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Blood of Assassins

The Wounded Kingdom, Book 2

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Blood of Assassins

By: RJ Barker
Narrated by: Joe Jameson
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To save a King, kill a King....

The assassin Girton Club-foot and his master have returned to Maniyadoc in hope of finding sanctuary, but death, as always, dogs Girton's heels. The place he knew no longer exists. 

War rages across Maniyadoc, with three kings claiming the same crown - and one of them is Girton's old friend Rufra. Girton finds himself hurrying to uncover a plot to murder Rufra on what should be the day of the king's greatest victory. But while Girton deals with threats inside and outside Rufra's war encampment, he can't help wondering if his greatest enemy hides beneath his own skin.

The Wounded Kingdom trilogy begins with Age of Assassins, continues with Blood of Assassins and will continue with King of Assassins.

©2018 RJ Barker (P)2018 Little, Brown Book Group Action & Adventure Classics Epic Epic Fantasy Fantasy Fiction Historical Royalty Assassin War
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Critic reviews

"Reveals its mysteries with the style of a magic show and the artful grace of a gifted storyteller." (Nicholas Eames, author of Kings of the Wyld)

"Outstanding...Kept me reading well into the early hours of the morning." (James Islington, author of The Shadow of What Was Lost)

"Dead gods, dread magic, and a lead that feels like a breath of fresh air. Great fun." (Peter Newman, author of The Vagrant)
All stars
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I went on to this straight after the first in the series as I had enjoyed it so much.
This was a bit more difficult than the first one, mainly because Gerten has changed quite a lot from the first book.

You know when you’re reading Harry Potter 5 and he’s being an insufferable tool for most of the book, flying off the handle for no reason and generally being horrid to everyone, including the people trying to help him? And you know it’s because he’s got PTSD from seeing a friend die, and because he’s a teenager trying to deal with devastating personal tragedy, so you can understand... but it also doesn’t make it any easier to read!
Well it’s exactly like that - except the anger and the violence are magnified ten fold by the bleak, hard and dangerous setting that the author has created here.
I found that hard going and shouted at Gerten a lot of times as I was driving around listening, but it is all worth it in the end.
I still ploughed through the whole thing in 4 days because I so wanted to know what happened. The characters are getting deeper, the story more complex and rewarding. This is a great series, with a haunting setting and some richly drawn social attitudes based on their environment. I’m really looking forward to hearing the next one.

Harder read than the first but definitely well worth it

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Slow start and nearly gave up and returned for credit but improved as went along. Didn't enjoy as much as book 1 but overall a good development of the tale.

Didn't think it was as good as book 1?

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I felt like Blood of Assassins was a decent enough read but not nearly as much fun as Age of Assassins. The story was decent enough but I did feel like it had a slowish start and overall I was not quite as engaged while listening to the happenings as I was while listening to those in the first book.

I also felt like Girton himself was the cause of a bit of frustration. There was a 5 year time jump between Age of Assassins and Blood of Assassins yet in that time Girton does not appear to have matured emotionally at all and often reacted to things like a moody 14 year old having a tantrum!

I did still enjoy this as it had a lot of the elements that made the first book a good story. This is a coming of age fantasy with a slightly YA feel to it but the action and mystery are decent enough.

Joe Jameson gave a great performance of the audio and he is a good fit for fantasy with younger lead characters.

Not quite as good as the first book.

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From start to finish, I really enjoyed this story. More pace than book one. It gets better and better.

Unputdownable.

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TLDR: An older Girton is thrown back into the machinations of the kingdom, but this time around we get a lot more bang for our buck. A solid improvement and a solid book.

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The book sees us once again reunited with Girton Club-Foot, a trained assassin who has been in hiding with his master since the events of Book 1 (though why they actually needed to disappear for 5 whole years is beyond me, considering what actually happened). So now we reacquaint ourselves with Girton as a 20-year-old, a young man where before he was an angsty teen, only now the angst has been replaced by something darker, and for once, I can truly believe that. He’s not evil, but he’s been through some shit, and that shit has left rather nasty stains upon his soul in some of the most believable character development I’ve ever come across. Again, this book didn’t speak to me personally as much as it would to listeners who like the more introspective novels, but by the dead gods, the fleshing out of Girton’s character was done well.
There’s more action in this book than Barker’s last foray into the Wounded Kingdom, and I for one am very pleased to see it. The entire backdrop of the book is war, which really tickled the military fiction fan I am at heart, but it certainly wasn’t constant. Once again, the story is very much situated around Girton and his relationships with those around him, and the war just happens to be going on. I still have the same issues with this book as I had with the last, though to a lesser degree. Again, there was very little exploration of the well-crafted world that Barker had created, but that’s Barker’s style and I can’t fault him for it. He produces a beautiful narrative with real, living and breathing characters within it. It’s just my personal preferences that lead me to want to see more of this world than we are shown through the eyes of Girton alone. The reignited friendship that forms the heart of this book is a joy to listen to, and the toing and froing that you are dragged through as you are constantly on edge about Girton’s dark secret coming to light is the ever-present anvil that keeps the story pumping. There are slow parts to be sure, but they are better paced than the last book and often ended with rather satisfying climaxes.
There was one plot device that sprang up fairly immediately in the story that had me growning with despair. It didn’t make sense and made that logical part of my brain slam its face against the bars of my sanity, but without giving too much away, it was explained entirely to my satisfaction by the novel’s end and I back-peddled all the mean things I was of a mind to say about it. Again, the novel is more of a murder mystery than it is the epic fantasy adventures that I love so much. It’s not a bad thing if these are the kinds of books you love, but that just isn’t the novel I kept hoping this would turn out to be.
Overall, the book was a decent improvement on the last. The ending was satisfying, tense, and left me very pleased that I had given Book 2 a try after not being so blown away by Book 1. As before, my personal score won’t give the book the justice that its quality deserves, but I blame that entirely on Barker for building such an interesting world and refusing to let me explore it more.
Narration was once again top-notch. The aging of the characters between Books 1 and 2 was worked beautifully into the changes in the voices and tones while leaving them unmistakably the same people as in the previous book. I’ve got a lot of time for good accents, of which this reading was full of, and the emotion of each character really came through. Another sterling performance by Joe Jameson.

Personal score: 3.75 stars.
Professional score: 4 stars.

Blood, blades, and battles.

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