s probably realistic that Simon and Miri aren’t going to be good at politicking or dealing with people that don’t have the inherent drive to be good (like Morgan), but it’s not very much fun to read about our old heroes being incompetent.

Other than those two (admittedly major) gripes, I thought The Witchwood Crown was a pretty good book. It’s certainly more nuanced the the original trilogy. I’m especially glad that the Norns are being given some definition and not just treated as faceless villains; between Tzoja, Nezeru, and Viyeki, we get a variety of perspectives into their culture and motivations. The prose is good, of course. And by the end of the book, I was intrigued by most of the plotlines enough to eagerly await the next book.  I hope it has better pacing and more competent characters, though.


The Witchwood Crown by Tad Williams (The Last King of Osten Ard, #1)
DAW Books, 2017 | Buy the book
I received a free review copy of this book from the publisher or author.


“The Legion of Flame” by Anthony Ryan

I loved The Waking Fire, the first book of this series – it sent me into an Anthony Ryan binge and I read his previous series as well (review coming eventually). I was glad that I’d read it so close to the release date of the next book so I didn’t have to wait too long to find out what happens next.

The Legion of Flame picks up pretty much where The Waking Fire left off and continues to follow Lizanne, Clay, and Hilemore. Lizanne is back home and is immediately sent on a spy/peace mission to the Corvantine Empire. Clay and Hilemore are still in Arradasia and are voyaging to the South Pole in an attempt to figure out how to save the world from the increasingly more likely dragon apocalypse. We also have some new PoV characters that provide more insight into the White dragon’s plans, I won’t say more about them to avoid spoilers.

I always find it hard to review sequels since (usually) pretty much everything about the first book applies to the sequel as well and I wouldn’t be reading the book at all if I hadn’t liked the first book. The Legion of Flame definitely expands the world, we see Mandinor and more of the Corvantine Empire (we do still have some insight into what’s happening in Arradasia though the new viewpoints). We learn more about dragons, their origins, and the history of the world, which I thought was pretty cool. I had some guesses about that and I was glad to see them vindicated.

My favorite plotline in the book was probably Lizanne’s, her mission has a very Escape from New York vibe to it and it’s fun to see her badassery grow. Clay and Hilemore get the more interesting worldbuilding though, and I liked that each of the viewpoints told a different kind of story. There are also some in-universe newspaper articles, etc. at various points, and I always enjoy those.

Overall, I thought The Legion of Flame was a solid sequel. However it does end on a cliffhanger, so I’m impatiently waiting for book 3.


The Legion of Flame by Anthony Ryan (The Draconis Memoria, #2)
Ace Books, 2017 | Buy the book
I received a free review copy of this book from the publisher or author.