She passed a snake-headed gorgon chained by her neck to brackets in the wall behind her, and a black horse that breathed fire into the face of someone fool enough to inspect its teeth.

Readers will find their own themes to ponder, but for this reviewer, the main theme of Bloody Rose is “What constitutes family? The badge of Saint Mina and her followers is a red rose, with prominent thorns, representing her nature. This served to ensure that the characters were both relatable and real; characters deal with addiction, loss and many other themes in here. When the last of the Slaanesh-worshippers had been eradicated, the Canoness Superior of the Bloody Rose -- who upon her death would become canonised as Saint Mari -- penned the Thorn Treatise, using the blood of those sisters who had fallen to record the teachings of this war.From the moment a sister joins the Bloody Rose, she is taught to foster and harness her most violent impulses so that they may be unleashed upon the enemies of the faith.

In this world, monster hunters have transitioned from a more legitimate “saving helpless townsfolk from marauding creatures” role to a lucrative career of touring stadiums to defeat captured “monsters” – and no one wants to look too closely at whether these creatures are truly evil. These references, combined with the book’s brilliant sense of humor and genuine pathos of its characters’ plights, felt carefully cultivated and richly rewarding. Some, like Fable, also take on contracts to hunt monsters out in the wild but most prefer to make their living touring the arenas of Grandual either as support acts or headliners ( depending on how famous they are). Tuck Hashford also had a rule about his only daughter going anywhere near the Monster Market, or the arena, or associating with mercenaries in general: “ No fucking way. Not only was she hopelessly late for work, but her father, naturally, had yet another rule when it came to his daughter going for drinks with strange boys.Eames’ plot holes are also forgivable, namely those where villains decide not to kill the heroes when they have the chance, James Bond-style, and large events that might leave the fate of the Band in question were they not located squarely in the middle of the book. Nicholas Eames’ freshman novel, Kings of the Wyld, was one of my favorite reads of 2017, a well-written, cleverly observed and often hilariously funny adventure fantasy pastiche that adhered to genre forms w

The fact that there’s a lot of new characters along with those that we know from the first didn’t turn out to be as clustered as I thought it could be, Eames is a master at controlling large groups of characters in and outside of fights; despite the large cast, we have time to get attached to all of the characters, each gets their own character arc, small or not, and you end up all the more close to them for it. There is a monstrous Horde ( partly built from the remnants of the Heartwyld Horde from KoTW) led by the giant, Brontide out in the Brumal Wastes and subsequently dubbed the “ Brumal Horde” intent on invading Grandual but Bloody Rose and Fable aren’t interested. The mercenaries—all of them big, bearded Kaskars—were regulars at the tavern where Tam worked, and their leader gave her a wave as the argosy went by.And that’s all that you are getting regarding the story from me, trust me, you don’t want me to spoil anything as it’s a voyage that you want to discover for yourself. I can always rely on your reviews to be honest and I’m glad to hear it’s somehow impossibly even better than Kings of the Wyld, which was one of my best reads of 2017 and my first step into fantasy. David's favorite authors include Grandfather Tolkien, Uncle Steve (Erikson), and that weird cousin with the crazy hair, Neil. Readers who love battle scenes and fighting, however, will probably need to change their underclothes. Its feathers had been daubed in black paint, and its beak was smeared with blood to make it look feral, but Tam wasn’t convinced.

She ducked around the bulk of a shaggy yethik, then slipped between a shouting huntsman and a barking wrangler an instant before the huntsman launched a punch that put the wrangler on his ass.It’s Tam’s job to witness Fable’s exploits and record them in song for posterity, but as events in the five kingdoms unfold, Tam will have to decide if standing on the sidelines is truly what she wants in life.