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".