Kristen Britain’s first book and its sequel.
I liked the first book, Green Rider. It’s a solid adventure story; the Green Riders remind me a bit of Valedemar’s Heralds, but in mostly good ways. The faded magic is an different backdrop. Particularly interesting is the main character Karigan; much like Tolkein’s hobbits, she often succeeds because of her friends and the gifts she’s been given. It’s interesting to see a fantasy hero so dependent on others for everything but mettle.
By the end of the book, I felt like I knew Karigan pretty well and enjoyed the adventure. The author does a good job of reminding us about the character’s pain and unreadiness for the nation spanning task she got stuck with.
First Rider’s Call was less interesting to me. The rotating points of view are weaker, or less to my taste, than Karigan’s viewpoint in the first book. The primary focus is still on Karigan, but we get some additional– and for most of the book apparently disconnected– viewpoints. Hadrian’s letters are somewhat interesting, but always lag the main plot– the interesting changes and debates that Hadrian goes through have already happened by the time it gets to his POV.
The time jumping felt forced, particularly in the first half of the book, before an explanation is given. The information given matters more, and Karigan’s ability to witness the events in real time makes it more suspenseful than the letters. The other two viewpoints didn’t interest me much at all; the villain was much less impressive after looking through his eyes (and those of his contemporary). D’Yer was an interesting idea, but was never a POV I much cared about.
Karigan is changed– she does her duty and does it well. Much of what she does is through her effort rather than the effort of friends. While this sounds better, it makes her closer to typical fantasy heroes in my mind. Her horse changes too; communally, the remind me of Valedemar’s companions far more now.
In the end, the parallel storylines didn’t really work for me. The different POVs tended to diffuse the tension rather than complimenting each other. The other issue– and maybe a big factor affecting everything– was that this book felt the middle book of a trilogy. A lot of setbacks and bad stuff happens, averted in part like limited fire breaks created by the heroes efforts and sacrifices. In the end we have some small hope but a looming evil remains… perfect for a third book.
Despite my grousing above, I’ll probably check the third book out of the library (when it’s done) and see how Karigan’s story ends.