Ally

This is such a difficult book to review, mainly because I haven’t been able to devote much time to reading lately. Through my own fault, I realized I couldn’t remember who certain characters were or what their purpose was in the story. So, I must conclude that this book needs a re-read before I can feel comfortable rating it properly.  For now, my 3.5 will stand, but I feel like it may change in the future.

There’s something about fantasy like this that I just love. Especially when you have a writer like Anthony Ryan, who just knows how to build a solid world and create fantastic characters. I wish I had had the map of Ryan’s world beside me, particularly through the last two parts of the book. I loved the world he created, though I’ll admit, I didn’t feel an extreme desire to live in it. More on that later. Other than that, I enjoyed following Vaelin through the Order, and through his travels in the Unified Realm and beyond.

I think the reason I didn’t immediately want to take off to the Unified Realm was due mostly to the lack of female characters in the story. However, the female characters we did get to meet were strong and very capable. I can’t wait to see more of them in the sequel. The majority of the characters in this book were wonderfully flawed. The lack of perfection was something I really appreciated because it made you think about each character and how you felt about him or her. The lines between what is right and wrong were blurred and Vaelin constantly found himself torn between the two.

I’m going to cut it off there until I can re-read it and properly review it. Overall, a fantastic fantasy story. For those of you who liked Mistborn, or want a Game of Thrones type story where not everybody dies, this book is for you.