Queen of Fire

By: Anthony Ryan

Narrated by: Steven Brand

Length: 26 hrs and 37 mins

Publisher's Summary

The spectacular conclusion to the New York Times best-selling Raven's Shadow series, which began with the critically acclaimed Blood Song. 

Empires will fall. Queen Lyrna has survived the bloody siege of Alltor. Now she must rally her troops and take back the capital from the Volarian invaders. But driving her hated enemy out of the Realm will not satisfy her lust for vengeance - she wants to pursue them across the ocean and burn their empire to ashes. To do so she must place her faith in the Seventh Order: men and women who wield terrible powers born of the Dark itself. 

Vaelin Al Sorna would sacrifice his life for his queen - and may yet have to. Only by unmasking the Volarians' mysterious ally can the tide of war be turned. To this end Vaelin must travel deep into the icebound north, in search of a man who cannot die - and he must do it without the aid of his blood song, which has fallen ominously silent.... 

Queen of Fire is the epic conclusion to the acclaimed Raven's Shadow series by New York Times best-selling author Anthony Ryan.

©2015 Anthony Ryan (P)2015 Penguin Audio

Critic Reviews

"An utterly engrossing high-fantasy epic from a major new talent." (Buzzfeed on Blood Song)

"Anthony Ryan is a master storyteller." (Mark Lawrence, author of Prince of Thorns)

Bland....

Note- slight spoiler alert - in the last paragraph.

I really struggled with how to score this book. I just felt so neutral about it (hence the "Bland" headline for my review). Was it me being easily distracted? Was my listening interrupted too frequently that I never really got into it? Have I been overly spoiled by a previous Sanderson listen? To check I wasn’t being too harsh, I had a quick read of other reviews…. and relief, I’m not going insane or becoming overly picky.

Overall, I gave it 3/5, partly out of respect for the first book, which I really did enjoy. The second book lost it a little, but there was a promise of more to come. This third book has left me feeling flat.

I still like the idea of the story and the “magic”, but the execution felt muddled. Yes, the story continues, but there are so many new characters and so many more random threads, that it all just feels a little disjointed. It's completely lost the excitement and anticipation of book one. Unfortunately, the narration does nothing to help improve this sense. There is absolutely no character differentiation, and despite concentrating and re-listening to certain paragraphs, there was still doubt as to who actually said or did what. Also, either I've got wool in my ears, or some of the character names are so similar sounding as to seem the same person......adding to my confusion of who was where and who did what - maybe I wasn't concentrating properly? Unfortunately, the narration completely detracted from my overall enjoyment of the book. And, as an aside, I find it really annoying when characters (even armies) can be at opposite ends of the world, yet spin their horses around and apparently cross from the Arctic to the Sahara (or equivalent) in a couple of days....naturally turning up on time at the requisite location to help save the day. That's just too convenient.

Bottom line – try reading this one rather than listening to it. You may enjoy the written word more than the spoken one.

As for the ending? Again, I was left feeling completely flat about it; neither neatly tied up, nor with sufficient loose threads to keep me guessing or interested. It was almost a relief to have it end. My final thoughts of what should have been a great series were “so the boy doesn’t get the girl and the cat died”. Hardly a great sense of closure.

14 of 14 people found this review helpful

A disappointing conclusion

What could have made this a 4 or 5-star listening experience for you?

Character and plot development in this third book are very weak. Gone is the excellent narrative style of the Blood Song and instead we are given a disjointed (possibly boring) POV driven story from characters that we no longer care about. The development of the main character is very disappointing - in effect he is sidelined.

Would you ever listen to anything by Anthony Ryan again?

Yes - but I wouldn't pay for it.

Did Steven Brand do a good job differentiating each of the characters? How?

No. Brands narrative style does not pair well with the POV format used in this book. In his defence this is just not very well written to begin with and is confusing in the text version.

What character would you cut from Queen of Fire?

Several. Changing style and focus means that many characters have lost direction, and the badly done POV format makes listening a frustrating experience,

Any additional comments?

If you loved blood song (and to a degree Tower Lord) then I would very much caution you in respect to buying this. I struggle to understand how this could be the same author and this actually upsets me as Blood song was so very good. Ryan appears to have lost his way, either through not knowing where to take his characters (maybe feeling that one in particular was over powered) or a desire to partake in some world building, or possibly some mis guided input from the publisher. Take rave reviews on this and the physical copy with a pinch of salt.

This all being said just my opinion and a I hope other listeners can find something in this where I did not.

9 of 9 people found this review helpful

Confusing

I found the first book a easy listen,the second became more confusing but I really wanted to know the outcome of the third book so persisted. I found it really difficult to want to carry on and lost interest half way through and came to dislike a few characters,but I hate to leave a book unread so carried on.the ending to me was a bit " oh is that it?".

3 of 3 people found this review helpful

a wish washy ending

Is there anything you would change about this book?

yes the writing stile. its changed from book one and so sucks. i like a first book for its style and story type. second book in this story dosnt have the same writing type but the same concise writing. book three this one has nothing in similar with the first book. look back and weep at all we have lost

If you’ve listened to books by Anthony Ryan before, how does this one compare?

not well at all tbh, it sucks, loses its way and trails off. like a drunk after to many drinks

Which character – as performed by Steven Brand – was your favourite?

the narrator yet again. top notch

Did Queen of Fire inspire you to do anything?

write a poor review........ funny that

Any additional comments?

why oh why dd this book trail off and fade into obscurity. people please wait for it to come on sale its not worth your time to spend the money. its poor. wondering. dosent focus on the min character and isnt even written in the same style. i mean really??? really is this your final chapter after all this hard work. wow you dropped the ball.

2 of 2 people found this review helpful

Confusing

I am a huge favourite of Anthony Ryan but I found this book hard going. It was confusing trying to keep up with all the different characters in different scenes and felt somewhat disjointed.

2 of 2 people found this review helpful

Meh....

Meh....
Enjoyed the other two but this one didn't engage me so much..,
But better that I could do so.....

5 of 6 people found this review helpful

oh dear!

this book was so confusing I gave up .... I really had a hard time trying to work out which character was being talked about and where they were, very disappointed as I was waiting for this books release. thank goodness for GLG.

4 of 5 people found this review helpful

Very good series

The reader needs to pronunciation some of the names better. Weaver and Reaver were confusing towards the end when their paths crossed and who was who became sometimes unclear.

Ending was a little bit of an anti climax but that shouldn't take away from you listening. The journey to the end was very good.

1 of 1 people found this review helpful

Terrible narration

The story is a bit flat for a conclusion. The narration, as in the other books, is even flatter. No differentiation whatsoever. Sometimes not even a pause with change of scene. I would seriously pass a good book with this narrator again.

1 of 1 people found this review helpful

Not feeling it

I loved the first two books and couldn't put them down (so to speak) but this one was really hard to finish. I got lost with who the lesser characters were and found myself not really caring about any of them. I guess all in all, I just didn't enjoy it. It has to be said that Steven Brand was still fabulous as a narrator though.

1 of 1 people found this review helpful