The Blood Stones

Legends of the Bruhai, Book 1

De: Tori Tecken

Narrado por: Andrew D. Meredith

His name is not worthy.

A traitor is executed, his name ripped away from history. Now the kingdom stands on the brink of a succession war that could bring the country to its knees. Forces stalk the darkness, moving pawns into place in a deadly game.

Gehrin and his brothers were not meant to witness the execution, but now they find themselves trapped in the center of a political quagmire. When Gehrin faces the loss of everything he knows, will he also lose himself?

To the south, tribal warlords clash in an endless cycle of violence. Syndri, the daughter of a chieftain, kills for the honor of her people. An alliance with a foreign queen offers the power to unite the tribes, but at what cost?

Someday, history will remember them as legends.

©2023 Tori Tecken (P)2024 Tori Tecken

An epic tale of fate and fortune.

I enjoyed spending a couple of weeks with the characters of the Blood Stones. They were wrought with careful thought and the care of a mother. I am anxious to see what becomes of them.

Fantastic slow burn Dothraki inspired fantasy.

The first thing to say about this book is that it is a self published book and absolutely in no way reads like one. I’ve read enough self pub that sometimes within a single paragraph you can tell that they didn’t have enough editors or passes at it for the writing to feel smooth and professional. If I didn’t know that Tori had self published this, I wouldn’t have figured it out from the text itself.

Overall this book reminded me STRONGLY of two other books. It reminded me a lot of A Shadow in Summer by Daniel Abraham and the Dothraki portions of A Game of Thrones by George RR Martin.

The GoT comparison is easy as one of the main plots here deals with a nomadic, Mongol style tribe of horse folk. However the Daniel Abraham comparison is a bit more nuanced. It comes down to the tone of the book and the pacing. The whole time I was reading this I thought to myself “people who love A Shadow in Summer would love this book too (Allen)”. The political back and forth, the plots within plots, the deliberate pacing as things are slowly revealed, etc.

It definitely is a book one, and so there’s a lot of things that don’t come together by the end, but it leaves me excited for how things will go in book two!

If I had to give a negative there are three things I’d say, and they’re all minor.
First I didn’t love the audiobook. It’s not bad (and believe me, self pub books having an audiobook lends TONS of credibility to the work) but it’s not amazing. The reading is ok but even some of the side characters had more memorably distinct voices than main characters. (And there were some technical goofs. Repeated phrases, different audio levels, etc. ) Not horrible but I’ll be physically reading book two personally.
Secondly 70% of the worldbuilding is fantastic (like more believable than many mainstream fantasy books I’ve read) but some of the lore was confusing and some things I felt a bit lost in. Maybe that would’ve better if I’d physically read it.
Last of all is a REAL nitpick and it’s the audiobooks fault, but not because of the reader. Hear me out. There’s a deity character that I believe is also supposed to be the sun that’s called “Aqatar” which is pronounced exactly like ACOTAR the acronym for A Court of Thorns and Roses. So that was distracting a bit, but it did make me laugh. Haha.

Despite my nitpicks, this is a great book. The ending was fantastic and Tori is a remarkably polished author who I definitely plan on reading more of!!