It’s going to be hard to write a review for this book without giving away too many spoilers. Merla Karn and Girton have been away fighting as mercenaries for five years. During the time there have been numerous assassins sent to kill them and during the last attempt she was recently badly poisoned and Girton hopes to find sanctuary and aide with Rufra in Mainyadoc.

Since leaving five years ago he has with his inner demons and angst and this has made him much harder. He’s still angry at Merla but he also loves her and would die to protect her. This has made him a darker and angrier person and the story has become darker. “Don’t be a slave to old hatreds, Girton. People change, remember that. Forgiveness is its own reward.” This line becomes a very important theme in the book as he struggles to comer to term with the past and what is currently happening.

The war still rages in Maniyadoc with three men vying for the crown, Rufra, Prince Aodoc, and Tomas. Many of the old characters are still there fighting for one of the contenders and there are new characters and new religions.

The first part of the book was somewhat slow even with the increase in action. This was due to catching the reader up with what happened during the past five years and all the changes and challenges that were the result. The second half of the book make up the first and leaves this reader anxious to read the conclusion of this trilogy,

4.75/5 STARS: **I received an advanced copy through Netgalley in exchange for an honest review. I would like to thank the author, publisher and everyone involved in this process for this opportunity. **

This trilogy combines fantasy with mystery and political intrigue. Girton Club-foot is apprenticed to Merela Karn, an expert assassin. He is also secretly a sorcerer who has never explored his powers and suppresses them with the help of Merela, because in this world sorcery is considered a dangerous curse. At the very beginning of the book Merela is poisoned and Girton has to find a cure for her. He also must solve a murder, identify a traitor and help his old friend King Rufra who is engaged in a war with two other kings. There is a lot going on in this book. However, what really keeps me involved is Girton. He is not a clichéd wise ass and he isn’t on a quest, he has understandable emotions and just wants to to do the right thing for his mentor and friends. Unfortunately, he is politically inexperienced, often comes to the wrong conclusions and acts without adequate information. I also appreciate the female characters in this trilogy, who do not exist solely to serve the men or to wait around to be raped. When I read the first book I had assumed that the author was a woman. It turns out I was wrong.

While I read some epic fantasy, it’s not my favorite genre. I don’t care for stoic fighting machines, romance or the “chosen one “ on a journey. However, I’m really glad that I took a chance on this trilogy, which manages to avoid the things I hate while having an intriguing story line, compelling and relatable characters and exciting (although a few too many) battles. I don’t even mind that it’s a trilogy. Usually the second book of the trilogy bores me silly and I have to force myself to go on to the third book, but this book was so good that I have already bought the final book and am really looking forward to it. I don’t think that the books would work as standalones, even though each of the first two books tells a complete story.

I received a free copy of this book from the publisher.

Girton Club-Foot returns

RJ Barker’s Age of Assassins is one of the best debut fantasies I’ve read in some time. At a time when I’ve been struggling with the genre, Barker’s debut caught my attention from the opening scenes — it was amusing, the characters were very well-drawn, and the story was far more focused than many fantasies I’ve tried recently. In Blood of Assassins, Barker returns readers to Maniyadoc, five years after the events of the first novel. I enjoyed this novel a great deal.

The fact that this novel is set five years after the events of the previous was something I very much enjoyed. The characters have all grown, and racked up a fair amount of new life experience and traumas. Barker doesn’t wallow in the past, though, giving readers just enough to explain certain changes in the individuals and the world. The character feel more developed.

This allows the story to keep moving at a fair clip. Barker’s not in a rush, however, and the story has a number of red herrings and twists that should keep readers guessing until near the end. We’re introduced to new characters, new antagonists, and some unexpected new allies. We learn more about the magic system in this world, and the people’s ingrained, understandable fear of what sorcerers are able to do. Barker also adds some more details of his world at large, no doubt setting up the next novel in the series.

Girton, our club-footed assassin protagonist continues to develop well. Despite his physical condition, he remains a prodigiously-skilled assassin and fighter, coming to terms with what he’s been up to over the preceding five years. He makes rash decisions, a few mistakes (some deadly), and doesn’t get everything right. His mistakes are not easy to forgive — nor, do I believe they are supposed to be. This is a brutal world, in which life is characterized by hardship and blood — certainly in Maniyadoc. The battle scenes are good, but not self-indulgent. (I have a limited patience for long battle scenes, despite my fondness for the fantasy and sci-fi genres as a whole — which are, after all, so often about war, conquest, etc.)

I came away from the novel with not the greatest amount of sympathy for Girton, but at the same time I found him to be a more interesting character. He is, after all, an assassin — why would we expect him to be a saint?

To sum up, then, Blood of Assassins is an excellent follow-up to Age of Assassins. Fans of the first novel should certainly find much to like in the sequel. I am very eager to get my hands on the third novel, King of Assassins. This series is highly recommended.

5/5 Stars
I want to thank Orbit for the ARC and Hachette Audio for the ALC in exchange for an honest review, as both provided equal parts enjoyment. I also want to thank the author, RJ Barker, for giving us yet another refreshing and engaging novel in The Wounded Kingdom series.
Be forewarned: This Book is Full of Antlers (sorry David Wong) and will have some spoilers for those who have not read Age of Assassins (and if you are in that group, shame on you).
Some of you may know (if you follow my blog thing) that Age of Assassins (The Wounded Kingdom #1) was one of my top 5 reads of 2017.
*Inserts link that no one will click on* [https://fanfiaddict.wordpress.com/201...]
Like I said in that blog post, Orbit publishing killed it with fantasy debuts in 2017, and if Blood of Assassins is any indication of how 2018 is going to flow with sequels, we are in for a heck of a ride.
Age of Assassins was my dessert course of 2017 and instantly made me a fanboy of Barker's. Girton Club-foot is one of the most compelling young antagonists you will find in fantasy today and his relationship with his master, Merela Karn, truly takes an emotional toll on not only the characters themselves, but the reader. But enough about AOA. We are here to talk about Blood of Assassins, the highly anticipated sequel.
But first, and this has to do with AoA and now BoA, hats off to Joe Jameson for another stellar performance. This man can do no wrong. I will listen to every single audiobook he narrates and nothing is going to change that.
So, here we are. Over the last five (5) years, after the decisive events of Age of Assassins, Girton and his master have been traveling the Tired Lands in search of work; mostly quick jobs and objectives here and there that require their specific sets of skills and dole out pretty decent coin. During their most recent conflict on the road, Merela is poisoned and Girton must rush her back to Maniyadoc (where the events of Book 1 took place) in order to find not only help, but hope.
Maniyadoc is now ruled by King Ruffra, an old friend and sparring partner of Girton's, and lucky for Girton, has the aid he seeks. Problem is, two (2) other men from Girton's training days in Maniyadoc believe they have rights to the throne and war is being threatened. Girton is now tasked with saving his master, helping his friend, and keeping a secret he has had these five (5) long years safely hidden deep inside himself. But when talk of a traitor suddenly makes its away around the city, Girton may be in for more than he can handle.
To Save A King, Kill A King
It is always difficult, when finding yourself faced with a highly anticipated sequel, to NOT go into it with a ton of hype. As a reader, you don't want to be let down or be left with a bad taste in your mouth should the book not turn out as you had hoped. Good news for you folks: Blood of Assassins, while maybe not as spellbinding as Age of Assassins, fits the bill and does not disappoint.
Girton has grown up over the past few years, moving away from killing as an art form to more of a necessity to stay alive. He has put aside his blades and replaced them with a Warhammer for goodness sakes. Nothing says killjoy more than a freaking Warhammer. Though still foolish at times and oft makes mistakes, he is still the most loyal and trustworthy person a friend, or master, could ask for. The biggest change from AoA to BoA is the instillation of magic to Girton's repertoire. Though he does not yet know how to wield his power, it is definitely a force to be reckoned with and we are shown through several glimpses during the course of the novel. This magic also creates a power struggle within Girton as he tries to do what is right and just, while a strange voice in the back of his mind and in his dreams forces Girton to bend to its will.
All in all, mounts are some of the coolest beasts ever imagined in a fantasy story and I want one, mostly because of the antlers.
Wait... I mean, Blood of Assassins is a very worthy follow-up to its predecessor and should be one of the next books you read (only if you have read AoA, though you can kind of read it as a stand-alone I guess). And again, if you have not read AoA, I suggest you fix that immediately. I still kick myself to this day for waiting so long to read it, so maybe that'll light a fire under you.

In 2017 I placed the first volume of this trilogy, Age of Assassins, among the best debuts of the year and also my favorite reads, so I had great expectations for this follow-up novel: let me say up front that those expectations were more than exceeded by Blood of Assassins, that is not only a worthy sequel but also an amazing story on its own.

Five years have elapsed since the end of the first book, and they have not been easy years either for the world or for assassin-in-training Girton Clubfoot: the political situation has degenerated into all-out war between the three pretenders to the throne of the Tired Lands – Aydor, the former queen’s son, ousted by young Rufra, Girton’s friend, and finally pretender Tomas. War is never good news, but in a land still suffering from the sorcerer-enhanced conflicts of the past, that brought great devastations with them, this new war is adding a further layer of misery to an already grim situation. Girton and his master, Merela Karn, have fared no better: to escape from the bounty hunters set on their tracks, they have been forced to abandon their trade and attach themselves to mercenary bands, where Girton’s exquisite skills as an assassins have been replaced by a more brutal approach to killing, namely the use of a war hammer.

Ambushed by a band of savages, the two barely effect an escape toward Castle Maniyadoc – theater of Girton’s previous adventures – but Merela has been poisoned and hovers on the brink of death, leaving her apprentice bereft of her balancing advice and cooler thinking. What’s worse, Girton’s ability to wield magic – a dangerous skill in the Tired Lands, one that could sentence him to death – is growing stronger, and the scars that Merela tattooed on his skin to keep them at bay are not working as expected, so that the young man must battle daily against the impulse of unleashing such deadly power.

Reunited with his friend Rufra, now King, Girton has little time to enjoy the meeting, because he learns of a plot to kill his friend, orchestrated by a spy that must have worked its way among Rufra’s closest advisers: tasked with this apparently impossible job (Rufra does not seem to worry too much about the possibility of treason), and in constant worry about Merela’s chances for recovery, Girton faces the most difficult time of his young life, one where conflicting emotions and needs threaten to overwhelm him and make him lose everything he holds dear.

Blood of Assassins is a deeply compelling story, one where the details we previously learned about this world fall into a wider and more fascinating context: we come to understand that the central power, the one held by the remote figure of the High King, could not care less about what happens in the outskirts of the realm, where wars are fought, won and lost while the supreme ruler prefers to wallow in his court’s more or less dubious pleasures.
There is a definite sense of lawlessness in the Tired Lands, of the rule of the strongest, that makes the suffering of the peoples dwelling there all the more poignant: the Landsmen, that could be compared to a sort of official army, are more interested in rooting out sorcerers – be they real or simply imagined – and their allegiance often hangs on the whim of their current leader. The recent turmoil has given rise to a peculiar band of outlaws, calling themselves the Nonmen, who delight in berserker attacks and in the vicious torture of their victims – and sometimes of their own members, with a sort of reckless, bloody abandon that speaks of madness, and worse. And last but not least the priesthood, that already did not come out with shining colors in the previous book, here looks like an added complication – both moral and political – to a very dire situation.

All this comes together in a story that kept me on my toes for the whole length of the book, among unexpected twists and turns, discoveries and betrayals, and a final battle that left me literally breathless with suspense. Add to that a powerful writing that manages to remain almost lyrical even while describing bloody skirmishes or to-the-death duels, and you will understand why I found this book so enthralling.

As fascinating as all of the above is, the focal point of Blood of Assassins remains Girton: he is a very different person from the one we left at the end of Book 1, and to say that here he’s in a bad place would be a massive understatement. The five years spent as a mercenary (and with Landsmen, no less, with all the added dangers that his potential for sorcery entails) have both hardened and unraveled him, taking him away from his training as an assassin and teaching him far too much about brute force. His relationship with Merela has changed as well: there is a thread of resentment toward her, that remains however mostly unexplored due to the fact she’s out of the picture for most of the book, and that comes from the necessity of the scars she must carve on his body to keep the magic at bay. This necessity seems to have placed some cracks in their mutual trust and generated a deep conflict in Girton, who still feels the strong pull of his loyalty – his love – for Merela, while battling with the impulse to rebel against all she taught him.

Losing Merela’s support so early in the story proves almost catastrophic for Girton: she is not only his teacher, his surrogate mother and the only person he used to trust implicitly, even before himself, she is also the one who guides his logical process, and his moral compass, so that her absence makes itself dramatically clear in the sequence of bad decisions Girton takes while pursuing his task for Rufra. Seeing him so unhinged is a painful experience, because if sometimes I felt like shaking some sense into him, my prevailing emotion was compassion because I could not forget the heavy amount of damage he had to go through in a relatively short life. And what further damage might be visited on him in the course of the story: as with the previous book, we are given to understand here that we are reading an older Girton’s memoirs, and given as well a few hints of more tragedies to come. As harrowing as that might be, I know I would not give up this opportunity, because I’m deeply invested in this character and his journey: at the end of this book I saw that the third and final volume already has a title – King of Assassins – and that GoodReads shows its cover, so I imagine my curiosity will be satisfied before long. Still it will feel like a too-long wait….

This volume takes place five years after the end of Age of Assassins. Girton Club-Foot and his master Marela Karn are returning to Maniyadoc after several years of absence, and on the way, they get into a scrap with some bounty hunters out for the price on their heads and Girton’s master gets poisoned. Badly. Luckily, they’re close enough to Maniyadoc that one of the three kings who are at constant war in the area picks him up and offers him help. Weirdly, it’s the last person he expects to help him. But, it turns out that they showed up with some impeccable timing, as his best friend Rufra, one of the three kings, is in grave danger, and it’s up to Girton to puzzle out who the traitor in his war camp is. On top of everything else, Girton is struggling to control the magic inside of him, and with his master out of commission, he can’t rely on her help. Shenanigans ensue!

This was one of those books that was really difficult to put down once I picked it up. It’s not overly long, as fantasy books go, which I often find refreshing, and it’s quite gripping. The plot grabs on and takes you on an adventure pretty much immediately. Girton and Rufra and their friendship was the highlight of Age of Assassins for me, and so their reunion made me smile. Nonetheless, Girton (and Rufra, for that matter) has changed. He’s older, and has spent the last five years as, more or less, a mercenary (battling rather in the open rather than in the shadows). He’s seen some stuff now, and it does show from time to time in Girton’s mood… he has an increasingly short temper these days. With his master out of commission for the most part, he’s also on his own, and it shows, because he’s definitely more inclined to rush into things without thinking about them from every angle. He doesn’t have Marela there to smack him upside the head when he’s being lead by his emotions. He’s given up his stabsword (best weapon name ever) for a warhammer, and at first, the reason why left me curious, because an assassin with a warhammer seems odd. You do find out the reasoning behind it though. You find a lot out throughout the story that is only hinted at in the beginning.

There are mysteries and murder, battles and murder, and mounts (and murder). Oh, the mounts though. I was afraid right at the beginning that we wouldn’t get to see Xus (Marela’s awesome mount) again, but then he was there in all his clawed, tusked, and antlered glory. Biting, goring, and skewering his way into the hearts of many. Never change, you magnificent beast! <3<3<3

There is, like in Age of Assassins, a mystery in this volume as well, and it was well plotted. I, who will try and guess at things with varying levels of success, was unable to guess at it, and so the ending, with all its revelations was quite riveting. The pacing was great, and I was never bored with the plot. There were parts that legitimately made my eyes go wide, and a part or two where I had some feels reverberating, and maybe a tear or two well up. There was quite a few ‘Oh, Girton….’ moments- whether they be in a good or bad way, I will leave for you to find out. There is also (and I say this having read an early ebook, so I can only imagine how neat it will look in print.) some excellent use of text formatting in one of the ‘in between the events happening’ chapters (like Age of Assassins had) where Girton is dreaming of or remembering the past. A feeling like falling. Down, and down, and down. 10/10 use of space.

All told, I thought the book was fantastically done, and certainly a good addition to this series!

I really liked it. Loved it, even. Like I loved Age of Assassins. It was really, really close either way. So far, this is my favorite read of this year! ;D I can’t wait to find out how this story ends. I bet it’s going to be bonkers! 5 stabby stabs out of 5!

This review is brought to you by RJ Barker, Orbit, NetGalley, and coffee. Thank you to all of you for this read!

THIS BOOK WAS AMAZING. I loved Age of Assassains and couldn't wait for the second book and I am so happy netgalley let me have an e-arc for an honest review so I get to read this!

It was absolutely incredible and I couldn't stop reading it until the end and now I am dying for the third book!