Review: "A Pilgrimage of Swords" and "The Kraken's Tooth" by Anthony Ryan

Fresh off reading "The Pariah", I took the recommendation of a friend of mine and gave Anthony Ryan's "Seven Swords" series a try. So far it's only two books: "A Pilgrimage of Swords" and "The Kraken's Tooth".

I burned through "A Pilgrimage of Swords" in about two days. I got "The Kraken's Tooth" immediately after and started in on that.

The two books go together, so it's easier to ramble about my overall impressions.

In a nutshell, the series is about Guyime, aka "Pilgrim", who bears a cursed sword with a bloodthirsty demon within it. The sword and the demon give our (anti-)hero long life and enhance his badass talents. Guyime, a former king with a decidedly bloodthirsty reputation, is sort of done with the whole mass-murderer routine and is looking to get out of his arrangement with his snarky demonic blade.

In "A Pilgrimage of Swords", Guyime joins a quest to meet the Mad God in order to get a prayer answered. He meets a variety of folk on his quest (as is typical of the trope), including a woman who calls herself "Seeker". Seeker is a beast-charmer on a quest to find her daughter, abducted by slavers.

As one might imagine when one looks for a being called "the Mad God", things go sideways pretty quickly. Guyime and Seeker wind up joining forces, leading into "The Kraken's Tooth". In the second book, the two are on a quest that has tied Seeker's quest for her daughter to Guyime's quest for an end to things. Without giving too much away, krakens are the scariest creatures in the world. Hunting for something called "The Kraken's Tooth", predictably goes in some horribly-wrong directions and involves a magic, demonically-possessed sword. Yes, I think there will be seven books in this series.

Overall the books are quick reads. I'm not going to suggest there's deep character development or anything, but the new characters who come on in the quest are intriguing. I think my favorite character is actually Guyime's sword. Hilariously-evil. I look forward to the rest of the series.

Review: "The Paraiah" by Anthony Ryan

Been a while since I read Anthony Ryan.

I liked his "Blood Song" book a lot. I know I said good things about the sequels, but honestly they lost me, especially when he got to "Queen of Fire". So much so that I've never bothered to pick up the successor series in the Vaelin Al Sorna story.

I picked up "The Pariah" on a whim, really. I was hitting a dry spell in my reading options and decided to give Ryan another shot. I'd tried his dragon series and found that to be uninteresting, so I wasn't sure what to expect of this book.

I have to say I was pleasantly surprised by "The Pariah".

This novel feels a lot like how "Blood Song" felt. Told as a first-person account of Alywn Scribe, a young bandit turned... uh... scribe... it traces how Alywn essentially gets in a lot of shitty situations, including a holy war. For all that, I found the story engaging. Ryan has a certain style to his tales and "The Pariah" has a lot of the flavor his "Raven's Shadow" series had. Mysterious, dark magic. Vague menace. Badass lady warriors. Gritty situations. Wolves.

Ryan likes wolves.

I'll certainly pick up the next book in the series. I hope it's better than "Tower Lord" and "Queen of Fire".