Join my 3-emails-a-year newsletter #prizesĪ decent foundational start to a steampunk epic fantasy and also a far departure from Blood Song. In short then, it's a great read with tons of twisty story and excellent world-building. This is a more sophisticated story - although don't worry, plenty of people get shot in the head and the Gatling guns vs winged fire-breathing dragons are very cool (& put me in mind of Myke Cole's Black Hawks vs dragons in the Shadow Ops books). In The Waking Fire although our secret agent has plenty of smooth moves there really isn't a 'wow' character to appeal to the demographic that love a blood and guts hero. Some readers were disappointed by the move to multiple characters in the rest of that trilogy (that I must read!). Many fantasy readers like a 'cool' sword swinging hero and they got that in spades in Ryan's first book. I will say though that the spectacular success of Ryan's debut, Blood Song, was in part due to the focus on a single, young, heroic character. It's a marvelous piece of imagination with plenty of twists and reveals to keep it going.Īny complaints or doubts? Not on my own behalf. In this last thread we have a wild-west element with gunmen (and women) aplenty. And the out in the wilds with the drakes and the natives element was also fascinating. The covert operations were great fun too. I loved the naval battles and the life aboard ship stuff. Our characters are a secret operative in the corporate wars, a thief with special talents, co-opted to explore the wilds in search of a unique drake, and a naval officer serving on an ironclad warship. Plus there's a largely unexplored continent where the drakes are hunted and on which a lost explorer is sought (Dr Livingston, I presume?). The presence of the drakes and the need to harvest them make for an unusual kind of Victoriana. The implementation though bears no resemblance to mine and the setting is a refreshingly different with late 19th century(ish) technology and a vast commercial empire where profit and trade have replaced royalty or democracy. The magic comes in through gaining powers from drinking the blood of dragons (drakes) - exactly the same as in an unpublished book I wrote in 2001 ( Blood of the Red), down to the colours and the fact that a very tiny percentage of people can survive drinking the blood. The main pillars of the book are world-building and story. There are three point-of-view characters and the story is split reasonably evenly between them. Anthony Ryan can write! In fact he's annoyingly good. At 220,000 words it's longer than any book I've written and almost three times as long as Prince of Thorns! Still, it's only half a George Martin doorstop.īut mostly, I had an electronic copy and I don't get on with reading from my laptop - I keep nipping off to the internet!įirst off, it's really well written. I've been reading this book for 16 weeks! And Corrick Hilemore is the second lieutenant of an ironship, whose pursuit of ruthless brigands leads him to a far greater threat at the edge of the world.Īs lives and empires clash and intertwine, as the unknown and the known collide, all three must fight to turn the tide of a coming war, or drown in its wake. Lizanne Lethridge is a formidable spy and assassin, facing gravest danger on an espionage mission deep into the heart of enemy territory. The Syndicate's last hope resides in whispers of the existence of another breed of drake, far more powerful than the rest, and the few who have been chosen by fate to seek it.Ĭlaydon Torcreek is a petty thief and an unregistered blood-blessed, who finds himself pressed into service by the protectorate and sent to wild, uncharted territories in search of a creature he believes is little more than legend. If they fail, war with the neighboring Corvantine Empire will follow swiftly. Harvested from the veins of captive or hunted Reds, Green, Blues and Blacks, it can be distilled into elixirs that give fearsome powers to the rare men and women who have the ability harness them-known as the blood-blessed.īut not many know the truth: that the lines of drakes are weakening. Throughout the vast lands controlled by the Ironship Syndicate, nothing is more prized than the blood of drakes. Martin’s Song of Ice and Fire novels.”* Now, Anthony Ryan begins a new saga, The Draconis Memoria. The New York Times bestselling Raven’s Shadow Trilogy was a perfect read for “fans of broadscale epic fantasy along the lines of Robert Jordan’s Wheel of Time series and George R.
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