The Best Book I've Read In Two Years

When I first finished Patrick Rothfuss’ Name Of The Wind two years ago I was a bit sad. I knew that even though the book was wonderful (and had a sequel on the horizon), that great books which capture me as that one did don’t come along very often. Before Rothfuss was Harry Potter, and that was a good number of years before Rothfuss. It was five years before Potter that Pillars Of The Earth fell into my hands. So I’ve been working on an average of one Utterly Captivating Read every five years or so. Watching the last page of Name Of The Wind blink offscreen, I knew it was going to be another five years before I found one of those Utterly Captivating Reads.

Now, that’s not to say there haven’t been other great books. Other five-star books. George RR Martin has written a few. So has Lois McMaster Bujold. Five-star books, through and through–books that I’ve read more than once out of a desire to travel into them again.

But there are just some books that make five stars look like the sky on a cloudy night and beg for a constellation. Those are the Utterly Great Reads, the ones whose stories feel more real than the stories you know other people think are real.

I wasn’t expecting another Utterly Great Read for three more years. I wasn’t due for one, you see.

I certainly wasn’t expecting it to be independently published, released in near secret and available on Kindle for less than the price of my usual Vente Breve Chai Latte at Starbucks. Seriously. This thing was three dollars. I swear to you I want to send twenty bucks and a bottle of Macallan to the guy who wrote it. It’s that good. This is a book that should be in leather-bound hardback, smythe-sewn, gold tooling, deckle-edged paper. It’s a book that costs less than a large bag of cheetos, for crying out loud!

This is the book:
Raven’s Shadow Book 1: Blood Song by Anthony Ryan

I don’t know the man–wish I did–but I know from his brief bio (historian, professional researcher, fantasy buff) that he’s the kind of fellow I’d see bits of myself and best friends in. The exact kind of fellow to write a rich, nuanced book like this. The kind of fellow who deserves to have his name up there with the greats.

I’m trusting the few of you who read this blog to read this book and to spread the word about its utter wonderfulness for me. Because I can’t go door to door begging people to read it and I don’t have a talk show or a magazine or connections that would get this book the attention it deserves. So I’m endeavouring to give it the attention I can. Please read it. Please.

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