Fiona McIntosh: King’s Wrath

Hi

This review is about the third and final part in the Valisar Trilogy by Fiona McIntosh.
The novel has 448 long pages.

* SPOILERS! *

The trilogy contains a lot of violence. Though I wouldn’t say it’s just violence for its own sake, it does serve a purpose in the story. And I certainly don’t mind a good fight (but the cannibalism in the previous novel was a bit too much).

Everything gets turned upside down and not always in a good way.
I can believe Leo’s change; his hatred has been feeding on him for years and years and there’s no place left for any other feeling but hatred and desire for the crown.
But Piven! Piven is a wholly different person. He was a moron, became a genius with magic and ended up back a moron. That’s pretty unbelievable in my book. And a bit of an unethical decision to have this little idiot becoming a ‘normal’ person because I wish it were that easy in this world.
Now Loethar, him I liked a lot. A very sudden change but definitely not unexpected.

McIntosh is not afraid to hurt or kill characters. Even those we like or even love.

I greatly disliked the whole love/relationship stuff between EVERYONE. Everyone falls in love, falls out of love, falls in love with someone else in an instant or has always been in love with someone who doesn’t return these feelings.

The ending was too easy, too predictable and rushed to be satisfying.

All in all I had a mixed reading experience. I loved the world-building, the magic, the characterization  and her writing. But I disliked the romantic stuff, Piven’s change and the very easy ending.

Happy reading!
Helena

Fiona McIntosh: A Tyrant's Blood

Hi

This review is about the second novel in the Valisar Trilogy.
It has 425 pages and I read it in Dutch.
You can find all my Fiona McIntosh reviews here.

I still can’t make up my mind whether I like this series or not.

* MINOR SPOILERS AHEAD! *

It takes some time to get into the novel. The first chapter is very strange and I thought they printed the wrong text for the cover. Secondly, 10 years passed since the first novel and that is not clearly stated at the beginning.

A Tyrant’s Blood is not a boring book; far from it I must say. It is a constant succession of action, flight and interrogation. Not a dull moment to be found in this book.

But a lot changes from the first novel, and in my opinion it’s all a bit too much. Good characters turn out to be bad; a moronic child becomes a smart 15-year old boy, some people turn out to be gifted etc. I think there is too much going on in such a small book.
She should have made the series bigger or the plot less complicated.

There are characters I loved one chapter, I hated the next and I forgave the one after that. I had mixed emotions throughout the entire novel! If that was what she aimed to write, she clearly succeeded!

The last 50 or so pages jump around a lot. About every other page is told from the perspective of another person. It can be confusing.

A very engrossing series, nicely written and so very captivating though a bit unbelievable.

Happy reading.
Helena

Fiona McIntosh: Royal Exile

Hi

Royal Exile is the first novel in the Valisar Trilogy. It took me quite some time to find all three of them. Normally I wouldn’t buy the whole series before reading at least one of the novels. But this time it was different for two reasons. I read a series by Fiona McIntosh before and I enjoyed that a lot. I bought the third novel very cheap and that buy made me go and search for the first and the second part. Which I eventually found over the course of a few months.
This one has 390 pages.

“From out of the East they came riding like a merciless plague—destroying kingdom after kingdom and the sovereigns who had previously mocked the warlord Loethar and his barbarian horde. Now only one land remains unconquered—the largest, richest, and most powerful realm of the Denova Set…
Penraven.
The Valisar royals of Penraven face certain death, for the savage tyrant Loethar covets what they alone possess: the fabled Valisar Enchantment, an irresistible power to coerce, which will belong to Loethar once every Valisar has been slain. But the last hope of the besieged kingdom is being sent in secret from his doomed home, in the company of a single warrior. The future of Penraven now rests on the shoulders of the young Crown Prince Leonel who, though untried and untested in the ways of war, must survive brutality and treachery in order to claim the Valisar throne.”

This novel was a disappointment.

It has great potential but it doesn’t live up to the expectations I had.
The series has a very intriguing villain; Loethar. He has merits; he has a few good traits, or traits that change for the better throughout the novel. Nothing is simply black or white; the way it is in a lot of Fantasy. Here, there are all shades in between.
Almost every character is important. There are no characters without a purpose. And I like that. It was one of my complaints in my review about Game of Thrones; too many characters that serve no purpose and are just there to make the novel seem grander than it is.

But the story is slow, too simple and straightforward and lazily told with convenient plot twists.
A wooden dialogue makes everyone sound pretentious (especially the teenagers) and unconvincing. The interactions between the characters are awkward because of this.
And I don’t care about the characters. I was surprised to find so many of them killed, but it did not bother me.
I want to care about the characters!

I’ll surely read the second one because I own it already, but we’ll see after that.

Happy reading.
Helena

Heaven, I'm in heaven...