Holy cow. Took me two weeks to complete this somewhat little book. The Bulgarian edition is a bit short of 600 pages.
Why? I’ll try to explain it to myself first before I can blog about it.
The book is dense. A lot is going on. Tam, the main character, is a teenager who grew up, surrounded by heroes, and wanted to become one. What better opportunity than joining Bloody Rose’s band Fable? And of course, one of the most legendary bands wants to hire a teenager because she can sing, when they plan to participate in a million dangerous battles.
Bands in this world are like our rock bands by but rather than perform on stage, they fight monsters in Roman-style arenas. The monsters are sometimes evil, and sometimes human, branded as evil. Not necessarily good or bad, mostly just alien. Also big and scary. Each band has a bard, who will witness the heroic acts and write songs about them, then eventually die. Bards are in high demand, which could explain why Fable took the young Tam.
So, this setup is complex, and Tam, being a minor, has to develop and grow as a character. Also, the environment at the start is not particularly scary. It takes forever for the despair to level up and reach another Kings of the Wyld type of shit storm that can’t possibly be resolved without Rose and Tam shining like stars.
I opted out of using the new half-ratings on Goodreads. It is a very good book and I gave it 5*/5. The final 0.25 came from the autograph Nicholas Eames put in my book. It is dense, different, has some very awkward moments, and all you can read at times is 10-20 pages before you need a break. But it’s also well-made and courageous. I can’t promise you’ll like it but surely, it will be difficult to forget.
