Wrath of the fury Blade by Geoff Habiger and Coy Kissee. It is a unique in its story telling as it blends a few genre together. It’s not an unusual when you are doing it with Crimes, as this novel is doing but it goes to police procedural through fantasy creatures eyes. You get to know about the world itself and what all goes on and shows the influence that others have and their outlooks.



The book is about Reva an inspector and her new partner Ansee a problematic bedfellow who’s too stubborn and does things her own way. The case is a high murder profile case that they have to find the killer and deal with the corruption that goes with politics.

I rather enjoyed the world building and the description of what people wore and how things look around, but it is a lot of information at once in some areas and therefore made it a bit harder to stay focused on. It’s still a decent book but one you have to put your mind to so you can continue reading it.

Wrath of the furious grammarian

"Lies in shadow no more
the red Light reveals
the masquerade

“Shouldn’t that be ‘lays in shadow no more’?” asked Loren… He turned to look at the body, in the shadow of the desk. “The killer got that wrong.”

No, the killer got it right. And why are you asking?

Either "(He) lies" or "(The) lies" works, depending on what the inscription intends. But no one is "laying" anything. "Lay" is a transitive verb and required an object.

But why this question at all? If we need to know that Loren is an undereducated booby, it should be handled elsewhere. The lack of corrective reaction to Loren's mistake by anyone in the room suggests that no one in the room knows grammar. If this is question is a clue to something it falls way flat. If the authors agree with Loren, this whole scene is nuts. AARGH.

My publishing friends tell me that an ARC should be two editing steps from the final version. It needs still to be checked by the senior copy editor and then by the author before it is sent to the printer. The ARC I am working from is a grammatical nightmare. Nerve grating and unreadable

Due to weak worldbuilding and rambling info dumps detailing nearly every physical detail of nearly every character Reva and her partner encounter, Wrath of the Fury Blade becomes an overly complicated story with an ambiguous moral lesson. These elements drag down the thrilling unique murder case promised in the prologue and in the end, the reader may be disappointed in the novel as a whole.

A full review appeared in the print version of The Gazette (Cedar Rapids, Iowa) on May 6, 2018.

A fascinating concept well executed. I enjoyed Wrath of the Fury Blade, and look forward to a sequel. Although enchanted knives are nothing new the storytelling is rarely as good as in this one. Nice characterization and setting, too.

Wrath of the Fury Blade tries to be several things:  It is a police procedural, a commentary on Nazism, a semi-romance and a fantasy.  The story itself is engaging, with police elf Reva Lunaria untangling the mysterious murder of the First Magistrate, a murder where the victim is cut completely in half, in his own home, with no witnesses.  A second murder, this time of the kingdom's finance minister, soon follows, then more attacks and murders.

Elvish Nazis
It's clear that someone has a vendetta against a group of people, but what ties the group together?  Reva's only clue is the pin that each victim wears, from a club dedicated to elven racial purity; the victims' pins all have one black star, possibly indicating a secret sub group.

Here's where the Nazi problem comes in.  The king promulgated Purity Laws three times, each one decades apart, and each one increasingly strict.  Now a person with a great grandparent who was not elvish is no longer an elf and cannot own property nor be married to an elf.  (The authors say this is Fascism, but Fascists revere the State, not the blood.  Nazis revere "pure" blood.)

This Nazi/Jim Crow/Apartheid nasty mess is a backdrop that doesn't add much to the story.  It explains a little why some of the secret society is so careful to hide their Dark Elf ancestry, but we didn't need the entire Jim Crow racial nonsense to make that point work.  The authors brought in a few incidents with the now-denigrated non-elves that felt pasted on, as if they initially intended to make those incidents a big part of the story, then changed their mind and left the stubs.

The primary story, Revi and her new partner Ansee, unraveling the murders and finding the culprit, is good.  It moves fast and is engaging.  The secondary story, with the Gestapo-like Sucra working hand-in-hand with the new police commissioner, is also quite well done.

This secondary story is terrifying all by itself as we see the Sucra's Senior Inquisitor Malvaceä torturing, imprisoning without cause, extorting, killing and setting up false trails.  I'd like to see the authors further develop the primary story against the backdrop of this secret police threat to the king and kingdom.

Overall
Wrath of the Fury Blade is readable and I mostly enjoyed it.  There were a few spots that are far-fetched, for example, when Revi's long time information source not only recognizes the pins but knows there is a centuries-long plot against the king that ties into the pins.

The characters were fairly interesting but not well developed enough to carry the novel without the fast plot.  Revi felt too much like a composite police/dectective/good guy crime fighter and the authors dropped a few clues that she may have more going on than the stock character they present.

Wrath of the Fury Blade leaves us ready for a sequel.  I think we'll have more Revi/Ansee interactions, possibly more about Revi's family and murdered father and we'll see why Ansee and his sister do not get along. I'm hoping the authors build onto the Sucra threat.  I also hope the authors write a little less of a multi-genre mash up and concentrate on the characters and pick one or two main stories.

I received a free copy from NetGalley in expectation of an honest review.

Wrath of the Fury Blade has potential, but it definitely needs a good bit of work.  Habiger and Kissee spend far too much time describing incidentals and elements of each character’s appearance, rather than taking the time to develop the characters.  It reads more like a gm run adventure game than an actual novel.  It got to the point where it was distracting and more than a bit annoying.  Readers really don’t need detailed descriptions of everyone’s hair.  Elements of the plot were left at loose ends (why did the Wake affect Reva so severely so quickly), and there were areas where editing missed problems (duplicated text in chapter 29) and wrong word usage.  

With some refinement Wrath of the Fury Blade could be a solid first novel.  It has an interesting plot and a pair of well developed leads.  But at the present time I can’t give it more than a 3.

3 / 5

I received a copy of Wrath of the Fury Blade from the publisher and Netgalley.com in exchange for an honest review.

-- Crittermom

Excellent fantasy book. You really get invested in the two main characters. I am anxiously waiting for the next book in what I'm sure will be a best selling series.