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400 reviews for:

Tower Lord

Anthony Ryan

4.02 AVERAGE


What a great book! This was a real change from the way the story was told in [b:Blood Song|13569581|Blood Song (Raven's Shadow, #1)|Anthony Ryan|https://d.gr-assets.com/books/1421573407s/13569581.jpg|19148922], using multiple POV's and shifting the focus away from Vaelin and onto other characters, a lot of them women. I thought the author took a real chance doing this and the results were very successful. Looking forward to the conclusion of this trilogy in [b:Queen of Fire|18405221|Queen of Fire (Raven's Shadow, #3)|Anthony Ryan|https://d.gr-assets.com/books/1417350958s/18405221.jpg|26039753].

lard7's review

4.0

Very enjoyable read. Lacking a little bit of the 5 star power of the first one. I think that the reasons why it wasn't as good as blood song are 1. I cared most about vaelin, so having other POVs was more of an annoyance than anything and 2. There was just a lot of fluff. I think Ryan could have cut about half of the 'traveling from point A to point B' chapters and this would have been better. Plus we didn't get to see Frentis and Vaelin reunited, which I was sad about.
dzver's profile picture

dzver's review

4.0

Много исках да разбера какво се случва с Велин ал Сорна и преминах през втората част от серията с тази цел. Книгата е увлекателна, но точно историята на Велин не е особено.

Като цяло усещането е като от средните книги на Колелото на времето. Вместо един, имаме много герои. Някои от тях са интересни, други са пълнеж, а трети са просто отвратителни. Имаше доста сулдам-дамане отношения, които не обичам да чета, а са често срещани във фентъзитата. Отдавна подбутвам една книга на Робин Хоб точно по тази причина.

Като цяло е друг тип фентъзи спрямо първа част. Първа част се върти около изграждането на супергерой, продължението - около разплитане на мистериите в предната книга и сбъдване на пророчествата в нея. Не случайно Blood Song има много по-висок рейтинг.

iblendspoons's review

4.0

Solid four stars. This was a little different from the last one since there were so many more character viewpoints, but none of them were boring.
adventurous fast-paced
Plot or Character Driven: A mix

This book feels very different from the first. The new POVs are definitely a hit or miss and they occupy a lot of space. I found myself skimming over sections and I normally have an allergic reaction to doing that. Overall, the book is fine but not sure I would recommend.
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too_fond_of_books's review

4.0

I feel like this second book in the series pulled itself together better than the first...honestly I was so confused after the first book that I had to go back and read a detailed summary, but in this second installment Ryan seems to have hit his stride and I found myself much more engaged with the story and characters. Looking forward to the conclusion.

Not as good as Blood Song. I feel it's missing a lot of elements that made the first book great. Still worth the read if you're a fan of the first book.

I'd give this 3.5*s out of 5.

This is a very tough book to rate for me as I can either think about it as a continuation (albeit in an entirely different format) of Al Sorna's story from Blood Song, in which case I much preferred the first one, but still enjoyed this. Or I can think of it in terms of an individual book and if I'm thinking about it like that then I would say it's a very good story and I didn't mind the formatting. The thing that gets me is that it IS a continuation and therefore I had expected the layout to be at least similar to book number 1. I really liked the way that the first book was about friendship and training and the brothers, political systems and world building. Those were the elements which made book 1 so brilliant for me, and unfortunately they just weren't carried over into book 2...

Book 2 picks up with another account from Vernier who made appearances in book 1 and whose POV I enjoy a lot because he's always away from where the main storyline is taking place. However, although this remained the same and I really enjoyed his plot line in this book, the POVs for the other characters shifted greatly. Instead of Al Sorna relaying events of his life and it being mostly focussed on him, as in book 1, this story divides between a few other characters such as Frentis, Lyrna and Reva.

Whilst I do enjoy the characters of all three of these new POVs and I found what was going on with them to be interesting, I was way more interested and invested in Al Sorna's story because of how much we care about him in book 1. I also wanted to know a lot more about his brothers and what was happening with them and that seemed to be almost totally removed from large sections of the book.

Although I do have criticisms with the new formatting and the second half of the book in general (which is largely warfare and focuses minimally on characters and settings) that's not to say that I didn't enjoy a LOT of this book too, I just feel that in comparison the the first story it just was not up there and didn't meet even my lowest expectations. I really liked the first half of the book where Lyrna goes to meet with the tribes as I loved learning more about their culture and seeing a whole new side of Lyrna who previously resided in comfort and was barely tested in resolve in book 1. Her storyline was easily the most interesting for me as she consistently changed where she was and got into all sorts of different situations to the point that I saw a lot more of the world through her POV and that's what really interested me.

I did love Frentis' storyline to begin with when he was in a rather tough situation, however I found myself thinking that he needed to get out of it and just go and team up with his other Brothers and when that seemed like it wasn't going to ever happen that frustrated me.

I did like Reva as she was an interesting character with a bad start in life who had to grow a lot throughout the course of this story, however, I just wish that Vaelin had been the key focus or that some of these major characters had overlapped more because then I feel that this would have been far more interesting to see.

On the whole I would by no means say that this is a bad book, it's an epic book with a huge battle, a lot of politics and a variety of characters twisted up in it all, but, I would say that I did prefer the first one to this one a lot and although I still enjoyed it, it just didn't match that. I would recommend continuing with the series and I am still interested (after the DRAMATIC ending and revelations at the end) in what will happen next, but I am slightly mystified by what the format of book 3 will be...

I'd love to hear anyone else's thoughts??
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven: Plot
Strong character development: Yes
Loveable characters: Yes
Diverse cast of characters: Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus: Yes