Matthew Woodring Stover

Blade of Tyshalle

Sade A

3.5 stars
If like me you read Heroes Die and were expecting the same amount of bad assery from Blade of Tyshalle you'd be somewhat disappointed. It's not like the book is terrible but it's so vastly different from what you'd expect after reading the first Act of Caine book.

Although Blade of Tyshalle does have the signature bad ass action sequences that i've come to associate with the series, this book is more philosophical than the first one. You find characters searching for meaning for their actions, life.. Discovering and learning to accept themselves which really i have to say was not necessarily a bad thing. It definitely made me raise my eyebrow like umm TF is going on but i wouldn't have minded so much. Ultimately what didn't endear me to this book as the first one did, was that i felt Stover went out of his way to make this book as difficult as possible to understand. This isn't simply something that occurs just in book 2, even in book one you'd be hard pressed to figure out how the magic works (mind view ish and channelling the flow stuff) however what makes that easier to overlook are the action sequences. Book 1 is basically straight forward, no messing around action so magic is few and far between. Book 2 though has got magic in droves and let me tell you it's sort of hard to follow. 
Then the bulk of the scientific jargon that was in the book. My thoughts on putting purely scientific stuff is books is this - DON'T!! Chances are even if you do decide to do a little research to know what the heck is going on in the book you're still not even going to understand what the heck you're reading.

Considering though that the book was able to keep me spell bound up until close to the end i'd say it wasn't a bad book, i just wasn't able to appreciate some parts of the plot due to the lack of understanding with the whole magic/ god ish and all that scientific jargon. So in the end i liked this addition to the series but i didn't love it.

Blade of Tyshalle

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