Excellent Tale and Adventure

What a fantastic and fresh take on the classic fantasy adventure story, Redemptions Blade was fun, witty, and packed with emotional depth. Full of compelling characters, excellent world-building, and well-paced plot with graphically violent scenes of war. Redemptions Blade is the first book in the After The War series, and damn, it did not disappoint, well written, easy to follow, and keeps you intrigued and enthralled from the very first page. The war is over the Kinslayer is dead, a demigod, Celestaine is one of the heroes that destroyed him has tasked herself with correcting the worst excesses of the Kinslayer’s brief reign, bringing light back to a broken world. Some of the heroes of the battle want to rebuild the world, and some just want to hold onto the title of hero at any cost. It's a wonderful tale for any fantasy fan, and if you're a fan of Adrian Tchaikovsky's writing, you are in for treat. I very highly recommend...😁💙🗡🗡

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Very enjoyable

In many ways this is the the sort of story that I wish more sequels had the courage to be. History never ends, the happily ever after still has consequences that need to be dealt with. I liked in this book the feeling the world is healing, but it's a hard work process and there are no convinient solutions. A nice balance between idealism and cinicism.

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Another great story!

Adrian Tchaikovsky has fast become one of my favorite authors. His stories are full of characters that struggle with their choices, that are truly interesting and unique in a way that is hard to explain. The only slight drawback I had with this story is in the narrator sometimes being a little too soft of voice, so that a few words here and there are hard to hear over ambient noise.
All in all a story I highly enjoyed and recommend!

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THIS is the way to do fantasy

I’ve been reading fantasy books on and off for close to fifty years and I can honestly say this book is the diamond that makes it worth all the stuff that turns out to be coal. If you want yet another Tolkien retread this may not light your candle but you should read it anyway. This book takes the very worn (to the point of being threadbare) Dungeons & Dragons riffs and themes and turns them upside down. For one thing, the story begins with the final battle against “ The Ultimate Evil” and goes on from there to gently dismantle all the entrenched heroic fantasy ideas in a way that would make Joe Abercrombie proud. Or Terry Pratchett for that matter (although it’s not a comedy book). I’ve read a number of Tchaikovsky’s books and they’re all high quality stuff but this is the first one for me that has veered from the SF genre and it was a fantastic surprise. I should also say the audiobook is beautifully read. This is currently free to members so there’s no good excuse not to get yourself some of this top fantasy action.

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1 person found this helpful

Something a Tchaikovsky fan will love

Having listened to quite a few of his books by now, I knew what kind of writing to expect and I thoroughly enjoyed the worldbuilding.

The narrator was excellent as well ❤️‍🩹

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top drawer narration

one of the best bits of narration I've heard in a while, decent story too, shame the 2nd book isnt on audible

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A bit bland for my taste

None of the characters really grabbed me. The hero is supposed literally to be a hero but she comes across as quite whiny. As I often listen at bed time, there were parts I missed through falling asleep and nothing made me want to go back and catch up.

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1 person found this helpful