Bloodheir

Brian Ruckley
Bloodheir
Orbit Books

544 pages
June 2008

Brian Ruckley's Winterbirth was one of the most celebrated débuts of 2006, and, incidentally, having won a copy on Pat's Fantasy Hotlist, it prompted me to begin "the whole blog thing" in the first place... I ask you not to hold it against Brian! After that, I was delighted to grab one of the last advanced review copies of Bloodheir (consequently, Brian is called Brain on most pages, but I doubt he minds)...

Following from Winterbirth, and the na'kyrim Aeglyss' recovery from his crucifixion on a sacred Kyrinin stone, the disturbance in the Shared is now so large that even we plebbish humans (called the Huanin) can sense it, and, though this could be taken out of context, Ruckley really manages to create an air of inevitable death and destruction. Bloodheir, albeit definitely not the calm, is certainly awaiting the storm. As it becomes clear just how strong Aeglyss is in the Shared now, and with the squabbling and back-stabbing that is rife amongst his enemies, I finished Bloodheir thinking, for the first time in a while, I can't see how the bad guy can lose. This is, of course, how I'm meant to feel, but the danger is now, that with the Godless World series' gritty bent, and magic still largely in the background, short of deus ex machina, which I'm certain Ruckley won't stoop to, I'll be shocked at any other outcome. Excellently done. The only one powerful enough to harm Aeglyss is himself ... but enough of that.

Ruckley introduced a small, but interesting, group of non-human races in Winterbirth. Although, as the blurb says, the Anain are in this book, we see them from accounts of other people, rather than as actual characters which is a shame. In Bloodheir, though, we do learn more about them (whether from the Robin Hobb style entries at the beginning of every chapter or from Aeglyss) and, although they seem to be doing rather badly at restraining the mad na'kyrim, it will be interesting to see whether "the most potent race this world's ever seen" have anything else up their (probably metaphorical) sleeves. The Kyrinin, especially Ess'yr and Varryn, play a part in Bloodheir, but I was a bit disappointed that their characters weren't fleshed out more.

Bloodheir. The strange thing is, I'm not sure just which one that refers to. I suspect it's Orisian, who does a lot of travelling around in Bloodheir, but the High Thane's brutish son, Aewult, gets more page time, too.

After a slow start, Bloodheir quickly picked up speed, and a lot of different threads are starting to move together; it does suffer from some of the problems of a "middle book", and every character seems to be travelling somewhere (this is a world at war), but, nonetheless, Bloodheir is a good read, and Ruckley has definitely built upon the success of Winterbirth to produce a worthy sequel. Best scene? Five words: Highfast; Aeglyss; long distance possession.

There isn't one in the ARC, but I gather there is also going to be an extract from the concluding volume of the trilogy at the back of the book. There's also a rather useful "What Has Gone Before" section at the beginning! And damn those Orbit lying types: the book wasn't written in blood, at all...

For more information:

Amazon UK
Amazon US

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