Short Book Review // A Time of Blood by John Gwynne

A Time of Blood is the second book of Of Blood and Bone trilogy by John Gwynne. In a nutshell, A Time of Blood is an action-packed work of dark/epic fantasy, set in the Banished Lands, where the eternal war between Ben-Elim, divine creatures come to flesh, and their demonic foes, the Kadoshim, rages, affecting everyone in the world. It is a multi-POV story, an individual voice given to a variety of characters, best suited for adult readers, I think, as it's fraught with violence. Although I don't know whether it's written as adult fantasy. It has a young adult fantasy vibe to it, which, together with the overall (grim)darkness of the book, is confusing. For more information about the book, visit the author's website.

A Time of Blood continues straight where the first book, A Time of Dread, ended. It introduces a new main character and, through her, presents the point of view of the adversary of those who stand for the Ben-Elim. That's something I didn't expect, as the first book was written solely from the POV of those standing against the Kadoshim, and is the main reason why I devoured the book despite the few flaws that otherwise might've made me give up on it.

Things I find off-putting in A Time of Blood are smallish, yet I found the first of them especially frustrating: repetition. There's a LOT of returning to the events in the first book and repeating the facts about the characters and their pasts. About two-thirds of the book is plagued by rehearsing the same things over and over again. It's the second book in a series, so a certain amount of reminding the reader about the key points and previous events is necessary, but in A Time of Blood, it reaches the point where it makes you wonder whether the author is repeating the past events merely to add bulk to the story. 

Another feature in the story that I don't like is a few too many miraculous escapes from impossible situations. If this type of fantasy was right up my alley, I probably wouldn't pay any attention to it, but I must admit that the trilogy isn't quite my horn of mead. It's a bit too action-heavy for me, and the writer side of me seethes with frustration at seeing how much richer and more multifaceted this series could be if the author had put down the sword and axe every now and then, giving more room to the other levels of the story. However, I enjoyed A Time of Blood, and I'm already a hundred pages in A Time of Courage, the last book in the trilogy.

The underlying theme that no one is purely good or evil, and even the most horrid of deeds are done because the person behind them believes they're acting for the greater good, speaks to me. It also happens to be one of the themes I focus on in my books, which is why it makes me hail Of Blood and Bone that much louder.

All in all, A Time of Blood is a good read. It kept me encaged from start to finish, even managed to make me feel slightly sick at times. If it were purely adult fantasy, not adult fantasy written so that it doesn't need to be age-restricted, I'd say it's a great book. 

 

Short Book Reviews // A Time of Dread by John Gwynne

The older I get, the more selective a reader I become. As a teenager, I read almost everything I could get my hands on, waded through every shelf in the local library, except the horror and mystery sections. I also had a principle to finish every book I've started. I forbade myself from picking up a new read before I'd finished the previous one. Although even that rule had an exception: I am yet to finish The Brothers Karamazov by Fjodor Dostojevski, which my friends gave me for my eighteenth birthday. Nowadays, I don't think twice about giving up on a book partway through if it doesn't seem right up my alley, though I try to read more than one or two chapters before doing so. 

I started A Time of Dread (Of Blood and Bone #1) by John Gwynne (for background information, check the author's website, as I still don't write summaries or copy+paste information that anyone can google themselves in three seconds) in the late summer and was about to give up on it before I finished the first chapter. Because I had done that to several books during the summer, I forced myself to keep reading, thinking that at this rate, I'll never finish another book in my life. The first ten or so chapters felt like trying to consume a cooled-down cup of coffee, merely because throwing it away is against my principles. I felt utterly detached from the world and characters, even though Gwynne puts up just the kind of fantasy setting I like best, and there is more than one main character to find your favourite among. 

At the beginning of September, I actually put A Time of Dread aside to read The Alchemist. Then my dog died, and reading anything at all was the last thing on my mind for a while. I returned to books about two weeks ago, finished The Alchemist and decided to give A Time of Dread another go. I gobbled down the remaining forty-plus chapters in three days and can't even begin to comprehend anymore what felt so off-putting about the book when I started it.

Quite a long way to say you shouldn't give up on a book only a few pages in, not even only a few chapters in, but read at least twenty percent of it before you do. It's not always worth the time, but sometimes patience is rewarded.

A Time of Dread certainly turned out worth the second chance I gave it. Though the level of gore is a tad too high for my liking in general, I enjoyed the story immensely. Gwynne's writing style is something that I needed some time to get used to, but it works very well for this type of fantasy that's heavy in action and battle scenes. The characters that I couldn't relate to at all on my first attempt to read this book became so dear to me that towards the end, I struggled to continue reading because I didn't want to see them get hurt. That's something that hasn't happened to me in a long time, not after I listened to The Song of Achilles by Madeline Miller, which I very nearly didn't finish simply because I felt I couldn't bear the inevitable unhappy ending. 

To keep this short as the title promises, I am captivated by Gwynne's world and will definitely read the whole series, Of Blood and Bone, and probably give The Faithful and the Fallen a go as well. I am a person who picks up books at random, without doing much research beforehand, and it occurred to me only after I'd finished A Time of Dread that I might've been wise to start from The Faithful and the Fallen, as Of Blood and Bone is technically a sequel to it, although designed so that it can be read as a standalone series. 

If you enjoy multi-POV epic fantasy jampacked with suspense and bloodshed, A Time of Dread is for you. The pool of blood is deep, the island of mauled bodies in the middle is high, so if you're sensitive to gore (as I was back in the day before watching The Game of Thrones, after which any amount of violence in fiction hasn't affected me), you might want to keep a bucket within arm's reach while reading it. Sounds like I'm joking, but I'm actually (all but) serious, because the scenes that include violence are so well written that I could smell the stench of death and fouler things. It's not all blood and spilt guts, though. There are quiet moments, too, and deep bonds between the characters, interesting and adorable creatures (I love the talking crows of Dun Seren, though usually I find talking animals in what I deem as adult fantasy off-putting), and a world that unfurls as the story progresses. Also, even as it's an epic fantasy, A Time of Dread isn't overly political, nor does it contain info dumps. Definitely a book worth adding to your to-be-read list.

What is it with these middle-aged, bearded men that they're so damn good at writing fantasy? And why, oh, why can't I be a middle-aged, bearded man, because if I were, perhaps my book would have a few readers, too. 

Short Book Reviews // The Alchemist by Paulo Coelho

The Alchemist isn't a fantasy book, but it's the latest book I've read. I picked it up as a quick in-between read because I've always thought I should read something from Paulo Coelho, and Google recommended it when I asked for "the best self-help book when you feel like nothing's working out for you" (or something like that; I don't remember the exact wording of my search anymore).

I set a goal to read this book during September, but I didn't quite achieve that. I finished it yesterday and have somewhat mixed feelings about it. 

If I reviewed The Alchemist purely as a fiction book, I'd say it's a nice little story, easy to read, and as easy to forget. It's a story about the boy who chases his Personal Legend, following omens through the desert. He meets many people and learns a lot along the way. All in all, a cute story that would serve well someone who's only at the beginning of their reading journey, as it is short-ish and doesn't require much of the reader. It also served me well in the situation I am in, struggling with grief and guilt and the overall feeling of being an utter failure. If there's any book I could finish at the moment, it's The Alchemist.

However, I chose to read The Alchemist as a self-help book in a situation that feels hopeless. It turned out that I'm much like the Boy; I, too, chase my Personal Legend. Only, the Universe definitely doesn't conspire in my favour. (If nothing else, at least now I know where all that talk comes from...) Oftentimes, it feels that the Universe does the exact opposite, trying its hardest to prevent me from achieving my dream. 

That, of course, isn't true. I know, and The Alchemist confirms, that all the Universe does is exist. The only one who can help a person achieve their Personal Legend is the person themselves, and they are also their biggest obstacle on their way to their treasure. 

"There is only one thing that makes a dream impossible to achieve: the fear of failure."

That's very true, and I wouldn't have needed to read a book to figure it out. The Alchemist is full of the same kind of wisdom, stuff that is self-evident but often difficult to admit to oneself. It's easy to blame outside factors (one's parents, the society, the Universe...) when things don't go as intended. The harsh truth is, however, that in the end, the only one responsible for a person's success or failure is the person themselves. I knew that before I read The Alchemist, just as I knew that to achieve my dream, I must shake the thought that it's impossible to begin with and that I'll fail anyway, no matter what I do. Unfortunately, that's much easier said than done. 

So, in a nutshell, The Alchemist is a sweet little book that offers a lot of wisdom or lots of platitudes, depending on the reader. Unlike Google, I wouldn't recommend that you read it as a self-help book, but simply as a work of fiction.