Review: The Crimson Campaign

Author: Brian McClellan
Date Started: 12/01/2019
Date Finished: 14/04/2019
Pages: 593
Genre: Fantasy
Star Rating:✪✪✪✪.5

 

Synopsis (for the first book):

IT’S A BLOODY BUSINESS, OVERTHROWING A KING
Field Marshal Tamas’s coup against his king brings bread to the starving, but it also provokes war in the Nine Nations, internal attacks by royalist fanatics and a greedy scramble for money and power by Tamas’s supposed allies.
Stretched to his limit, Tamas relies on his few remaining powder mages to keep the peace. But amid the chaos, a whispered rumour is spreading. A rumour of a broken promise, omens of death and the gods returning to walk the earth.
Surely nobody really believes those old legends.
Perhaps they should.

My Thoughts: 

Following on from the 1st book, Tamas is war obsessed making this way through enemy territory. Adamat is hell-bent on getting his family back after they were kidnapped. Taniel is doped up in a mala den, caring about nothing and Ka-Poel is always by Taniel’s side trying to get him to make him see his way.  

I really love this series so far and it keeps on getting better and better! Brian McClellan is a good writer and I really enjoy his writing style. 

I really liked the way that the characters develop in this book. I especially like the development of Taniel and Ka-Poel throughout this book and the way that their relationship develops. 

This has so much more action and development than the first book. 

The way the storylines are intertwined throughout the books allowed me to be speed through both books I have read so far in this series. I think the female characters are actually done pretty well in this story but I do think that they should be in the story a little bit more. 

I can not wait to carry on with this series and see how it develops. 

In Farleigh Field Review

Title: In Farleigh Field 

Author Rhys Bowen 

Type: Kindle (Amazon) 

✪✪✪✪

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World War II comes to Farleigh Place, the ancestral home of Lord Westerham and his five daughters when a soldier with a failed parachute falls to his death on the estate. After his uniform and possessions raise suspicions, MI5 operative and family friend Ben Cresswell is covertly tasked with determining if the man is a German spy. The assignment also offers Ben the chance to be near Lord Westerham’s middle daughter, Pamela, whom he furtively loves. But Pamela has her own secret: she has taken a job at Bletchley Park, the British code-breaking facility.

As Ben follows a trail of spies and traitors, which may include another member of Pamela’s family, he discovers that some within the realm have an appalling, history-altering agenda. Can he, with Pamela’s help, stop them before England falls?

Inspired by the events and people of World War II, writer Rhys Bowen crafts a sweeping and riveting saga of class, family, love, and betrayal.

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When I first started reading this book I really didn’t think I was going to get on with it at all. I didn’t like the way in which the character spoke to each other and there was something about it which really made me uncomfortable whilst I was reading it. There was a section at the beginning where two characters were talking to one another and they said something was “donkey’s years” away.

(Sorry I didn’t get the exact section but I forgot to highlight it on my kindle). 

Now I don’t know whether this is me being naive in a way to how people acted back then but it seemed abnormal to me and this was something I used to say to my brother regarding things a long way away when we were growing up.  I suppose it had to come from somewhere. 

I really liked the characters, except “Dido”. She was one character I didn’t gel with at the beginning. This was due to her behaviour, I didn’t see how one could be so different from her older sister regarding things like Sex and behaviour in general. She also did one thing a sister should never do (I’ll leave this for you find out). Although I did think that this act would get brought up not brushed under the carpet anyway, I did enjoy the rest of the characters and didn’t see the turn the book was about to take. 

I really appreciated the author at the end specifying where the fiction and fact were placed within the book. Like the MI5 have actually operated the way she had written they were and the fact that the base where Pamela was based on her work is a place you can actually go and visit. I really liked this touch. 

I can’t wait to check out other books by this author and I would recommend this book to people who like books with Spies in and books set in world war 2.