The Bard's Blade by Brian D. Anderson

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Category: Adult
Genre: Fantasy
Content: As far as I remember, it was clean


 
Mariyah enjoys a simple life in Vylari, a land magically sealed off from the outside world, where fear and hatred are all but unknown. She helps her family make wine and spends time with her betrothed, Lem, a musician of rare talent. Their destiny has never been in question. Whatever life brings, they will face it together.

But destiny has a way of choosing its own path, and when a stranger crosses the wards into Vylari for the first time in centuries, the two are faced with a terrible prophecy. Beyond the borders, an ancient evil is returning, its age-old prison shattered. Not even the Thaumas, keepers of knowledge and wielders of magic from the outside world, know how to defeat it.

This is a slow moving fantasy, but don't let the slow moving part put you off. It kept my interest from start to finish. I'm always excited to find a new fantasy series that isn't too dark. I'm not into grimdark and that does seem to be the trend nowadays, so I was very pleased that this one was in the traditional vein of fantasy.

I immediately liked both of the main characters. They were easy to like and ended up getting into some sticky situations that caused some nail biting on my part. There were a couple of times I was practically yelling at Lem to not do something. The poor guy just went from one bad situation to another. What I liked most was that the characters went from naive and sheltered to experiencing a lot of awful things that changed their world view drastically. You could see that wide eyed wonder change to wariness of the world. It was sad, but of course necessary for the plot.

Another thing I really loved about this book is that it included a Bard. I've said before that there aren't enough books that include Bards, and that's what drew me to this book in the first place. The author did a really good job of describing Lem's musical ability. It was easy to imagine what the music sounded like as Lem played his beloved balisari. I would definitely recommend this book and I'm looking forward to reading the next book in the series.

Thanks to NetGalley and Tor books for providing me with a copy of this book.