This is such a unique world! I was curious to see how this series would progress and I was not disappointed. I would definitely recommend this title, but read book one first.

I enjoyed the first book, "Twelve Kings in Sharakhai," so was eager to pick up this sequel. In 'Twelve Kings' we met Çeda, accomplished swordswoman, who makes it her secret mission to destroy the dozen immortal Kings who rule the city of Sharakhai with a heavy hand. In the first book, she manages to kill one of the twelve...

In 'With Blood Upon The Sand' we continue where we left off. Çeda has achieved the elite position of Blade Maiden, and is conspiring from within the system for her hoped overthrow, plotting slowly and laboriously to try to assassinate more of the Kings and to discover from whence their power and life-extension ability come.

As in the first book, there's an extremely low page-count to kings-killed ratio. I have to admit that at several points I really wished we could dispense with some of the one-step-forward, two-steps-back details, and get this revolution moving! But we spend an awful lot of time on Çeda's rivalry with a hostile colleague, her training to commune with/control the undead 'asirim,' covert communications that don't go anywhere, and her frustration with the stagnant situation. I felt frustrated too!

Stick with it though, and there WILL BE exploding zombies!

It's really not a spoiler to say that there are still plenty of Kings left in Sharakhai to fuel further sequels in this epic.

Man thanks to NetGalley and DAW for the opportunity to read. As always, my opinion is unaffected by the source of the book.

The Song of the Shattered Sand, by Bradley P. Beaulieu, is a series I probably don’t talk about enough (maybe because every time I do I have to google the series name and Bradley’s name to make sure I get the spelling right). One of the primary issues with it is there is just so much to talk about that I never feel like I have enough time. The first book in the series was Twelve Kings in Sharakhai, a book I felt had a slow start but reached fantastic heights. Bradley just put out the second book in the series, With Blood Upon the Sand, and it's even better than its predecessor. When I originally reviewed book one I was new to the review game, but with my added experience doing these for two years I can hopefully better give Bradley and his story the props they rightly deserve.

Avoiding spoilers for book one, The Song of the Shattered Sand follows the story of a land of desert. It is a harsh land with limited resources, home to tons of roaming nomads who brave the sands. Long ago, a group of these nomads banded together to build a city at the center of the desert hoping to create stability and wealth. This city was Sharakhai. Twelve tribes with twelve kings came together to make the city, and it was incredibly successful. However, the city started to drain the resources of the desert, and its surrounding countries, in its quest to build an opulent metropolis in the sands. The remaining nomads of the sands resented this, rose up and threatened to overrun and raze the city. In the cities direst hour, the gods of the land joined together, blessed the city and its twelve kings, and helped repel the hordes of nomads. Through these desert gods the kings have been granted the divine right to rule, and govern their paradise with a just and even hand… or so they would have you think. Our story follows the POV of Ceda, a gutter wren in the city of Sharakhai and one of many who chafe under the kings’ absolute rule. The first book in the series focuses on Ceda, and her quest to overthrow the kings from the outside. With Blood Upon the Sand sees Ceda entering the service of the kings to try and take them down from within.

This new book is similar to a magical school story, with Ceda entering the elite personal army of the kings. As I have said before, I love magical schools and this is one of the best. In addition, while the first book focused primarily on Ceda, the second breaks out to a larger cast with more POVs. All the wonderful things about book one are still here in the sequel: the expansive and beautiful world, the deep characters, an exciting plot, the poetic prose, and the frankly beautiful physical book that is just fun to hold. However, the longer I spend with Bradley’s epic fantasy the more I am realizing he's making something more impressive and complex than I initially realized. First there is Ceda. Ceda is one of the most complex and interesting characters I have read. I constantly change how i feel about her personality and her actions in the book, but that is not because Bradley is inconsistent in his writing. Ceda is just a character who I don’t know how I feel about. As mentioned before, Ceda wants to end the rule of the kings, a quest that her late mother left her. However, unlike most other fantasy quests out there, Ceda is in many ways completely on her own. Ceda doesn’t have a prophecy to work off of, she doesn’t have a kindly mentor standing behind her giving her guidance, she just has a goal and a general direction she wants to move in. It makes her mistakes feel more reasonable and forgivable than other protagonists because it is so easy to place yourself in her ignorant shoes. What this means is that unlike most other epic fantasies, The Song of the Shattered Sand is as much about figuring out what to do as how to do it. This adds a layer of mystery and unpredictability to the books that pervades every chapter.

Furthermore, I am captivated by the land of Sharakhai. Bradley builds in lore, settings, culture, and details of his setting so that I feel like I am learning something new on every page. The story doesn’t have a lot of setup (hence my original comment of a slow start) but as it pushes forward it builds this incredible momentum that makes reading it an experience. He intricately plans the lore, power, and mysteries of the kings and city, while also making it feel organic and random. One of the major pillars of the story is that the kings all have unique powers, and weaknesses, granted to them by the gods. However, unlike many other series the powers (or weaknesses) aren’t know to anyone but the kings. The only information outside their heads on the subject is a series of 12 poems that were lost to time. These poems each tell: the identity of the king, their power, and how to kill them - but they are all in riddle form and the riddles are hard. A lot of the time when you get poems and prophecies in fantasy, it is painfully obvious who they point to - but Bradley’s are both eloquent and maddening as they often feel like they refer to multiple kings and that their powers and weaknesses could be anything, It is a refreshing take on prophecy and every time Ceda identifies a poem to its owner you get this satisfying rush of “it all makes sense now”. The story and world are a mystery wrapped in an enigma and I love peeling back each layer.

On top of beginning wonderfully complex, the entire story is in a grey area. There are more sides of this story than a cube, and I have no idea whose I am on. The more you learn about the kings, the more you can see that “evil tyrants” is an oversimplification. In addition, the noble rebels seeking to overthrow them have multiple subgroups whose goals align a lot less than they initially think. The book has political intrigue oozing out of every pore and shifting through the various players and characters is very satisfying. Finally, the magic and culture of the book is just fun to read. I have never been huge on Middle Eastern fantasy, but Bradley’s adaptation of the setting feels original and like it doesn’t fetishize the culture to a western audience (at least to me). I would love to spend some time talking with Bradley about his inspiration for the work, and what ideas he adapted from existing mythology and what he built for himself.

Despite my glowing praise, the books are not without flaws. Bradley if you are reading this you need a damn appendix, I cannot keep all your characters straight on my own. The pacing of the series is much slower than I am used to, but I am not entirely sure it is a flaw. With Blood Upon the Sand rarely kept me on the edge of my seat, preferring to slip grand reveals unexpectedly into the middle of chapters with little build up. On the other hand, I was never bored. The book might not be the most exciting ever, but it is definitely captivating in a slow and methodical way. The books are incredibly long, and felt it, but I had a really hard time thinking of anything that I would cut. Every scene clearly had a reason, and while the book might have been slimmed slightly, I actually think it was fine the way it was.

The Song of the Shattered Sand is an incredible series running under the radar of most people I know. Despite its slow pacing and quiet personality, it has an enormous amount of substance. I hope this review has gotten you intrigued enough to take a look and brave the sands. If you are looking for a wonderful world, a complex cast, mystery around every corner, and an unforgettable trip into the desert, I recommend you check out Bradley P. Beaulieu’s latest work.

Rating: With Blood Upon the Sand - 9.0/10

The Shattered Sands trilogy was by far one of my favorite finds of last year. With Blood Upon the Sand continues to deepen the intrigue and entanglements, and displays the harsh desert environment is not the only thing to fear in Sharakhai. It will also take your emotions and bend them to its will, ripping them through fear to excitement, from horror to triumph (or maybe triumph to horror), from sorrow to jealousy, hope, betrayal. Where it lands, I can’t tell you, but be prepared for the roller coaster of events that will evoke a huge range of emotional turmoil and excitement.

I continue to love Çeda as a protagonist. She is fierce not just in battle but also in personality. It’s quite interesting to see her handle life as a Blade Maiden, becoming part of what should be a close knit team, while also still working in secret to take down the Kings. Her every day life and training stands in conflict with what has pretty much been her life’s mission. Çeda is also much more alone in the beginning of this book. Emre, who has always been there for her in the past, is part of the Moonless Host. That alone is hard on her. Add to that, her inability to reach out due to her isolation from her previous life caused by living in the House of Maidens. But Çeda is not without opportunities, and when she sees one, she seizes it with all her might.

The setting and world for this series continues to be unique and fascinating. Çeda learns even more about asirim, those ghastly creatures that serve to protect the kings, and what she discovers is bone chilling. I also have to say, I still love the desert setting. I sometimes find myself sometimes forgetting that ships are sand ships, and when I remember, for some reason that detail just makes me happy.

My only concern with this book is something that could be an issue for some readers but not others. This is a hefty book, as many epic fantasies can be. But for epic fantasies to pull off the heft well, they require a balance. There has to be sufficient character development, world building, action and plot development at a pace that will keep the reader fully engaged for the page length. The story can be fantastic, but if it slows down too much, some readers may lose interest. Some readers love world building, so if it slows down for that, those readers won’t mind as much. Same for the other traits.

As much as I love this story, I did feel like it slowed down a bit around the half way mark. I never felt like that with the first book. While I still really, really enjoyed it, I do have some concern that it is walking that line of feeling somewhat over inflated for certain readers. That said, I can’t look at the story and pick anything that I would want cut, maybe its just a matter of increasing the pace in a few sections to help revive the readers excitement. I can’t say I felt like this one was quite as strong as either Twelve Kings of Sharakhai or the novella Of Sand and Malice Made and my sole reason for that is pacing. In all fairness, this is also a second book, so some of that initial excitement of a brand new world wanes just a little solely because it is not as new as it was in the first one. It may just be that second book syndrome coming in to play a little bit.

Overall though, I still absolutely love this series and can not wait to read the next installment to find out how Çeda’s quest for vengeance pans out. And I can’t leave this review without also throwing a little love for the cover. I absolutely love it and it is perfect for the book/series.

With Blood Upon the Sand is the second full length novel in Bradley P. Beaulieu’s “The Song of the Shattered Sands” series. I was very impressed by the first entry in the series, and the collection of short stories which came out shortly afterwards and served as a prequel. So my hopes were high going into this one – and, not to give the game away, I think it came out rather well.

We’re back in the shifting sands around the city of Sharakai for this second novel. It’s still startlingly evocative, carrying a sense of the Arabian Nights, laced with blood and dark magic. The desert is a livening ocean, an uncaring environment happy to swallow the unprepared. There’s some more use of sand skiffs here, using the winds of the desert to drive ships across the dunes for trade and diplomacy. But the desert is still a stark place. It has a sense of mystery to it as well when the moon shines over the sands, there are darker things stirring – blood mages, tribes of resistance fighters, supernatural creatures – all shifting out of the shadows.

A seeming bulwark against the eddies of change embodied in the desert, the city of Sharakai has come to life again. Tensions between the forces of the Kings, the mage-lords of the city, and the larger population of the city seem to be growing by the day. It’s an environment that lets Beaulieu explore and expose the causes of that sort of tension – as the authorities crack down on a population by emphasising their power, they drive members of that population into further acts of rebellion, often assisted by third parties. His cycle leads into more extreme actions, and even where most of those on all sides are working with the best of intentions, the results can still be bloody. There’s some interesting thoughts here on inherited grudges, a sense of tensions from injustices going back generations. There’s also a further exploration of the historical atrocities which left the Kings in power in Sharakai, and whether the price paid for a life and future in the past is considered acceptable by any of the participants in the present. All of this provides for a rich, lively, believable setting – a sense of a greater, fascinating world happening around our protagonist.

Speaking of protagonist, we’re back with Ceda, the heroine-of-sorts from the last book. She’s now operating within the elite troops of the Kings, and that’ having an impact on her worldview. There’s a focus here, and a sense of living on the edge, which permeates through all of her interactions. At the same time, she’s being forced to understand the situation from the position of forces she’s been struggling against – watching the consequences of guerrilla actions, trying to maintain order on a rapidly sparking powderkeg. If Ceda had few illusions before, they’re now fully lost under the mask which she has to wear. Ceda is, however, a clever woman, and one with a good degree of self-awareness; she struggles against both the external situation – where much of the conflict seems to be wrapped in history – and the internal, as she tries to conquer or control her own demons. If she’s a little quieter now, slightly more calculating, that’s no bad thing – and her meditations on friendship, on the way that those around her can fall into and out of her life, and whether the ties that bind them really do – are both heartbreaking and fascinating.

She’s joined by a whole cast of other characters, of course. We can see a bit more of the Twelve Kings, individuals corrupted by power, or using it to do what is necessary, or, perhaps, neither – their agenda is clearer here, but no less byzantine. Then there’s the forces of the tribes, desperate to tear down centuries of oppression; Macide, their erstwhile leader, and his colleagues, are quickly ramping up their game. The narrative wants to ask us what price is too cruel to pay for freedom, and Macide and the rest of the rebels are a piece of the answer. Though they don’t have the same level of screen time as Ceda, these rebels are still an intriguing bunch. The same might be said for Ceda’s new associates in the Kings elite troops – here there are smaller stories to share, likes, dislikes, old loves, older mistakes. There’s a plethora of characters on display here, and most of them end up doing more than a few unpleasant things – but it’s to the credit of their characterisation that they’re never just monsters. Blood magicians, yes. Extremists? Absolutely. Oppressive tyrants? Sure. But each carries around their own story to explain why they’re the hero – and if we only see the edges of that story, still the book makes us feel for them. Sharakai isn’t a place holding tight to black and white morality – but one where everyone may be justified, and also wrong. The characters embody that – complex, flawed, often brittle people, doing what they think is best, and often seeing it end badly, spiral out of control – or both. They are, in that way, real people, and their complexity and their flaws make their struggles both more human and very real.

The plot – well, as ever, no spoilers. Ceda is trying to work out how to deal with who she is now, and decide what it is that she wants – be it revolution, catharsis, or – well, anything else. In between her struggles to decide who she is, some of her erstwhile comrades are making sacrifices of their own – sometimes rather literally. There’s black magic here, as well as rather a lot of scheming. There’s riots and duels, dreams of better futures snuffed out by a darker present; there’s murders and abductions, and a feeling of rising tension, of matters coming to a head. It’s asking hard questions, turning to the reader for answers, and getting them to keep turning the pages to see which way things will go next.

This is an ambitious sequel, larger in scope than its predecessor – and it pulls it off magnificently. It’s intelligent, well drawn and a lot of fun to read – and so I’d recommend it wholeheartedly.

With Blood Upon the Sand is the second in Bradley P. Beaulieu’s THE SONG OF THE SHATTERED SANDS series, following up on the excellent Twelve Kings in Sharakhai. The sequel didn’t grab me quite as fully as its predecessor, but it’s quite nearly as good and certainly has me eager to continue reading the series.

So as to avoid spoilers for the first book, I’m going to offer up a relatively brief, vague plot summary. Though I will need to reference characters, so unavoidably you’ll know those folks survived book one. Read on at your own risk . . .

The sequel picks up shortly after the events of Twelve Kings and continues Ceda’s dangerous struggle to overthrow the kings from within in her role as a Blade Maiden. She plays that dual role throughout, which becomes harder and harder to do she enters further into the inner circles and machinations of several of the kings, whose world is both deepened and expanded for readers through a king’s POV. Meanwhile, Ceda’s childhood friend Emre is our entryway into what’s going on with the rebel alliance, er, group — The Moonless Host; and a pair of other POVs offer up their own storylines but also bring a third major power into the fray — Hamzakiir, a blood mage with his own agenda.

Theme, plotting, and characterization are all strong points in the novel. As one might imagine from that very skimpy overview and far-from exhaustive mention of characters, THE SONG OF THE SHATTERED SANDS is a sprawling, complicated bit of storytelling, especially as it also repeats the flashback pattern of Twelve Kings, sending us back into Ceda’s youth. The structural complexity and the narrative/plotting complexity are nicely mirrored thematically with a host of ethical/moral questions raised. Even better, these questions aren’t simply abstract, or dropped into the mix via exposition or an omniscient narrator; instead they bubble through dialogue and interior monologues, driving and influencing character, character growth, and relationships among characters as each has to ask themselves (and others) just how far they are willing to go to further their cause. And, intentionally or not, there’s a nice working of how fantasy can make the metaphoric literal, as Ceda is at times literally at war with herself, which parallels her less-literal struggle with ends and means and her actions.

I had a bit more trouble with pacing in THE SONG OF THE SHATTERED SANDS than I did in the first book, with a few areas that seemed to lag, and the book overall felt just a little longer than necessary. The prose was smooth throughout, and vivid in places, though for some reason the setting felt a bit less evocative here, unlike in Twelve Kings where it really stood out in terms of atmosphere. I wanted more of a sense of place here, mostly because the setting is so relatively rare in contemporary fantasy. But these were niggling concerns. Overall I was drawn into the intrigues and politics and thoroughly enjoyed our deeper exploration of the Kings, Maidens, and Rebels, as well as the slow pulling back on long ago events. All of which left me impatient for book three, always a good sign.

<a href="https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/26159656-with-blood-upon-the-sand" style="float: left; padding-right: 20px"><img border="0" alt="With Blood Upon the Sand (The Song of the Shattered Sands, #2)" src="https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1479674870m/26159656.jpg" /></a><a href="https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/26159656-with-blood-upon-the-sand">With Blood Upon the Sand</a> by <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/2851725.Bradley_P_Beaulieu">Bradley P. Beaulieu</a><br/>
My rating: <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/1891101311">5 of 5 stars</a><br /><br />
The Song of the Shattered Sands is currently one of my favorite series. I have let it be well known that I am a world building junkie and the city of Sharakhai and surrounding area is a living, breathing thing and I revel in it. Beautiful writing, a deep and exciting story and characters you CARE about. <br /><br />I can't say enough good things about this series or this book, you guys know I don't review things I don't like and I am FAR from an objective reviewer.<br /><br />Throw this man your money, do yourself a favor and just start from the beginning and read them all, I am not gonna tell you wrong, that I promise.<br /><br />9389 out of 5 stars
<br/><br/>
<a href="https://www.goodreads.com/review/list/279564-kdawg91">View all my reviews</a>