Lord of the Fire Lands

A Tale of the King's Blades, Book 2

By: Dave Duncan

Narrated by: Austin Vanfleet

Length: 17 hrs and 18 mins

Publisher's summary

Having just finished five years of training to become deadly "blades", the finest swordsmen in the land, Wasp and Raider, refuse to bind themselves to the king during the graduation ceremonies, and become outlaws and head for the dreaded "Fire Lands" to redeem themselves in battle.

©2014 Katanji Arts Inc. (P)2020 Katanji Arts Inc.

Another great book in a Fantastic Fantasy series

This book was a great installment of the King's Blades series.
I'm looking forward to more of the series being done.
Austin Vanfleet does a great job performing the story.
I can't wait for more of the series to be performed.

I received a free copy of this audiobook in exchange for an unbiased review.

Wonderful!

The story is engaging, fascinating, and so fun! I can't wait until book 3 is up so I can see how it continues!!

I got this book and the first in this series because I am a fan of the narrator. Austin's performance in this one is even better than the last, its SO GOOD! I can't suggest this book enough!

Another great installment in a great series!

What a great book. This is the next installment of the Kings Blades. Although a stand alone story, it blends very well in the series. This book follows Wasp and Raider as they are chosen to become King's blades, but they refuse... This story is full of action and history that keep you engaged until the last page. Dave's world building adds to the book before but also stands very well on its own. Austin Vanfleet once again delivers a great performance. If you liked the first book, you will love this one. I can't wait until the next installment!

This book was given to me for free at my request and I provided this voluntary honest review.

An Okay Viking[ish] Story with a Poor Start

Narration: Passable

This story was billed as a stand-alone part of a larger series and it seems like it lives up to that promise (which is good, because I have not read any of the other books). The Norse World Building was actually pretty decent; how it was done much less so ... To start with, there was a crap ton of talking and very little action in the beginning (Elevating the art of Info Dumping to a ridiculous level). Unfortunately, the narration actually made this worse. Them after introducing the main characters in part 1, the story then dives down a rat hole with some dude named Gerard (its was not clear to me that the next 11 freaking chapters were a flashback from a POV that was not really a character in the story ... Who does that?)... regardless, Gerard seems to be there just to give some overly detailed background that served no purpose that I could detect. Sometimes more is not better.

It was not until half way through the book that the flashbacks end and we finally get to the actual story. Fortunately, although I was tempted, I had not abandoned the book. This is where the story finally gets interesting (feel free to skip Parts 2 thru 5 ... you won't miss much). The story then picks up with Raider and Wasp on the run trying to piece together exactly who the bad guys are and why (this was the story that I was expecting). It's a fair story that includes individual conflict and some simplistic political intrigue, but using 'magic' to solve most of the mystery with a ghostly soliloquy seems a bit lazy to me. Add to that a ridiculous ability to get the bad guys to admit their wrong doing at sword when they pretty much know that they won't survive the encounter (like a bloody TV show where we get a confession as soon as the bad guy is arrested). Still, it would have secured 3 stars if not for having to suffer through the first half of the book.

I was given this free review copy audiobook at my request and have voluntarily left this review.
#feeaudiobookcodes #audiobookboom

Update: My wife listened to this as well since she is a fan of the Blades series; while she agreed that the section on Gerard was too long and somewhat irritating, she thought I was a little hard on the rating ... so it gets back the star I had docked it for wasting my time.