Lord of the Firelands (A Tale of the King's Blades)

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Synopsis
2 young men graduate from a school where they are trained to be the King's bodyguards, magically bound and in the binding given great powers.
Only these 2 youngsters don't take the oath of fealty and a whole story of the past rolls forth from that. It also propels them both towards a future they can only guess at.

My Thoughts
This story starts out with the above as the beginning: 2 youngsters graduating. Which leads to a confrontation with the king and a history is revealed.
That history starts with a sacking of a town and the kidnapping of a young lord. Said young lord helps out the raiders leader with another sacking, which gets the raider the kingship of his land. He marries a royal he kidnapped in the second raid and has a son.
We follow the son growing up until he is forced from the land in a coup.

Then we switch to after the confrontation with the king and the young man, Raider and his Blade, Wasp, go back to Baelland to see if Raider can take back the kingship. Ends up becoming the next king and making war on the land that he graduated from.

If you think my synopsis and first couple of paragraphs are confusing, I agree. This book was not strictly linear and great parts were not about the main character, but setup and explanation.

It made for a great read, but not easily explained. The political intrigue, the action, the characterization, it all was top notch. Very little swordplay but I barely missed it.

There are 3 books in the King's Blades series, but from the little forward that Duncan included, it sounds like they are overlapping somewhat and telling things from different viewpoints, once again not linear story telling.

I am looking forward to the next 2 books.

Rating: 4.5 of 5 Stars
Author: Dave Duncan