Review: Of Blood and Fire by Ryan Cahill
Blurb:
Born in fire. Tempered in blood.
Epheria is a land divided by war and mistrust. The High Lords of the South squabble and fight, only kept in check by the Dragonguard, traitors of a time long past, who serve the empire of the North.
In the remote villages of southern Epheria, still reeling from the tragic loss of his brother, Calen Bryer prepares for The Proving - a test of courage and skill that not all survive.
But when three strangers arrive in the village of Milltown, with a secret they are willing to die for, Calen's world is ripped from under him and he is thrust headfirst into a war that has been raging for centuries.
There is no prophecy. His coming was not foretold.
He bleeds like any man, and bleed he will.
Review:
Plain and simple, I loved this book enough that I want to buy a Knights of Achyron sweatshirt tonight so that people can ask me what symbol is on my chest and then I can begin nerding all over them about The Bound and the Broken. But it was 90 degrees today; so I’ll wait until fall. This book is buy-sweatshirt-good.
But before I tell you why I loved this book so much, I have to get a few things off my chest. Feel free to skip to the real review in bold below.
As some of you already know, there are two ways to start The Bound and the Broken series: by starting with the Fall or Of Blood and Fire. Svidarya or Fellensir. Both are sword forms within the world of Epheria. Svidarya is aggressive and has you jump into the action of the Fall. You face an avalanche of bloody war and lore with a glimpse at the scope of this colossal story. Fellensir is a more immersive, learn as you go approach where you start in the village of The Glade and begin to learn about Epheria along with our main character, Calen. I started with Of Blood and Fire, following the path of Fellensir and I sincerely believe that it is the best way to begin The Bound and the Broken. The Fall is massive and action packed and high stakes. But there are characters that you meet and develop relationships with during Of Blood and Fire that, when you see them in The Fall, hit so much harder and with greater impact if you’re not seeing them for the first time during intense action scenes. I’ll discuss this more below, but it is important to frame this review with the knowledge that I started with Of Blood and Fire and have not finished The Fall yet.
The second topic I need to get off my chest is other people’s reviews about this book. Obviously, everyone is welcome to their opinion. And I’m not going to say Of Blood and Fire is a perfect debut. It’s not. But, for whatever reason, I decided to go through and read a bunch of reviews on Goodreads. The most common criticism was that this was too derivative of Lord of the Rings, Wheel of Time, Stormlight Archive (which he hadn’t read before writing these first couple books), and Eragon. I want to push back that a book cannot be good or worth reading if it shares similarities to other works in the same genre. There’s a huge difference between plagiarism (bad) and familiar themes and common tropes (fine). I won’t go into this further here, but Of Blood and Fire should not be criticized for having some familiar feeling themes, especially in this first book. As Cahill himself said, he wanted Of Blood and Fire to reignite the nostalgia many seasoned fantasy readers feel for the classic fantasy of their youth while serving as an entry point for readers who are new to fantasy. For those of you familiar with the Wheel of Time, you’ll know Jordan pulled a very similar trick with The Eye of the World and then he opened up his world in The Great Hunt. Cahill is following in the footsteps of fantasy masters, and I predict that as this series continues to gain more and more mainstream notoriety, those who prematurely wrote it off as another derivative piece of fantasy fan fiction are going to regret that they’re missing out on something truly special.
Okay, let me step off my soap box and begin the review for real. For those of you who wanted to skip my diatribe and get straight to the review, you can start here.
**Real Review Starts Here**
"The sun will set, and it will rise again, and it will do so the next day and the next. The gods are in charge of such things, but it is by our own will that we pick ourselves up when we fall."
"Two souls blended together are not the sum of their parts, but something new entirely."
Of Blood and Fire is the beginning of an epic, high fantasy series rooted in classic nostalgic dragon rider tropes mixed with the brutality of modern fantasy. Calen and his two best friends from The Glade, Dann and Rist, are thrown into an unexpected adventure when they are confronted by dark abominations called Uraks that haven’t been seen in the surrounding forests for years. This encounter thrusts them into a series of events that pushes them into the wider world of Epheria, where they begin their adventure. They are not fulfilling any kind of prophecy. They are just in the wrong place at the right time and their actions push them deeper into the narrative.
While the farmboy-to-hero trope is common, Cahill does a wonderful job of keeping the narrative fresh and quick moving, as we follow our trio out of their city. At one point, the trio are in a pub, throwing axes with the patrons, gambling away some of their money. One of the people they are throwing with leaves the pub, forgetting his cloak on the chair. In an interview, Cahill mentioned that he loves that the rest of the story hinges on the actions around this simple event. Calen picked up the coat and walked out of the pub, returning it to the owner and then the remainder of the story unfurls as we know it. He says Rist never would have seen the cloak, because his nose would have been too deep into his books. Dann would have seen the cloak, picked it up, and then slung it over his own shoulders, changing the story completely. It’s in this attention to character detail that Cahill really shines.
Each of Cahill’s characters have fleshed out stories and motivations for their actions. It never feels like the characters are being moved from place to place or conversation to conversation by the plot. There are natural and understandable motivations for each of the characters that moves the story along. For a debut novel, Cahill has a masterful grasp of the story and all of the characters. No one feels useless or wasted in the narrative. While the majority of this book does use Calen as the main POV, other POVs were equally as interesting.
Cahill also does a fantastic job dealing with the repercussions of death and killing. Too often in these farmboy-to-hero stories, the farmboy transforms from sheepherder to battle hardened veteran without significant emotional damage from that transition. Cahill brings us through Calen’s struggles with the reality of killing another person and his difficulty dealing with the psychological trauma that can cause.
Violence is a key feature in this book. There is little to no main character armor, with important characters getting killed left and right, keeping the reader on their toes. There is a sense that no one is safe, which enhances the overwhelming sense of foreboding that hangs over Epheria. The violence is graphic and jarring; however, Cahill doesn’t glorify or revel in the bloody details but rather uses the blood to paint a tapestry depicting the horrors and grim reality of war.
While the book is brutal, it is infused with heroic hope that shines at its core. Almost everyone who has heard of this book knows that it is the beginning of a dragon rider saga. Cahill has created a bestial bond between dragon and rider that is raw and emotional. The scenes with Calen and his dragon are highlights of the book. In order to remain spoiler free, I will just say, “Draleid n’alydryr. Rakina nai dauva.” It still gives me chills.
In terms of magic system, what we are introduced to in Of Blood and Fire is reminiscent in some ways to what you’ve seen in the Wheel of Time series with elemental magic (Earth, Air, Fire, Water, Spirit) that is thread/weave based. While what we know of the magic system at this point is not revolutionary or a new Sanderson-level magic system, it serves the story well and provides some great scenes and has set the stage for a lot of potential moving forward in the series. While Of Blood and Fire only hints at it, we know there are other magical systems at play that have not been fully explained.
Are you going to find some common touch stones with other popular fantasy series. Yes. Cahill is using elemental magic in a world populated with humans, elves, dwarves, and giants. Does this detract from the book? In my opinion, not at all! From the very first pages, Cahill has thrown us into a fantasy coming of age story that is just beginning to be revealed by the end of Of Blood and Fire. The potential for this series, with the groundwork that he has laid in this book and in The Fall, is huge. This goes back to the Svidarya versus Fellensir argument. If you read The Fall before Of Blood and Fire, you are coming into Of Blood and Fire with an understanding of the epic scope that this series is about to launch into. However, my concern is that after reading something as epic as The Fall, it feels jarring to then zoom into The Glade where the majority of Of Blood and Fire is much smaller scale and can feel slow in juxtaposition. However, if the reader is exploring and discovering the world with Calen, Dann, and Rist and the expansion of the world is gradual, the explosion of scope that comes in The Fall is sown into a narrative garden that has already been prepared and tilled by Of Blood and Fire for maximal impact.
Was this book without flaws? No. This was Cahill’s debut novel. He himself says that it’s probably the roughest of his published work. But if this is his roughest, I literally cannot wait to see what else he has in store for us, because, as I said, this is already sweatshirt-buying-good. Cahill has managed to mix the perfect blend of classic, nostalgic, heroic fantasy with brutal, no-holds-barred violence that is elevated to ethereal heights on dragon wing.
