With that said, the world we see in Nolyn is adequate – there’s a bit of travel, and a bit of talk of the lay of the land, but a good portion of the book is spent in Percepliquis, so this is where we get most of our actual building. There are some nods to the earlier books, in the Legends of the First Empire series, and those who have read the Riyria books may also pick up some references, Easter eggs if you will. While this is true, I feel that readers with that prior knowledge will have a richer experience with Nolyn than those who go into it as their first taste of Sullivan’s writing.
The notes for Nolyn state that this is a standalone work that requires no prior knowledge of the books set in this world. Similarly with the world itself, a lot of the work has already been done before we get to Nolyn. There is history that was crafted for previously released novels, even those set after Nolyn in the timeline. This is a book that should benefit from the work that has been done before. Sephryn is like Nolyn – half-human, half-Fhrey (basically an elf) – and is being forced by a sinister stranger to acquire a mythical item, for reasons unknown to her. We also follow Sephryn, who is Nolyn’s lover, or former lover, I’m not entirely sure where they stand at the start of the book.
Along with a small band of survivors, Nolyn sets off on a course of action to find out who wants him dead, and ends up caught up in much more than a single assassination plot. In Nolyn, we follow the emperor’s son, Nolyn Nyphronian, who starts out in the middle of the jungle on a certain death mission. This sounds like the books might be a trio of standalones rather than a traditional trilogy where events follow on from one book to the next. The Rise and Fall series, of which Nolyn is the opener, is set one or two thousand years prior to events in the Riyria books, and it’s planned to be three books detailing the rise and fall (I assume) of three key figures in this world’s history. Nevertheless, Nolyn interested me and I wanted to have another try of Sullivan’s work.
His Riyria Revelations series is in my top 10 list, but for some reason I just couldn’t get into the Riyria Chronicles, which is a prequel series detailing the origin story of the Riyria duo, Royce and Hadrian. Nolyn is the first in a new series by Riyria author Michael J Sullivan. ** Review copy supplied by Netgalley, with my thanks to them and to the publisher, Grim Oak Press **
0 kommentar(er)
