A Time of Dread: 1 (Of Blood & Bone)

Product Information

This first book in the Blood and Bone series follows four main characters: Bleda, Riv, Drem, and Sig.

Gwynne delivers adrenaline-filled fight scenes with characters you care about, and the outcome never feels certain, that aforementioned dread is convincing, you feel that characters you care about really might not make it. His prose is the glue that connected all the incredible plot, characterization, action sequences, and world-building to become one of the finest first books in a series I’ve ever read.So that means fewer characters, fewer places and the events connect the characters pretty fast which is cool! They've spent generations uniting the nations and tracking the remaining forces of the grotesque and scarily powerful Kadoshim, their Eternal enemy.

Somehow the last 20% of every single one of his books flies past with events always leaving you flabbergasted, awed, and with such a deep yearning for MORE! These characters and their actions influence the plot as much as the plot influences them, which I love. And there definitely is nuance, particularly on the "good" side where the issue of how much personal freedom must be ceded in the name of the greater good is put under the microscope. Certainly, it seems harder to find book that awaken that elusive 'Sense of Wonder' or the need to turn pages despite what the numbers on the clock say. John Gwynne is one of the modern masters of heroic fantasy' – Adrian Tchaikovsky, author of Children of Ruin .It felt half-told, and though I'm certainly it will be developed much more strongly in the following books, I appreciate when certainly story elements are self-contained within a book. The world is rich and complex, but you never feel lost or find yourself desperately reaching for a map. The first chapter, for example, immediately set the darker tone of the entire book which wasn’t found in Malice; even the source of inspiration is different. As many a fantasy lover will know, world-building is the lifeblood of fantasy’s storytelling and in this case it is a resounding success, largely thanks to the groundwork the author has laid in tFatF and subsequently built on in AToD.