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The Chronicles of the Lescari Revolution #2
Blood in the Water
Those exiles and rebels determined to bring peace to Lescar discover the true cost of war. Courage and friendships are tested to breaking point. Who will pay such heartbreaking penalties for their boldness? Who will pay the ultimate price? The dukes of Lescar aren't about to give up their wealth and power without a fight. Nor will they pass up some chance to advance their own interests, if one of their rivals suffers in all this upheaval. The duchesses have their own part to play, more subtle but no less deadly.
672 pages, Mass Market Paperback
First published October 27, 2009
About the author
Juliet E. McKenna
106 books236 followersJuliet E McKenna is a British fantasy author living in the Cotswolds, UK. Loving history, myth and other worlds since she first learned to read, she has written fifteen epic fantasy novels so far. Her debut, The Thief’s Gamble, began The Tales of Einarinn in 1999, followed by The Aldabreshin Compass sequence, The Chronicles of the Lescari Revolution, and The Hadrumal Crisis trilogy. The Green Man’s Heir was her first modern fantasy inspired by British folklore in 2018. The Green Man’s Quarry in 2023 was the sixth title in this ongoing series and won the BSFA Award for Best Novel. The seventh book, in 2024, is The Green Man’s War.
Her 2023 novel The Cleaving is a female-centred retelling of the story of King Arthur, while her shorter fiction includes forays into dark fantasy, steampunk and science fiction. She promotes SF&Fantasy by reviewing, by blogging on book trade issues, attending conventions and teaching creative writing. She has served as a judge for the James White Award, the Aeon Award, the Arthur C Clarke Award and the World Fantasy Awards. In 2015 she received the British Fantasy Society’s Karl Edward Wagner Award. As J M Alvey, she has written historical murder mysteries set in ancient Greece.
Who’s to say what will come next?
Learn more about all of this at julietemckenna.com and on Twitter @JulietEMcKenna
Her 2023 novel The Cleaving is a female-centred retelling of the story of King Arthur, while her shorter fiction includes forays into dark fantasy, steampunk and science fiction. She promotes SF&Fantasy by reviewing, by blogging on book trade issues, attending conventions and teaching creative writing. She has served as a judge for the James White Award, the Aeon Award, the Arthur C Clarke Award and the World Fantasy Awards. In 2015 she received the British Fantasy Society’s Karl Edward Wagner Award. As J M Alvey, she has written historical murder mysteries set in ancient Greece.
Who’s to say what will come next?
Learn more about all of this at julietemckenna.com and on Twitter @JulietEMcKenna
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Displaying 1 - 6 of 6 reviews
August 21, 2019
When I started the series, i had accidentally picked up this book first by mistake. I was hooked instantly.
I really like the pace of this book, its a little slower than irons in the fire, but its not so slow I got bored with it. I wish it was paced a little bit better with the chunk of the dramatic happenings in the last 1/4 of the book spaced out in the more slow middle.
My only other issue is that i wish aremils character had developed more intensely at the start and first half of the book. I understand he was trying to be diplomatic about his interactions with lord roshuarn, but i can't imagine aremil being so easily ran over by his ovbious ableism and his reluctance to see aremil as a intelligent and educated human being as opposed to an invalid who refused to die from his childhood illness. The way he snaped at lord roshuarn was long overdue, and just felt rushed in the last chapter. It feels as if McKenna was trying to imply that branca was the only reason he changed as a person, but she really just initiated it. I think he should have been written better.
I really like the pace of this book, its a little slower than irons in the fire, but its not so slow I got bored with it. I wish it was paced a little bit better with the chunk of the dramatic happenings in the last 1/4 of the book spaced out in the more slow middle.
My only other issue is that i wish aremils character had developed more intensely at the start and first half of the book. I understand he was trying to be diplomatic about his interactions with lord roshuarn, but i can't imagine aremil being so easily ran over by his ovbious ableism and his reluctance to see aremil as a intelligent and educated human being as opposed to an invalid who refused to die from his childhood illness. The way he snaped at lord roshuarn was long overdue, and just felt rushed in the last chapter. It feels as if McKenna was trying to imply that branca was the only reason he changed as a person, but she really just initiated it. I think he should have been written better.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
November 4, 2010
Better than the first book, there still are problems with the delivery of this story. Some attempt was made to explain how one pair of our heroes use magic where they should not be able to. And then some attempt I believe is made to explain magic and how it fits politically with the authors other series.
It fails for me as I have not read the other series. But a great deal of time is spent with the subplot that seems to fizzle out. There are things that work though. The battles and concept of armies moving about. The names of the nobles have been drilled into us so often that it begins to make sense, but the number of mercenary companies is so vast that mentioning new ones intermixed with ones we have heard of before is just a confusion.
Further it is done so to describe a battle. A good book on battles where they show how units move and maps of where units start a battle, would have benefited the author writing a book on a large war. Here we get lost, a lot in battle. We also see a hero complain bitterly that he does not have the fighter credibility and yet he survives through several actions unscathed and is made the third part of the armies best special forces team.
It does work as a story, but the holes should have been plugged. McKenna seems to have a grand idea, but then there are other problems as well. Financing the army. It all comes from a few men. Not a government. Just saying that doesn't mean anyone could do so. We know that in our own world to finance a mercenary unit takes fortunes. To finance an army worth, on campaign. It is why we have governments.
The author throws out a line that the captured capitals treasury did not have a lot in it and they hoped to have found a fortune to pay for the army. Well, they should have found a lot in it. If you start doing the numbers, how much a mercenary needs to earn each day, and multiply that out by an army, that is not going to loot to supplement its needs because it is paid well, the financiers have had to been hoarding from their fantastical profits for a long time. And if these men were like any other men in their line of work, let me have that business. I would be a billionaire in no time.
Those problems show McKenna writes something but does not think about it. The same with time scale where some pages it takes a day to cover half the map and other times weeks. A dedicated editor who paid attention to this could have begun to make this series head towards the level that Jordan maintains in the Wheel of Time. Instead we have someone who has a good outline for a story, that needs more work.
It fails for me as I have not read the other series. But a great deal of time is spent with the subplot that seems to fizzle out. There are things that work though. The battles and concept of armies moving about. The names of the nobles have been drilled into us so often that it begins to make sense, but the number of mercenary companies is so vast that mentioning new ones intermixed with ones we have heard of before is just a confusion.
Further it is done so to describe a battle. A good book on battles where they show how units move and maps of where units start a battle, would have benefited the author writing a book on a large war. Here we get lost, a lot in battle. We also see a hero complain bitterly that he does not have the fighter credibility and yet he survives through several actions unscathed and is made the third part of the armies best special forces team.
It does work as a story, but the holes should have been plugged. McKenna seems to have a grand idea, but then there are other problems as well. Financing the army. It all comes from a few men. Not a government. Just saying that doesn't mean anyone could do so. We know that in our own world to finance a mercenary unit takes fortunes. To finance an army worth, on campaign. It is why we have governments.
The author throws out a line that the captured capitals treasury did not have a lot in it and they hoped to have found a fortune to pay for the army. Well, they should have found a lot in it. If you start doing the numbers, how much a mercenary needs to earn each day, and multiply that out by an army, that is not going to loot to supplement its needs because it is paid well, the financiers have had to been hoarding from their fantastical profits for a long time. And if these men were like any other men in their line of work, let me have that business. I would be a billionaire in no time.
Those problems show McKenna writes something but does not think about it. The same with time scale where some pages it takes a day to cover half the map and other times weeks. A dedicated editor who paid attention to this could have begun to make this series head towards the level that Jordan maintains in the Wheel of Time. Instead we have someone who has a good outline for a story, that needs more work.
July 28, 2011
Add one star if you didn't come in the middle of the series like me. Epic fantasy about a rebellion to overthrow the corrupt dukes of Lescari. It feels like a second book to a trilogy, but assumes you have read the first book. A lot of names are thrown at you, and there are some odd plot decisions. A lot of space is focused on Litasse, the wife of one of the incumbent dukes, and pictured on the cover. However she doesn't really have any link to the rebellion or the rebellion's characters, and is just trying to avenge the death of her intelligencer while surviving the rebellion. Some characters get a lot of noise, like Tathrin, but just exist.
The rebellion warfare is meh. McKenna loves having people talk about and list the mercenary regiments participating, but the general never loses and never gets set back. It's curiously unengaging. It's mentioned in the author's note that she likes wargaming, and I think she views and writes the battles more like pieces engaging each other. I think though I really need the first book to give context, as there isn't much to emotionally engage you except on Litasse's side.
The rebellion warfare is meh. McKenna loves having people talk about and list the mercenary regiments participating, but the general never loses and never gets set back. It's curiously unengaging. It's mentioned in the author's note that she likes wargaming, and I think she views and writes the battles more like pieces engaging each other. I think though I really need the first book to give context, as there isn't much to emotionally engage you except on Litasse's side.
March 6, 2014
As the middle book of a trilogy, Blood in the Water gets to have fun with the characters, and there is plenty of action. There is also a lot of dialogue, which can get monotonous, but overall the book keeps a decent pace. A few surprises are thrown in, keeping the reader on their toes.
I won't give a synopsis or spoilers about the story, but I will say that I had to immediately grab the next book in the series after I finished this.
I won't give a synopsis or spoilers about the story, but I will say that I had to immediately grab the next book in the series after I finished this.
May 2, 2012
ok book, better than book 1, * thankfully read first book, character description in first book
indespensible for this book
indespensible for this book
September 6, 2013
The Chronicles of the Lescari Revolution #2
Displaying 1 - 6 of 6 reviews