I’m not one to re-read books, normally. So far this year I’ve found myself to re-read quite a few, though. Once I opened my folder with ebooks – I used to read epubs on an e-reader and only switched to using the Kindle app on my iPad when the e-reader broke down, so I have hundreds of books I haven’t even glanced at for a couple of years – I’ve found myself oohing and aahing over books forgotten.
One book that will never be forgotten as far as I’m concerned is Bloodraven by P.L. Nunn. I didn’t mean to read it again, but here we are.
Yhalen is captured by ogres and ogres are not nice creatures.
There is a lot of violence, lots of blood and pain, lots of evil, but there is also a political game, a long journey, and a fight for a better life. In a harsh world where no one will do you any favours your worst enemy might become your friend…and maybe even your lover.
This is not a fluffy romance for the fainthearted, it’s slow torture ending with love. I’m utterly impressed by P.L. Nunn’s ability to keep me interested all the way through the 660+ pages that this book is, so impressed by the way I’m getting invested in the characters and how I love them despite all the heinous things they do.
Hats off.
A son of a forest dwelling people, Yhalen knows little of the world outside the ancestral forest, until he is captured by a band of ogres on a slave-taking mission. Only grim tales of the barbaric giants had reached the forest, but Yhalen soon learns that even the darkest fireside story only hinted at the brutality of these Northern warriors. He discovers the meaning of true fear at their hands, and only the awakening of ancient magic saves him from destruction.
Surviving ogre viciousness, he finds himself given to Bloodraven, the half ogre, half human war leader as a slave. Yhalen, refusing to bend, soon pays the price for offending prickly ogre pride.
But Bloodraven is no mindless, violent ogrish beast. Bloodraven has an agenda and Yhalen finds himself drawn in the wake into human and ogre politics, into bloodshed and cruelty and into the forbidden magic that is damnation in the eyes of his own people, but which might mean the difference between death and salvation.
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Ofelia Grand 