Last night I finished Dave Duncan’s Lord of the Fire Lands. This is one of his “King’s Blades” books, the first being The Guilded Chain which I told you about last July.

Like the first book, Fire Lands is an enjoyable read, though I didn’t like it quite as much. Part of that stemmed from the odd delivery…early parts of the book take place as flashbacks but when we catch up to the present it feels like the pacing changes in an odd way.

Also, though its “A Tale of the King’s Blades” it isn’t really about a King’s Blade. It’s about a Bael, the Baelish being “the enemy” in the first book. Bael’s are modeled on sort of a Viking theme, living on an archipelago complete with active volcano. They aren’t big enough to invade Chivia (where the King’s Blades live) but they harry the coast and strangle trade. Anyway, this book lets you see the war from the other side, so to speak (not that the war is the predominant theme in either book).

Lord, I’m rambling. Anyway, what was really interesting here is that the events of the two books aren’t in sync. Things happen in one that don’t in the other, and vice versa. My first thought was “What shoddy continuity.” but then I flipped back to the front and read a warning that we’ll see discrepancies between the two, and only reading the third will clear them up.

OK, I swallowed that, hook, line and sinker, and you can bet that my next book is going to be Sky of Swords!