Raven's Shadow - Anthony Ryan

  • Guest, it's time once again for the hotly contested and exciting FoH Asshat Tournament!



    Go here and fill out your bracket!
    Who's been the biggest Asshat in the last year? Once again, only you can decide!

Seventh

Golden Squire
892
15
There's a thread about this in the BOTM forum, but since it gets ignored (and the first book was awesome) I figured it was thread-worthy.

The first book is Blood Song:

CxsL5xO.jpg


Blood Song (A Raven's Shadow, #1) by Anthony Ryan ??" Reviews, Discussion, Bookclubs, Lists

Vaelin Al Sorna was only a child of ten when his father left him at the iron gate of the Sixth Order. The Brothers of the Sixth Order are devoted to battle, and Vaelin will be trained and hardened to the austere, celibate, and dangerous life of a Warrior of the Faith. He has no family now save the Order.

Vaelin's father was Battle Lord to King Janus, ruler of the unified realm. Vaelin's rage at being deprived of his birthright and dropped at the doorstep of the Sixth Order like a foundling knows no bounds. He cherishes the memory of his mother, and what he will come to learn of her at the Order will confound him. His father, too, has motives that Vaelin will come to understand. But one truth overpowers all the rest: Vaelin Al Sorna is destined for a future he has yet to comprehend. A future that will alter not only the realm, but the world.
I thought it was fantastic. Nothing groundbreaking but definitely a solid read. The second book in the series comes out tomorrow:

Tower Lord (Raven's Shadow, #2) by Anthony Ryan ??" Reviews, Discussion, Bookclubs, Lists

For those of you who enjoyed the first one.
 

faille

Molten Core Raider
1,831
415
First book was awesome and I couldn't put it down. I probably put it on the same level as Rothfuss, which I consider to be below Asoiaf but above Way of Kings.
Can't wait to read Tower Lord and see how it continues.
 

Needless

Toe Sucker
9,146
3,263
First book was awesome and I couldn't put it down. I probably put it on the same level as Rothfuss, which I consider to be below Asoiaf butabove Way of Kings.
Can't wait to read Tower Lord and see how it continues.
.... negro you crazy.

Gonna read Tower Lord once i finish up what i'm reading now. Pretty excited!
 

Nebuchadnezzar

Golden Squire
458
50
Still haven't got around to this series but some of the reviews for book two are pretty funny. The author added female POVs! Horror! It's not exactly the same as book one! Blasphemy!
 

Himeo

Vyemm Raider
3,260
2,799
Just finished a re-read of book one and now diving into book two.

This series is damn good.
 

Himeo

Vyemm Raider
3,260
2,799
This series sucks.

Marathon reading of book one and two over.

Book one is still as good as I remember, maybe better after re-reading it and discovering new things I'd missed.

Book two...

Yeah, not what I was expecting. I enjoyed it for what it was, but no longer recommend this series.

I liked the new format. Adding more points of view (4 + frame PoV) was a good idea. I prefer the first person + frame of the first book to multiple Pov + frame of the second. However the change allowed the second book to have more freedom for the story which made sense given what he was trying to do. It's different, but that isn't a mark against it.

The problem is that at least two (maybe three) of the PoVs were kind of shitty. He's not good at writing female PoV's, or the female PoV's he wrote were really awful. He straight ruined the princess by turning her character from a villain / antagonist to an ally / PoV character. In the first book she was this bad ass female Machiavelli. In this book she's a second-rate Khaleesi.

The new female assassin started out interesting. By the end of the book I was skipping her chapters. Not sure why I lost interest. Might have been when she mastered the sword after spending a week with the main character training her.

What?

It took years for the main character to master the sword. Yet she becomes an effortless bad ass after a week of training? It felt like the author regretted making the main character male and was trying to fix it by adding her as a back up. The entire book revolved around her, which I guess could have worked if she had an interesting story. It was a gamble to put so much emphasis on her and it didn't work.

The other male character, was his journey fucked up and sad or what? Not sure what the point of having him as a PoV character was. Some of the best moments in the book came from his PoV though, so I guess it's a wash.

The main character's story in this book was weak. At one point one of the characters says something like, "When the main character shows up everything will be okay." Then a side character's all like, "What if he doesn't bring enough troops to fix this shit?" And the first character responds, "Nah bro, as long as the main character is here, BY HIMSELF, he'll fix this shit. Trust me. He's got this." Classic Superman dilemma. He spent 99% of the book traveling to the last fight, shows up and magically fixes everything then loses his power. Fun to read, but for a book about a massive surprise invasion - nothing really changed.

He had so much material from the first book to work with but instead decided to add new villains and turn old villains into allies. Adding more information about the King from the princesses point of view has not helped his character. The other love interest was basically dropped from the story entirely and a secondary character steps in to replace her role in the love triangle.

Book could have been much better.

WHAT THE FUCK WAS UP WITH THE ENDING? SO CONFUSED.
 

Vlett

Lord Nagafen Raider
817
69
I enjoyed book two of these series more than I did book two of Powder mage.
 

Gask

Bronze Baron of the Realm
11,732
44,079
WHAT THE FUCK WAS UP WITH THE ENDING? SO CONFUSED.
My Theory: Some random gifted guy shows up out of nowhere to rescue the wench from her rather contrived stupidity (leaving the safe area with only 1 untrained guard
rolleyes.png
) and then decides to heal her thus undoing the only interesting thing to happen to her all novel long. No doubt Sorna will get his mojo back as well which is a pity as I thought the series rapidly went downhill ever since his spider sense started to dictate the course of all his actions.

Anyways yes the first book was alright mainly due to its strong first half but book two has nothing going for it whatsoever. All of the PoV characters feel invincible or at least safe from any consequence; lots of people die but there is no one to care about, all of the enemies come off as cartoonishly evil clones, and the battles are extremely boring as all they amount to is a PoV character being an unstoppable badass 100% of the time. The final fight was especially bad;
"Well men we are vastly outnumbered, under trained, unblooded and exhausted after weeks of forced marching from one end of the continent to the other... but well damn it my lesbo sidekick is in a rather tough spot and I'm going to get her out of it so follow me if you want... CHHAARRGEEEE!!!!
/vomit
 

Needless

Toe Sucker
9,146
3,263
I'm only like half way through tower lord but... it's not very interesting-at all really.
Which kind of reminds me that the first book really wasn't all that impressive either.

Oh well lol
 

Needless

Toe Sucker
9,146
3,263
half a month later i'm still only 75% through Tower Lord... this book is hard to get through for the reason mentioned above... everybody is too immortal, theres virtually no sense of danger at all for any POV

Perhaps i enjoy that aspect of helplessness of ASOIAF that it kind of ruins this one
 

Seventh

Golden Squire
892
15
Well, fuck.

I finished this, and yeah... What a mess.
frown.png
Ryan can write his ass off, but whoever decided on this format needs to have their head checked. One of the Goodreads reviews hit the nail on the head - it's a lot like the middle of Wheel of Time where you're constantly finishing chapters thinking "Where the fuck is Rand?". This isn't a terrible book, and it's really well written, but a well written mess is still a damn mess.

There are a bunch of decent spoilers and ending discussions here:

[SPOILERS] Tower Lord: Book 2 of Ravens Shadow - Literature - A Forum of Ice and Fire

I'll still read the next one in the hopes that he gets anywhere near the form he was in the first book, but this was pretty disappointing.
 

faille

Molten Core Raider
1,831
415
Is Book 3 of this coming out this year?
Hopefully it's more like Book 1, but have my doubts 8(
 

Needless

Toe Sucker
9,146
3,263
Book 3 is out on Tuesday... i'll probably get it but i really wasn't all that impressed with the 2nd book. I hope this one is better lol
 
  • 1Like
Reactions: 1 user

faille

Molten Core Raider
1,831
415
yeah, book 2 was pretty shitty, but I'll give this a try also since I loved book 1 so much.
 

Needless

Toe Sucker
9,146
3,263
every review i see says the third book is garbage too, guess i'm done with this series. Nevermind lol
 

Seventh

Golden Squire
892
15
I see those reviews too but I don't want to believe it. Book 1 was so fuckin' good.
frown.png


Will read it anyway.
 

Ashin

Silver Knight of the Realm
184
40
Finished Queen of Fire after rereading books 1 and 2 (flicked through Reva's chapters in 2). Honestly, book 3 has some interesting parts to it - noticeably Vaelin and Alucius' chapters. It is though, paced quite terribly. The first 1/4 of the book is not too bad. In comparison, how the book's endgame goes down is fucking atrocious, the "big bad" that had been hyped up for 3 books, is brought down in about 5 pages. If that.

Most of the characters are written horribly and experience virtually no character growth. Lyrna who was bearable in book 2, becomes less so in QoF. Reva and her chapters are fucking awful - I literally just rushed through. Frentis' chapters....had the potential to be more interesting due to what occurs in them, but the writing of them lets it down.
 

Ritley

Karazhan Raider
15,698
34,169
I'm just going to stop where I am (only read first book) and make up an awesome ending in my head