Balzer + Bray A Song of Wraiths and Ruin

I screamed when I got to the end and realised it was the end. I just wanted to keep reading. I’m so in love with this book. A glorious fantasy. I completely binged on this book and am dying for Book Two.A story of duology. A romance. A battle of wits and wills and personal demons. Of magic and myths made real. A terrific read.Malik and Karina couldn’t be more opposite. One, a princess. One, a refuge. And yet both are on a similar journey to understanding their place in the world and the truth about their own personal power. And both are completely at odds with each other. Those desires act like two magnets. Pulling them together and pushing them apart at the same time. The conflict between their opposite needs sets up a clash of epic proportions. Malik who must save his sister and Karina who wants her mother back. Every step they take to achieve their desire puts them into further conflict with each other. A tragic love story. For each to win, the other must lose.The story is told from both Malik and Karina’s points of view and thus we are fully enveloped in their individual stories, and in their triumphs and tragedies. Each personality is gloriously alive and gripping in intensity, driving the plot forward with every ill-intentioned or forced choice. And with every choice, their path changes for better or worse leading them inexorably toward each other.The worldbuilding is fantastic. A fantasy for the ages, beautifully visual and brimming with color. The magic is believable; dangerous and powerful. The worldbuilding and magic together weave a fantasy that is impossible to escape from. And you don’t want to. As a reader I wanted more.I cannot wait for the next book!

It arrived Saturday and I started reading it Sunday. I did my very best to take my time reading it, but the last two nights I kept turning my light on to read “just one more chapter” when I should have been trying to sleep. After going through the, "I'll just read one more chapter before I go to sleep," bit last night, I finally gave up and finished it. I was done at around 5:30 am this morning.Pros) It is very fantasy with a well crafted magic system and lots of political intrigue in a setting that draws on African folklore. Yay for non-European settings! (Note: as much as I love European folklore, I feel that there is a dearth of non-European stories available and am enthused to find good stories based on cultures that I am less familiar with.)There are plot twists that I did not see coming, but when they happened, they made perfect sense. It was definitely not what the blurbs led me to expect from the story. Did whoever wrote the teaser even read the book? Sure, there was attraction between the protagonists, but this was NOT a "romance."The world building is the very epitome of "show don't tell." Kudos for that!Cons) The book contains a handful of editing errors (or are they printing errors?), which makes me think it was self-published (I have yet to read a self-published book that does not have editing errors). Some were relatively understandable (for example: there is one place where the word "onto" is used when the context indicates that it should have been the word "unto").There were three editing errors that were pretty blatant and I can't understand how they could have gotten past the editing process. 1: The second time the word "obosom" is used, it starts with an "A" but every other time it appears in the story, it starts with an "O." 2: On one occasion, some people make a gesture that somehow involves them touching their lips to their lips (this struck me as amusing, on other occasions when the gesture is made, the people use their fingers). 3: Near the end of the book, the word "heart" is spelled with two "R's" (this should have been caught by spell check).The story is good enough that I can forgive a few editing errors. The biggest down side is that it’s part one of a planned two part story, so now that I’ve finished it, I’ll have to wait for the second book in the set to come out to discover how the story really ends. Fortunately, it does not end on an actual cliffhanger as I'd feared when I saw that it was book 1 in a planned two book set.Conclusion) Since the biggest issues I have with the story are a handful of editing errors and the fact that the sequel is not yet available, I have no hesitation in recommending it to everyone who loves fantasy stories.Final score:Story - 5 starsEditing - 3 starsFinal score - 4 starsNote: I am rereading the story and am finding things that made no impact on me the first time through, which now that I've read to the end have considerably more impact and increase my enjoyment of the story.

I was so excited to start reading this book. Then I started reading it and I was highly disappointed! There was so much detail that the story began to drag and I quickly lost interested. But I was motivated to finance because I paid for this book and we are reviewing it on our podcast. I will say that I loved the main characters and there back stories. I do wish that the book when have given more explanation about some rituals, countries and other magical things and basically other unfamiliar things in the story. It was a lot to take in because it was magic based in an unfamiliar country and culture. Some scenes carried on too long and were in too much detail and felt unnecessary and that’s what bores me. But what saves this book for me was the ending. It was probable the last 8-10 chapters where the climax started to build up and things actually started happening and more information was revealed to help understand previous plot points. I wish that it didn’t take so long to get to the good stuff, some of the storylines drug on for too long and felt unnecessary. But the ending so pique my interests in a sequel. I think that is because I fell in love with the character Malik.