I finished Den of Blades and Briars by LJ Andrews. This is book seven in the nine book series The Broken Kingdoms. This book is fabulous. This whole series is fabulous. There are four kingdoms North, East, South and West. There are Fae, humans and all other sort of creatures. The magic system is very complex but is explained and compounded upon with each subsequent book. The complex and detailed world that Andrews has built is really like no other fantasy world I've read about. The Viking influence is very strong and apparent. The fairy tale re-tellings take a back seat to the complex plots in each of these. This book in particular follows Ari to the Southern Kingdom where he has been charged to oversee the preparation of vows between Gunnar and Eryka. Gunnar is the son of Valen's sister and Malin's brother. Eryka is from the Southern Kingdom. All of these people and their stories are very intertwined in the best possible ways. Andrews herself describes this series as Vikings (the TV show) meets Once Upon a Time. In the previous book Ari was bonded to Saga who had fought against them in the battle. They have a mutual loathing of each other. There is much more to Saga than she lets on. She had not willingly allied herself with the fallen queen Astrid, but she could not speak the truth to Ari so she must endure the treatment from the misunderstanding. Ari doesn't particularly like the situation that Prince Bracken has placed him in with the bond so he pesters Saga relentlessly but never harms her. The rest of the people in town treat her as a traitor and threaten her well being. Despite his feelings of ill will he wont let any harm come to Saga and ends up defending her from a rabble of murderous dock workers. For reasons neither of them understand they both start feeling things about each-other. Then certain events happen that necessitate Ari fleeing for his life. Saga goes with him. There is forced proximity, an inn with one bed... all the fun tropes. Eventually some of the truths come out and they both realize one has sorely misunderstood the other. There interweaving theme in all these books is that no one can escape one's fate. There was an entire prophesy if you will that was set in motion turns ago and all the pieces are falling into place one book at a time. This book ends on what I would call a cliff hanger. Luckily the series is complete so I can just jump right into the next book, which I have. So to sum up. It made me laugh, it made me cry, it made me squee with joy. This book knocked it out the park, just as I suspected it would, because this author is one of the greats and I'd read her re-telling of the local phone book at this point. If you haven't jumped into the Broken Kingdom series yet, what are you even doing?
-Q
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