Bloody Rose: The Band, Book Two

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From the moment a sister joins the Bloody Rose, she is taught to foster and harness her most violent impulses so that they may be unleashed upon the enemies of the faith. In fact I would venture to say that some aspects of it such as the action sequences are even better.

When the biggest mercenary band of all rolls into town, led by the infamous Bloody Rose, Tam jumps at the chance to sign on as their bard.I mean, yeah, it is the usual journey of the heroes, with the usual obstacles and sacrifices but just like in the "Kings", it is done so expertly, so emotionally fitting that one just can't stop reading (in my case - listening ;)) - immersed in the world and the challenges that the heroes go through. Not only was she hopelessly late for work, but her father, naturally, had yet another rule when it came to his daughter going for drinks with strange boys. She’d remarked when they first met that Willow was a curious name for a guy his size, and he’d said it was because a willow tree provided shade to everything around it—which made a lot of sense when he put it that way. Some characters only spend a paragraph in the spotlight, while others have exceptional arcs with tragic or glorious endings. Kings of the Wyld, Eames’ first book, is one of my favorites, but it’s a book about old men reliving their adventuring glory days, and I can’t really justify reviewing it for my queer blog.

Tam tried to imagine what her father would say if she came home with a pet goblin in tow, and couldn’t help but grin. Well……I shouldn’t have worried as sometimes when you start a new book you just know within the first few pages that you are going to be in for a treat and that was the case with Bloody Rose. Nearly every page crackles with something fresh and memorable: clever similes, interesting character origins, a rotating menagerie of monsters, conversations of enlightenment and camaraderie, or a sharp commentary comparing this world to our own.

Fable’s frontwoman wore a piecemeal suit of dull black plate slashed with red—except her gauntlets, which gleamed like new steel.

Emotional moments snuck up on me and hit me hard, though I usually found myself bursting with laughter on the very next page. The world building and magic system continue to grow and develop and we meet new monsters and necromancers along the way. When most sensible debut authors produce something as spectacularly good as Nicholas Eames did with his Kings of the Wyld opener to "The Band" series they tend to follow up with something that gives the fans exactly what they want. Tam isn’t “working as a waitress in a cocktail bar” ( Don’t You Want Me by Human League song lyric) but she is working in a bar with dreams of escaping the boring and repetitive monotony of serving drink for the rest of her life.

You catch yourself screaming with the rest of the crowd as the opening riffs pulse through the speakers. Brune for example, has always believed he is a bear until circumstances require that he overcome that misperception to survive. The closeness, loyalty, friendship, and dedication to each other - so I was surprised when Eames surmised that the second entry in The Band trilogy would feature mostly all new players. Great with kids, provided those kids don’t mind having corrosive acid spat in their faces from time to time.