Ryan, Anthony (Blood Song)

Which of these many fantasy series should I read? Why, all of them! Well, all of them recommended highly to me.

I do feel like I'm drowning a bit in fantasy, which are renowned for their preponderance of characters, so it can be difficult to keep switching between them so as to keep multiple series in play at a time. I wouldn't have started another one, actually, but this was highly recommended to me. It's a surprising tale - surprising because it seems like it's nothing at all different from similar medieval-history series. I can see parallels to Scott Lynch and also Tolkein, however this has a distinctly different flavor.

I'm not certain if this is because of how Ryan builds his mystery as he tells the plot, or for some other reason. It wasn't until I was a quarter through that I realized there were elements to the story that weren't being explained well enough, and that they would return at other points in the plot, with the assumption that you would remember why they were mysterious to begin with. All of this builds to the satisfying-but-sad ending, and then, as with all good trilogies, leans into the next book.

So, I started the second book right away. As I said: preponderance of characters to keep straight, so I might as well try to finish this while I have them all straight in my head.