When they brought me up to the auction block, I looked out over the crowd and thought:
I would kill you all if I had a knife. And ifI wasn’t naked, I amended. And shackled. I had never felt so helpless, and-
That’s the opening lines of THE RUIN OF KINGS – the first book in the epic fantasy series A CHORUS OF DRAGONS by JENN LYONS.
Judging by book one and two this series will be a landmark in epic fantasy. JENN LYONS is creating a fantastic world filled with fascinating characters.
The series will be published in five books – one new book every nine months!
THE MEMORY OF SOULS (book 3) will be out August 25, 2020. Here’s a preview of the cover:
Lars Grant-West
Cover artist
JENN LYONS is curently writing book 4 – THE HOUSE OF ALWAYS
You will find my reviews of the published books here:
You should absolutely read the first book, THE RUIN OF KINGS, before you read this one.
If you read this review without having read the preceding book, there will be spoilers – so don’t read the review until you have read the preceding book.
To help you avoid spoilers, you will only see the review, if you press the button below.
Kihrin lowered his pack to the hay-strewn ground. “I’m sorry, ma’am, but there’s been a mistake. No one here’s expecting me.”
The old woman looked surprised. “You ain’t named Kihrin, then?”
The young man, who definitely was named Kihrin, managed not to pull out any weapons. Barely. “Who gave you that name?”
“Your woman said you’d be along”
This is the beginning of THE NAME OF ALL THINGS.
Though Kihrin still plays a large role in this book, the role of Janel Theranon is just as large and important. Kihrin is not really sure, what her role is – but he has met her before and is quite smitten.
Janet believes that Relos Var possesses one of the most powerful artifacts in the world – the Cornerstone called the Name of All Tings.
Soon the plot thickens – a lot of threads spread out, some visible others hidden. In the fashion of epic fantasy everything gets more complicated.
…..and then of course we have dragons to mess up things.
But JENN LYONS keeps it all together and this book makes her whole universe bigger and still more fascinating without losing clarity, while still adding more characters and problems to solve. I love this series.
[expander_maker id=”7″ more=”Cover artist” less=”Close cover artist”] Cover artist: Lars West [/expander_maker]
When they brought me up to the auction block, I looked out over the crowd and thought:
I would kill you all if I had a knife. And ifI wasn’t naked, I amended. And shackled. I had never felt so helpless, and-
These are the opening lines of Chapter 1 of Jenn Lyons‘ fantastic novel – The Ruin of Kings.
559 pages of epic fantasy – the best I’ve read since Patrick Rothfuss’ The Name of the Wind.
Kihrin is the slave. His jailer is Talon. She is a lot of different things – human is not among them. Kihrin is not interested in telling his story, but Talon has very good arguments to get him to do so anyway. She also has firsthand knowledge of details of which he is not aware. How she has that knowledge is a story (or stories) in itself.
As you are taken along for the ride, you will be well advised to concentrate. This is not a book about just the protagonist and his jailer. There are many people, gods and demons and more to keep track of. Things are not always what they seem, persons may not be, who you think they are….and so on.
The story is told with lots of footnotes. This is very well done – giving you more important information and an extra perspective on the story.
When you have finished the story, you want more, more, more.
And don’t worry, you shall get more. The Ruin of Kings is the first book in Chorus of Dragons a projected series of five books. TOR is planning to publish them with short intervals. Book two – The Name of All Things– is being published on October 29, 2019. So we don’t have to wait too long.
The scope of this first book, the intrigues, the incredible world-building, the characters and the quality of the writing leaves me in awe of Jenn Lyons – I cannot wait for October to come around!
