Well written, edge of seat book

A really well written and well read book. Story is deep with plenty of twists and turns in the plot to keep you captivated. Was actually gutted when it finished as I need to know what happened next.

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Cracking Listen!

The narrator was absolutely exceptional I wish he read all my audio books!! cracking listen we written left you wanting the next book to be written and audio'd straight away!! The main character is excellent and I cant wait to hear what a not so main character in this book (Bjorn) who I have no doubt will come into his own in the next books.... really enjoyed!!

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Medieval horror zombie done right!

The story is very well written and the plot is very captivating. The narrator is excellent, capable of doing several voices. My only con would be the choice of names as many sounded similar. Overall I heavily recommend this book!

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A Bone Cracking Tale

This book is well written , brilliantly performed and keeps you listening into the wee hours of the morning when you should be asleep ( ooh just one more chapter )
. Great book

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The Bloody Dead

My fourth reread of this dark medieval, plague ridden and zombie infested lands of Arnar, There is only two books in the series so far and its in my favourite top 10 series of all time, it's one of those books you can't put down till you finsh it in one setting, like an old friend, always visiting now and again, after a college ritual goes bad, a foul the dead and cursed are ravaging the lands of Anar, the erie dark setting Lee C Conley has set from the start has you hooked, The grizzly characters the plot and the worldbuilding is awesome, a bood curdling read that will have you wanting more, R.J. Baley the narrator gives an awesome performance, his northern gravily accent gives life to the Vikings of Arnar, There is a scene were an Arnar warrior is trying put down a zombie and starts shouting, why won't you just fucking die, will have you in stitches, pray to the Gods that you make it through this one alive, highly recommended....😁🧟⭐

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Dark and moody good grimdark fun

Ok, so I’m gonna get right to the chase here. This book was fully awesome. It exceeded my expectations, which is no disservice to the author, Lee C. Conley, rather it’s an insight into me being a cynical bastard.

There is a lot to like about this book. But almost more than anything, I would say the style of writing made me fall in love with it. Conley has an easy, graceful way about his work. This is especially delightful given the subject matter: plague, vomiting blood, undead eating the alive, cannibalism, and other such dark and violent shenanigans.

The main POV’s we follow are equally engaging (often hard to do, and as an author of multi POV, I really respect what Conley has achieved). The setting well sculpted, the dialogue crisp and real. The violence, although graphic, was not overplayed.

As an indie author, I’m a big supporter of our ‘slice of the pie’. There are a great many excellent indie books out there, that merit attention and respect. This is certainly one of them, and easily one of the best books I’ve read* this year.

*I listened to the audio version, narrated brilliantly by R.J. Bayley, it swept me up and was just so much fun.

Book 2, A Ritual Of Flesh is out tomorrow (10th October). I for one will be getting it! You should get on book 1 it’s incredible!

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Didn’t engage me.

Couldn’t really get into this one not sure if it was me or the writing but didn’t get invested in any of the characters didn’t get to like or dislike any was just, meh. Also thought the pacing was a bit off not sure if again this was me or just poorly edited. All in all I think I will struggle in a week or two to remember any of this book.

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An excellently violent tale brilliantly narrated.

Disclaimer: I was provided a copy of this book, free of charge, in exchange for an honest review.

I'm sorry but zombies are overrated. They groan and moan, shambling around mindlessly until they smell meat and then shuffle inadequately towards their intended prey...boring. Sure there have been attempts to make them more scary by making them fast or strong but, at the end of the day, a bullet to the brain always puts them down.

But what if you don't have bullets? What if you live in small villages in a time when medicine in poor meaning that death is a part of life and the dead greatly outnumber the living? What if the most powerful tool you have at your disposal is an axe and the enemy are not only fast but uncaring of the damage done to their bodies.

This is what A Ritual of Bone brings to us, basically Vikings vs the Undead.

Based in ancient Iceland and in a time where the inhabitants had forgotten the old-ways and stopped believing in legends and monsters, an experiment carried out by scholars sets off a chain of events resulting in hordes of unkillable monsters sweeping across the land.

Told from the perspective of various members and groups Arnar's people it follows the hordes as they pass over the Spine of the World into Arnar and Sidor and into the realm of man. Death is aplenty and I quickly learned to avoid growing attached to a any characters as they regularly died, mostly in a truly horrific manner.

This bring me to the gore aspect and I do need to state that if you are upset by blood, gore or child-death you may want to listen with care as this has it all. The sheer amount of severed limbs, decapitation, burnings and flesh-ripped corpses is above anything I've read before but the important thing is that it is all Fitting. There is no gore purely for the sake of making you upset here, every cut and blow is used to highlight the lack of hope mankind has against these creatures and each death is felt as a personal loss and made all the more poignant by the fabulous narration of Rob Bayley-Boyd. As a new Narrator for me I was unsure what to expect but his range and ability to add real personality to each character was astounding and he has a real knack for creating a sense of dread.

Add to this the slowly building sense of there being something otherworldly involved with horned beasts and shadows that appear to be guiding the hordes and I truly could not put this book down. Again Rob's narration has to be mentioned here as I've been reading horror for over 40 years and listening to Audiobooks for 20 and there was a scene towards the end that, for the first time in all those years, gave me real shivers of fear.

I going pretty much straight onto Book 2 to see what happens next and cannot recommend this enough to all fans of Zombies, VIkings and brilliantly narrated shocks!

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So much fun to listen to!

Lee Conley's “A Ritual Of Bone” is a relentless tale. Dark magic has brought a dire plague to the land – a plaque which reanimates the dead and turns anyone infected by them into something equally nightmarish. Set in a bleak, Norse-esque region, the unrelenting tone paints the picture in stark clarity; even any mention of trees and grasses does little to add colour to the gritty image of dirt, stone, death and stalwart individuals that dominate the story. The combination of the various locales of the setting were, for me, particularly reminiscent of the Elder Scrolls and could almost fit nicely as a spiritual companion story to that game series. In fact, I would say that A Ritual Of Bone (and further books in Lee Conleey's Dead Sagas series) would make for a great TV series to fill the niche between Game Of Thrones and The Walking Dead.

I listened to the audio edition of this book, and I really must say how excellent a narrator RJ Bayley is. His grim narrative tones drip with a brooding menace, and his character voices are perfect for the setting. Right from the offset, while listening to him deliver this tale I found him strongly reminiscent of one of my favourite voice actors, the great Matt Berry, and yet RJ Bayley is no cheap imitation; in fact, I would say that his delivery of A Ritual Of Bone has given me the most enjoyment I've had from an audiobook in a long while. Massive kudos to Mr Conley and Mr Bayley for breathing life and undeath into this story.

When the audio edition of the second book in the Dead Sagas is published, I would certainly like to listen to it, both to hear RJ Bayley's delivery again and to find out what lies in store for the surviving characters of this unfolding ttale. I highly recommend this book to anyone who enjoys grimdark or any other form of gritty adult-oriented fantasy.

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More like an incredibly long prologue

Calling this a complete book would be generous. There is almost no actual story here, there is no arc of any kind. It is entirely made to set up the world for the sequel.

Somehow, despite not being a particularly long read, A Ritual of Bone is also incredibly slow and repetitive. Not just repetitive in terms of story, but also within passages several ideas will be repeated over and over. It almost reads as though the author wrote down every variation of the sentence so they could decide which one they wanted later, but forgot to remove the other versions.

Characters aren't actually characters. I could not tell you anything about what any of them value, who they aspire to be, what their goals are beyond the incredibly basic.

The very, very, very few women characters revolve entirely around their existence as sex objects or how they matter to the men around them. Even the story of the one named female warrior (who speaks perhaps once throughout the whole book) revolves entirely around her backstory of a man trying to rape her, and one of the other warriors pursuing her as a sexual conquest.

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