Great series! ( )

Good book

The author has a way of telling her story that keeps me coming back for more. Time to go to the next one. ( )

Leest lekker weg maar is erg rechttoe, rechttaan. Lineaire vertelling zonder tussen tussenstapjes naar het "verleden". Weinig diepgang of groei in personages, veel avontuur en een "open einde" in de zin dat het verhaal gewoon niet af is. Gauw door in het volgende deel dus. ( )

Dit boek begon een beetje rommelig, maar het einde maakt veel goed. Natuurlijk is het verhaal meeslepend en een plezier om te lezen. Maar zelden is het echt spannend. Dat en het rommelige begin maakt het voor mij een boek met 3 1/2 ster. ( )

This is book seven of the extended Deverry series (preceeded by Daggerspell, Darkspell, Dawnspell, The Dragon Revenant, A Time of Exile, and A Time of Omens). The blurb on the back cover of this book implies that it should be safe for a new reader to enter the series here, and I can understand why publishers would want to do such a thing for such a long series. By contrast, Asimov's Extended Foundation Series has many entry points, with most stories being free standing. I think Kerr did a reasonable job of introducing the characters without being overly annoying about it. I've seen reviews from others that say that there is a lot of annoying ground to recover, such as the Etheric travel sequences. I disagree however -- these are just as long winded as in other books in the series, and we're talking about a couple of paragraphs, not hundreds of pages.

The only part of this book which didn't sit well with me was Rori picking up a girlfriend with basically now warning. Perhaps I'm dense, but I didn't see it coming at all, and thought it was rather abrupt. I'm also not sure it did much to further the overall story. On the other had, Jadho is an interesting character, and I'd like to see him explored more.

This book ends mid plot line, so I guess they're expecting me to read the next book soon. That would have been a lot more annoying if I was reading this book fresh off the presses and had to wait for Kerr to write the next one before I could read it.

http://www.stillhq.com/book/Katharine_Kerr/Days_of_Blood_and_Fire.html ( )