All the Pieces, but No Feeling: Blood Song

It's very rare for me to put down a title that is marketed as epic or high fantasy, as this is one of my all-time preferred genres. And I read Blood Song for over three hundred pages. I was very close to finishing it, and then, I just said to myself, "you know what? I don't really care."

Blood Song has all the components of a great fantasy series - an abandoned boy, trained and hardened to kill, the hint of people outside the complex where he trains to be a Brother of the Sixth Order attempting to assassinate him, a hidden seventh order causing issues, and old secrets bubbling to the surface.

But there was something about the writing style that, while very detailed, felt lacking in emotion or that compelling thrill that drives you to turn pages. And there were some tropes that, the further into the book I got, the less I was willing to forgive. The shells were there, and sometimes the details were painstaking, but not necessarily in the places that would have given the story the breadth and beauty of something like Name of the Wind.

Don't get me wrong: I think a lot of people will like this book, and the story does have some interesting elements going for it, but I felt like reading was a chore rather than a compulsion, and that's not any way to start a lengthy series.

K Rating: 2/5