Blood Song (Book 1 of Ravens Shadow)

Blood Song

Reading this was like watching the entire Matrix trilogy. At first I was very excited and enjoying the ride, then I started to get a little lost as the main character becomes harder to like, odd powers were introduced and the story seemed to overwhelm itself and then finally I relaxed into the end game and just let it flow over me.

The author himself quotes one of his characters when explaining the gist of the book.

“We have fought battles that left more than a hundred corpses on the ground and not a word of it has ever been set down. The Order fights, but often it fights in shadow, without glory or reward. We have no banners.” Master Sollis

Vaelin is our main character and we follow him from his hard introduction as a young lad into The Order and his trials and tribulations as he tries to grow, forms a band of brothers and develops into a man we don’t quite know whether we like or not. At times I wanted to punch Vaelin in the head because he deserved it, and he never quite developed from the child at the start to the man he became. His decisions were at times very much at odds with his character and though some of this is explained during the end game I spent so much time questioning whether this guy was worth caring about that it was hard to win me back to his side, regardless of orders or intentions.

In Blood Song, Ryan has a very solid base for his trilogy but not a spectacular one. To sum it up after reading the first 200 pages I ordered a signed first edition of Tower Lord from Goldsboro, after the next 200, which were a struggle, I wanted to cancel the order, by the end I was 50/50 about getting or not.

Give it a shot yourself!