Reviewed by EBookObsessed on
Note: This is a long one so get comfortable. Also, this is an audiobook review so spelling doesn’t count.
This is a the beginning of an epic tale along the lines of Lord of the Rings. It is mostly told through the storyteller, Fintan, known as the Bard. That is his Kenning or blessing. As a Bard, Fintan is blessed with perfect memory as well as an ability to take on the likeless of the person whose POV he is telling the story. Fintan collects people’s stories, whether from them directly or from their written letters or diaries. Fintan has come to the City of Brynt to advise Pelenaut Röllend that forces will be arriving from the other towns and while Fintan is there, he is being offered as entertainment to tell the story of the invasion of the giants. Since trading has been cut off and the people in the cities which have been invaded so far are all dead, most of the people aren’t familiar with how this whole invasion started or what is going on outside of their own city walls. Some are also unaware that they are facing two different sets of giants, the Bone Giants and the Fire Giants.
The main characters (but not the only characters):
Fintan is accompanied around Brynt by Dervan. Dervan was a scholar at the local college until it was closed down due to the war and he has been working as a historian for the Pelenaut. Dervan is tasked with writing down the stories told by Fintan and keeping an eye on him. Dervan is the only characters we spend time with but not through a telling by the Bard.
Nel is Fornish and she is blessed as a Greensleeve (Fifth Kenning). She has a bond with the plants and protects the canopy. She is the first to see the Harthrad giants (Fire Giants) land on the shores of the west coast. At first no one believes her until she returns with a scouting party and they are immediately attacked by the giants.
Gorin Mogen is the Hearthfire (leader) of the Harthrad giants. His people have been preparing for generations in case the volcano on their island erupted and have been building ships and keeping them stocked for decades in case they need to flee. When the volcano erupts in the middle of the night, he takes as many of his people who can make it and heads for the mainland of Ghurana Nent. While his predecessors planned to land and wait until the volcano dust settled to rebuild Harthrad, Gorin Mogen has decided that he and his people will keep the parcel of land between the Forn forest and the Nentians and becoming wood rich stealing the trees from the edge of the Fornish canopy. He believes that his blessed, the Fire born who control fire, will be able to hold the area by force until they create a City big enough and then the locals should then be happy to just trade with them. Mogen swears they are refugees, not invaders, but everyone is well aware they are not acting like suffering refugees and the wall that has appeared around his refugee camp doesn’t give the impression of temporary. The Viceroy know that the giants have no plans to ever return home but evicting invading giants who control fire is not so easy.
Viceroy Melishev Lohmet is not a nice guy. He likes to torture and kill, and he has desires on the throne. He runs the city closest to the Harthreen invaders and he is trying to figure out how to deal with getting rid of the powerful fire giants without much loss to him and to keep him looking powerful to the King and the country.
Kallindra is the daughter of a travelling merchant. We follow her around as the Eculan (Bone Giant) invasion begins. Her family is one of the first to come across an Eculan scout having no idea of the dire plans these Giants have for the people of the continent. Through her eyes, we see the world before and after the invasion.
Abhinva Khose is part of a hunting family but Abhi has no desire to be a hunter. He is trying to figure out how to break that to his family before the hunting season begins. Abhi accidentally become the first to be blessed with the Sixth Kenning (Animals).
Gondel Vedd is a linguist brought in by the Mistral of his town to try and communicate with a bone giant who was captured after he was found washed up on the shore. Through his conversation, Gondel learns that the Eculans are searching for the Seventh Kenning which it taught in their holy book but which really isn’t outlined what it is and so far Gondel isn’t able to figure it out, but he does know that the Eculans have interpreted their Book as saying that the Seventh Kenning is the only true Kenning and will be the only one left, giving the Eculans freedom to kill everyone on the continent.
The Kennings introduced are very interesting because to be blessed with a Kenning one must go through a sort of trial and you end up blessed or dead. For example, for the fire giants to be blessed with fire, you jump into a volcano. You either burn up or come out immune to fire and able to create it at will. Each area has its own blessing. The First Kenning is Fire (fire giants). The Second it wind. Those blessed control the winds. The Third is earth. They move the earth or build with stones. Fourth is water. Fifth is plants. The Sixth which is only discovered by accident by Abhi is animals. And now we need to find out what the bone giants believe is the Seventh Kenning. I also thought it was interesting that if the blessed over extend their blessing, they age prematurely. We will see how some of the characters change as they are forced to over extend to save their cities from the giants invasions.
We jump right into the story on the night of the invasion when one of the water blessed, a tidal mariner, was doing a routine night check of one of the sea beds and sees the giant fleet of bone giants. She is alone and has to figure out quickly if they are friend or foe and once she realizes that these strange giants are not coming for a visit, she has to figure what she can do to keep their boats from landing on the shore.
We eventually learn through Kallindra (the merchant’s daughter) about initial sightings of these bone giants and that no one knew what to make of these odd, pale and half nakes people. They were also unaware of their deadly intent as they scouted the mainland. I could easily believe that before an invasion, whether in a novel like this or in our own past, you might note someone’s odd behavior never realizing the evil intent behind that behavior. We also see how quickly everyone’s life changes as the bone giants invade. As they take over each city, they kill all the residents and take all of the goods. The cities which have not yet been affected are filled with people who have lost entire families or their livelihoods or both after the attacks. While the story was entertaining, the underlying premises is actually a little frightening.
When I went to the book signing back in July and listened to Kevin Hearne talk about this new series, I was concerned when he mentioned that there would be so many POVs for this book. Sometimes when I have read other stories with many POVs, I found that I would get frustrated when we bounce around so much, especially if there were characters I didn’t like or care about and I hated being drawn away from the characters I did care about.
Kevin Hearne does a fabulous job in presenting each story through the eyes of the Bard and breaking it up in a way that we keep pushing the whole story forward even though it is split amongst the different characters. They each brought necessary information to give us the whole story. I also found that each time we switched, instead of being frustrated, I was excited to get back to that next character. Each separate character caught my attention and although I had some favorites (like Abhi), there were none that I disliked.
I would highly recommend this as an audiobook as I am already a fan of Luke Daniels’ presentation of The Iron Druid Chronicles. I give him extra kudos on this one because I have listened to the same narrators for different series, and it took awhile to switch my mindset from one series to the next because I was picking out the same voices from one series to the next and being distracted by that. Luke Daniels brought a whole new set of voices with no crossover to IDC so that didn’t distract me from the narration of the story. They also brought in Xe Sands to cover the female voices and although I haven’t listened to her before, she does have a distinct set of individual characters.
I hated the fact that the story ended leaving me wanting so much more. Thankfully, this is the first of only three books as I am anxiously looking forward to the next book and what happens next in this war.
Reading updates
- Started reading
- 26 November, 2017: Finished reading
- 26 November, 2017: Reviewed