Thursday 20 October 2011

FANTASY REVIEW: Shadows of the Apt 7: Heirs of the Blade - Adrian Tchaikovsky

Release Date: 21/10/11

SYNOPSIS:

She remembered how it felt to lose Salma, first to the wiles of the Butterfly-kinden girl, then to hear the news of his death, abandoned and alone in the midst of the enemy.

She remembered how it felt to see her father hacked to death before her eyes.

But of her murder of Achaeos, of the bite of her blade into his unsuspecting flesh, the wound that had sapped him and ruined him until he died, she remembered nothing, felt nothing. In such a vacuum, how could she possibly atone?

Tynisa is running, but she cannot escape the demons of her own mind. Amidst the fragmenting provinces of the Dragonfly Commonweal her past will at last catch up with her. Her father’s ghost is hunting her down.

At the same time, the Wasp Empress, Seda, is on the move, her eyes on the city of Khanaphes, the fallen jewel of the ancient world. Whilst her soldiers seek only conquest, she sees herself as the heir to all the old powers of history, and has her eyes on a far greater prize.


REVIEW:

The latest in Adrian’s Shadows series and one that demonstrates why for me, he’s one of the top new fantasy writers of recent years with his well thought out world, cracking prose and of course cast of characters that have been hard to put down. Events take their own time to unfold as usual and when you add the emotional aspect as well as torment that some of the characters go through within, it clearly demonstrates that it’s a series about the people as much as the cultures.

Add to this the authors unique “voice”, a decent plot line and of course a few new twists woven within to be picked up later and you know that the Adrian is continuing to go from strength to strength. Magic.

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