Twisted Kingdom

Savage Messiah: The Destinies of Blood and Stone by Robert Newcomb: 2.5 /5
published by Delrey in December 2005

This books is the first in the second trilogy of 3 planned trilogies to tell the story of the Blood & Stone. Confused? Simple, first there was a trilogy titled The Chronicles of Blood and Stone. Then we now have this new trilogy which continues where the last book left off. Two more books will round off the Destinies trilogy then finally we will have the Victories of Blood and Stone.

All told there are 9 books telling the story of Prince Tristan and I for once find it silly that it's divided into 3 trilogies.

Anyways, I must say I was extremely disappointed in this book. Seems I'm not the only one. Straight from Amazon we have the plot:

Set in the world of Eutracia, Newcomb's repetitive first volume in a new fantasy trilogy relies on the same gimmick as The Scrolls of the Ancients (2004), the final book in his Chronicles of Blood and Stone series. Once again a villain returns from the dead; Wulfgar, whom the heroic Tristan "killed" in The Scrolls of the Ancients, is now the all-powerful Enseterat, whose mastery of the dark magic of the Vagaries is enhanced by his direct contact with the ancient Heretics of the Guild. A more serious flaw is the book's system of magic. People are drawn toward the evil Vagaries or the good Vigors by the "lean" of their blood signatures. Magic can change this natural lean, but since characters gain their magical abilities not by study or practice or experimentation but by "forestallments" imbued into their blood, they lack free will. Newcomb's prose isn't strong enough to compensate for an uninspired adventure whose protagonists amount to mere automatons.

The characters are all very boring and one-dimensional. In fact, the only characters that intrigued me any where the assassin Satine and the villain Wulfgar. The heroes all seem to act impulsively as if this where the first time they faced an evil villain when in fact they've "been there" thrice before [in the previous trilogy]. From what I've read on those books, well, they seem to be just about a carbon copy of one another. I found myself not caring what happened to the heroes way before we even hit the middle of the book. After that I skimmed the rest simply to find out who got bumped off and how it was all wrapped up. It's a very bad sign when you are rooting for the bad guy simply because he seems the more alive of the bunch.

At first I thought I may want to find out just who the destined queen will be but, after having to skim just about half of the book I realized I don't care one bit just how this entire trilogy or series ends.

A migthy disappointing read.