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A review by hostral
Blood of the King by Bruce Blake
3.0
Bruce Blake is a solid writer, his short stories are evidence of that. So how did this competent short-form author fair with the scope of a larger work?
Blood of the King is a solid book with a cowardly protagonist. Said protagonist watches the king die and through unfortunate circumstances is thrust into a quest to deliver his titular blood to a place it may be reborn.
As this quest commences, Khirro is gradually accompanied by a number of fellow protagonists in the classic fantasy sense.
The reason this doesn't sound overly detailed is the first issue I have with the text: outside of Khirro, I didn't find the characters all that memorable. There was your classic mercenary type, some sort of female rogue and something to do with a circus. None of it really stuck in my head as I continued to read through the text, and that made it difficult to care for anyone besides our main protagonist.
I feel that the majority of Blake's fans are those who enjoyed classic 80s black-and-white fantasy. They see the moral grey areas and explicit nature of parts of the book as points to write home about rather than things that aren't just in vogue but have been done to death over the last decade.
There aren't many particular downsides to reading Blood of the King, the biggest problem Blake faces is that there isn't much to make it stand out from the crowd either. It's a competent and solid fantasy that will no doubt garner many fans and sales, but it didn't blow me out of the water.
Blood of the King is a solid book with a cowardly protagonist. Said protagonist watches the king die and through unfortunate circumstances is thrust into a quest to deliver his titular blood to a place it may be reborn.
As this quest commences, Khirro is gradually accompanied by a number of fellow protagonists in the classic fantasy sense.
The reason this doesn't sound overly detailed is the first issue I have with the text: outside of Khirro, I didn't find the characters all that memorable. There was your classic mercenary type, some sort of female rogue and something to do with a circus. None of it really stuck in my head as I continued to read through the text, and that made it difficult to care for anyone besides our main protagonist.
I feel that the majority of Blake's fans are those who enjoyed classic 80s black-and-white fantasy. They see the moral grey areas and explicit nature of parts of the book as points to write home about rather than things that aren't just in vogue but have been done to death over the last decade.
There aren't many particular downsides to reading Blood of the King, the biggest problem Blake faces is that there isn't much to make it stand out from the crowd either. It's a competent and solid fantasy that will no doubt garner many fans and sales, but it didn't blow me out of the water.