Violence of Action

In the prior two books the Rangers have been hanging on to their lives by the skin of their teeth. Now, finally, they have been given some breathing room to go on the offensive, and oh boy do they go. This is a book of two very different stories, with the first being a blow-by-blow rundown of how the Rangers intend to slay a dragon and the other being a little much needed explanation as to how the whole Ruin came to be. Both are good, although they could have maybe been melded together a little better. I shall explain.

So the book is prefaced by the authors explaining how the narrative is going to be presented quite differently than the prior two books. First is the attempt to kill the dragon that has been terrorising their area of the Ruin for thousands of years, told in a non-linear fashion as it jumps seamlessly between the events of said attempted scaley takedown and the prior events and training that proceeded each section of the thoroughly planned assault. Anspach and Cole took a risk doing it like this, but it’s a risk that completely pays off. The aim was to show us listeners the ridiculous depth to which Rangers plan their assaults on high value targets, a methodology that they use here in our world to take out the enemies of Uncle Sam which they then apply in the Ruin to a bit of good old fashioned dragon slaying. It works wonderfully, and we are shown the degree to which these professional warriors are truly professionals, not running in screaming and shouting but intricately planning each aspect of the mission regardless of the fact that they now find themselves in a grim fantasy world that does nothing but try to kill them. The whole ride from start to finish is extremely entertaining, and because of the way that it is laid out, the awesome action scenes are evenly spaced through the entire main story without being disjointed or losing any of their fire. It’s a great technique used masterfully.

Now the second section of the book is an entirely separate narrative that explains a fair amount about how the Ruin came to be. It’s slow paced, or it is compared to the high-octane all-out charge that we’ve become used to with these novels. It’s incredibly interesting how Anspach and Cole have been able to stich the insanity of their book’s core concepts into something that the audience can actually say, ‘yeah, ok, I can see how all this lunacy actually came together’. I am very much looking forward to learning more. They have given us enough that, in theory, they could leave it there and let us as the audience fill in whatever blanks we have, but considering the way the structure was set up, I definitely think we’re going to get more from this past narrative in future books. Now here’s my problem with this section. I personally think that, instead of having it as a separate novelle at the end, the whole thing could have been weaved into the main narrative. I’m not giving anything away in saying that we learn of the past events from a book that the Rangers find at the end of the main novel, but that book could have just as easily been found at the end of Book 2 and thus allowed Anspach and Cole to drip-feed us its chapters through the main novel instead of lumping it all at the end. However, seeing as they were already trying something new with the non-linear aspects of the main storyline, I am inclined to give them a pass for not pushing the boat out too far.

There was one aspect of the main story that did irritate me. To avoid spoilers, I’ll just say that something fairly important for character development and relationships as well as the narrative structure of the story as a whole occurs at the end of the main story, and it’s kind of just glossed over. No great detail, no build up, just ‘Oh, and this thing happened as well and it changes a huge amount of things for our characters. The end’. Like, it is super important, and I’m pretty sure it is going to get fleshed out more in Book 4 (I hope), but Anspach and Cole missed a chance to add some truly deep character development, an aspect that has been sorely missing from much of this series thus far. I was just left at a bit of a loss as to why it wasn’t given any more words than it did. But aside from that, the book was great. Again, you have to be into your military action genera to really enjoy this book, but seeing as I am, I thoroughly enjoyed it.

As for narration, Christopher Ryan Grant once again does a great performance. I particularly liked his dragon voice. It produced the calculating, otherworldly nature of the beast and didn’t just paint it as some great evil being that needs to be destroyed. A great portrayal of a creature that I often have a lot of problems with in other fantasy novels.

Personal Score: 4.25 stars

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