The Waters of Eternity (The Chronicle of Sword and Sand) (A Chronicle of Sword and Sand Anthology)

by Howard Andrew Jones

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I was going to be reading the Hazel Wood right after Markswoman but I thought I would like a small change of pace instead, then Honour Among Thieves came out and I’m most certainly reading Rachel Caine’s book first.

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Unlike the big continuous adventure, I had with the duo in the first book, The Desert of Souls, this book is merely snippets of their adventures afterwards. Now the stories are way shorter than I expected them to be, some even felt like they were wrapped up pretty quickly so naturally not all of them were as entertaining to read. Out of the 6 of them I think I enjoyed two and was okay with the others, not that they were bad per say but felt lacking in some way.

Thanks to the almost identical way the first half of each story starts, there isn’t that much to gain when I try to take it into that big of perspective but luckily there was a different type of thing in every second half that it got me engaged to a bigger degree than the starts, so I’ll take that as a plus regardless.

I think what I liked more in these stories is Jones’s research resurfacing once again with the way he writes about the locations, the cultural aspects and the religious aspects of the setting. I really appreciate it when authors go further into any setting and try to incorporate as many real life angles to it as possible. However, there seems to be a misconception of sorts with his understanding to some words/phrases and how he uses them vs what they actually mean and how they’re supposed to be used. I noticed it in the Desert of Souls as well but I let it go thanks to the bigger plot line, in here though, it was kind of hard to ignore.

Overall it was a nice quick read and gave me the change of pace I needed, I can’t really go in depth here because spoiling the stories would be super easy and no one needs that.

Final rating: 2.5/5