FANTASY REVIEW: Ancient Blades Trilogy 2: A Thief in the Night - David Chandler

Release Date: 04/08/11

SYNOPSIS:

Enter a world of darkness and danger, honour, daring and destiny in David Chandler’s magnificent epic trilogy: The Ancient Blades.

It takes a thief to destroy a demon…

Circumstance made him a criminal.
Destiny may make him a hero.

As a thief, Malden is unparalleled in the Free City of Ness. But he has no desire to take up arms against the forces of horrific evil. By saving the life of the knight Croy, however, Malden has bound himself to an ancient, noble brotherhood…and he now possesses a magical weapon forged at the dawn of time – one of only seven swords capable of destroying demons.

Malden fears accompanying Croy and the barbarian Mörget on their quest to dispatch a foul creature of nightmare…nor does he want to disturb the vengeful dead. But with an assassin on his heels, the young cutpurse is left with no choice but to follow. And there is the comely sorceress, Cythera, to consider – promised to Croy but in love with Malden – not to mention the fabulous treasure rumoured to be waiting in the inescapable depths of the demon’s lair…


REVIEW:

For me, the first book is always one that announces an author to a genre, yet its always the second book that can either earn them their own triumph or damn them to the gallows. So with this, his second Fantasy title to be released in the Ancient Blades Trilogy, David Wellington had to make up for a sadly disappointing (in my opinion) fantasy debut which I felt concentrated more on centralising the world than any real solid characters or development, which for me is a huge error.

So what did this book do? For me, this title restored a lot of my faith in him as an author as it allowed his writing skills to come to the fore as the plot moves forward at quite a pace. The characters pick up from their original 2d impressions to be more fleshed so that they stand out and when you add crisp prose alongside some good dialogue (with the addition of a cracking undercurrent) which made this book vastly superior to its predecessor. I really am now looking forward to the third and final part.