As I mentioned in the previous post, I would be putting up my review of the two books I finished while on vacation. The books are the first two in a series called The Godless World by Brian Ruckley.
Winterbirth
The first book, called Winterbirth starts the series out with a little history of the people in the book. The story goes that after kingships began to fall, small Thanes rose up and formed an alliance. Over time a woman came about who believed in something called the Black Road, which is a path to getting the Gods to return to the world.
The book starts out extremely slow and at times becomes very confusing because it takes awhile to understand what is going on. As the story slowly gains momentum you begin to realize something quite brilliant: their are no real bad guys in the story. Ruckley will take a character from a previous chapter, who you absolutely hated, and tell the story from their point for a few chapters. It gives you insight into what they are thinking and how the world is not always black and white.
The battle scenes in the book are quite bloody and very action packed. Once the ball starts rolling, you can barely put the book down. It ends on a fantastic cliff hanger, with a huge, scary threat looming over everyone.
Bloodheir
The second book, Bloodheir, picks up right where the first one leaves off. This book takes the threat from before and makes it real.
Ruckley also starts explaining more things that happened at the beginning of the first book, stuff that seemed out of place and kind of boring. Now those elements are fit in and we see why they were important.
There also begins an explanation of the era when the gods were present and the differences in the five races inhabiting the world. As always though, the action shadows everything. The battle scenes are great, putting you right there and never giving you the idea that everyone will be okay. Most books when telling a story from a characters POV, usually do not have that character die in the telling, but Ruckley does that quite well.
If you check out Amazon, they recommend this to fans of the Abercrombie books. I liked both books and eagerly await the third book.
