- Title:
- Bloom of Blood and Bone
- Author:
- R. J. Hanson
- Release:
- March 22, 2021
- Format:
- Audiobook
- Narrator:
- Terry F. Self
- Series:
- Lords of Order and Chaos #2
- Bloodlines Reforged Saga
This is a re-review for me. Book IV, Stalking Shadows is set to release next month, so I felt I was due for a refresher. I originally received this audiobook as a review copy, though I now consider it a personal copy for this review. To say I enjoy this book, series, or saga is an understatement. I’m an admin on the official Facebook Group and I run the official wiki.
Revisiting this book for the first time since January (give or take) has been a real pleasure. As I’ve grown more familiar with the lore over the last year, as well as having listened to this book 2 times previously, I’m still picking up on minor lore details and references I didn’t understand previously.
The half-ogre, half-dwarf…. ew… Rogash was previously mentioned in Fires That Forge, and here we get to meet him. Second to Silas, …. Dunewell, Dru, and madame Lynneare, he’s one of the most interesting characters in the saga. He’s clearly more intelligent than he lets on, yet simultaneously has a distaste for academic lectures that Silas is so fond of. There’s clearly more than meets the eye here, maybe he’s a robot. His interactions with Silas are the best scenes in the book, in my opinion. His dialogue and speech patterns done by Terry F. Self give him a lot of personality and character that make an already interesting character feel more alive.
I personally enjoy tome-length novels, one complaint I have about the saga as a whole is how details are often skipped over. It’s strange, to be honest. Sometimes, a page is so jam-packed with lore, you’d need to read a wiki article and several books to get the full context. While other times, conversations and travel scenes are glossed over to ‘cut the fluff’ if you would. While I think some people might get bored with those scenes, and I’ve often ragged on books with too much court politics, at the same time, I think they also add a lot of world-building and believability to the story. It really helps to build Silas up as a formidable character, as well as working at a plot device.
One of the other things I love about this book specifically is getting to learn more about Silas’ “mind room” and his interactions with Shezmu, who he previously subjugated in Fires That Forge. Having a demon-held prisoner inside of you, that would turn on you the second your guard is down is a horrific thought. Yet Silas seems not the least bit worried by it and continues on with business.
The Silas half of the story kinda overshadows Dunewell for me. While I enjoy Dunewell as a character, Silas and Dru are my flavorite characters and they’re just more enjoyable to follow. I will say, Jonas’ interactions with Dunewell are always hilarious. Dunewell reminds me of a patient, well-mannered child, and Jonas, his older, rebel of a brother will never tell Dunewell what’s going on. But Dunewell always follows along, continuously asking questions, despite almost never getting answers.
The narration is fantastic. One of my flavorite lines in the book is when Rogash says “Queen Jandanero wants me to lay low, this is me, laying low.” The delivery of that line was done extremely well, emphasizing Roash’s speaking manner and personality in a single sentence. Another thing I appreciate is how Terry F. Self actually acts out the lines. Such as when Silas laughs, he actually laughs, in a croaking manner to match, as opposed to just reading aloud how Silas laughed, as so many sub-par narrators would opt to do. While the background hissings makes a return, it’s not super distracting. It’s most noticeable when my phone is closer to me, as when it’s somewhat far away, I don’t even notice it.