Blood Song (Raven’s Shadow #1) by Anthony Ryan

Vaelin Al Sorna is the son of the Battle Lord of King Janus’s Unified Realm and is dropped off at the gates of the Sixth Order, a monastic order of warriors dedicated to hunting down Deniers and ensuring all who live under the King’s rule are true to the Faith. The boy is unsure of himself, initially, but soon his resentment for his father grows inside of him, it drives him to dedicate his focus to becoming a member o the order. He truly takes to heart the idea that he belongs to the order.

Before we get to this, Ryan frames the story much like Patrick Rothfuss framed The Name of the Wind (and the subsequent novel The Wise Man’s Fear): we initially meet the protagonist through the eyes of, Verniers Alishe Someren a historian charged recounting Vaelin Al Sorna’s, known to Verniers’ people as Hope Killer, duel for honor. The historian is intrigued by Vaelin, how he answers some of the assumptions made about him and eventually asks the Hope Killer to recount his story.. These smaller sections are told from the first person perspective of Verniers while the ‘past’ of Vaelin comes across through third person narration. Shortly after that introduction in which the scribe describes the menacing, imposing Vaelin, Ryan launches into the greater portion of the novel, essentially a Bildungsroman.

Much of the novel follows the growth of Vaelin from a blank slate of a young child to a hardened warrior trained by the Order in the art of war and combat. Vaelin distinguishes himself early, gaining the respect of his peers and making close ties with a handful of boys, much like (I assume) soldiers would bond during their military training. Vaelin comes to think of these peers as his brothers, Barkus, Caenis, Dentos, and Nortah. The bonds of trust and respect that develop between these young men are strengths of Ryan’s narrative on full display throughout the novel. One writer I’ve always felt who handles such bonds of friendship between youthful characters is Stephen King (The Body, Hearts in Atlantis, for example) and here, Ryan captures that bond just as powerfully.

As Vaelin grows from a child into an adult, he learns more about his lineage through none other than King Janus himself. While on the surface it may seem strange for a King to have such interest, and more importantly, for a King to allow a soldier-in-training such intimate access to his royal person, the revelation of what Vaelin’s destiny was supposed to be erodes such a barrier. Here, Ryan is playing with the prophecy/destiny aspect of the fantasy genre, twisting the theme on its head enough to throw some uncertainty into Vaelin’s tale just as Vaelin’s presence throws Vernier’s assumptions for a spin when the two meet.

While playing with prophecy/destiny is a major theme of Blood Song, two other, intertwined themes that came across to me were morality and regret. Often, acting as the tool of the Order, Vaelin is tasked with committing acts of violence and destruction that go against what the perceived moral imperatives of the Faith would seem to be. As Vaelin matures and grows into an intelligent man, he questions the things he’s asked to do and often finds himself on a slippery slope through the gyre of doing what he’s told and doing what is right. In parallel to that morality, is an undercurrent of regret and sorrow, it seems. Though Vaelin claims to hate his father for leaving him at the gates of the Sixth Order that feeling doesn’t quite feel honest. There’s sorrow and pain which fuel the superficial hate Vaelin expresses.

Of course, just because one destiny may be avoided doesn’t mean that all things destined for a person won’t happen. Just as Vaelin is more than a simple soldier’s son, he’s also in possession of a supernatural sense, the Blood Song of the title which acts very much like the “Spider Sense” of Spider-Man, offering warnings and portents at key points in his life to the point that the song causes Vaelin to collapse under the weight of the song. Here is where Ryan brings in magic and supernatural elements in the form of The Dark, the maligned power in the world. For it is the Dark and those who use the power of the Dark that make for the Sixth Order’s enemies, along with the Deniers who don’t follow the Faith. Often enough these two groups are lumped together.

Ryan’s style is somewhat relaxed and paced extremely well. I was lulled into the novel with Ryan’s almost conversational tone which kept me reading as the strength of the narrative’s power clung to me very strongly. The framing device, a chronicler hearing the legend of the man from the legend himself, utilized allows for an unreliability to set in as the novel progressed. Questions the historian Someren asks don’t exactly match with the narrative it seems Vaelin is telling in the framed sections of the novel. Unreliable narrators work best when this unreliability comes through subtly, and like Rothfuss and Gene Wolfe before him, Ryan pulls off this balance quite well.

Like Rotfhuss’s Kingkiller Chronicles, the power of story (and tangentially, history) is a powerful thing in Blood Song. The story/history hinted at through the scribe Verniers is enticing, but what’s more powerful is the magnetism he feels from Vaelin and the need to hear the story of the infamous and maligned Hope Killer from the man’s mouth. Within the proper narrative itself, one story about a witch’s son is perhaps the most mythic and resonant – in terms of the story’s power – element of the novel.

I said on Twitter as I was reading Blood Song that it was like the love-child of Patrick Rothfuss and Joe Abecrombie writing the story of Jon Snow (of George R.R. Martin’s A Song of Ice and Fire) in the Night’s Watch. The relationship between King Janus and Vaelin also reminded me a bit of the role FitzChivalry played in Robin Hobb’s wonderful Farseer Trilogy. I make these comparisons because the authors to which I compare Blood Song and Anthony Ryan’s writing because those authors brought me such great reading experiences. With Blood Song, Anthony Ryan has brought just as enjoyable of reading experience.

Blood Song is a very male-centric novel featuring primarily a cast of males. However, the females who are in the novel (and especially Vaelin’s mother who is not seen and only known and spoken of in memory) have a powerful hold over the characters, particularly Vaelin. This isn’t to say women aren’t in places of power a woman is one of the Aspects, heads of the order, in this world, just that the story is told from Vaelin’s point of view so we only really ‘see’ his thoughts on the women in his life. Princess Lyrna, daughter of King Janus, is possibly the most powerfully imposing female Ryan has thus far introduced. Though her appearances in the novel are fleeting, her character is the type who walks into a room and all eyes fall on her; she has great presence and gravitas. Equally powerful is the nurse of the Fourth Order with whom Vaelin finds a powerful bond early in the novel through to the conclusion.

At the halfway point of 2013, Ryan’s Blood Song is a top contender for most impressive debut of the year. It is a thick, meaty novel of substance with little gristle. The novel was a self-publishing sensation receiving a great deal of praise and a lot of sales before Ryan was snatched up by Orbit in the UK and Ace in the US. All that praise and ‘buzz’ was legitimate. Blood Song is a powerful epic that, while ending with a sense of closure, hints at more to come. Tower Lord, the second novel, is scheduled for publication in 2014 and is at the very top of my list of books I can’t wait to read next year.

Highest Recommendation

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