Review on Eye of the Sword

I don’t know about you, but I tend to be that reader that likes a little variety in genre in her reading. I like a good suspense book, love some historical fiction a funny contemporary and yes even a good fantasy book filled with swords, princes and even a bit of magic thrown in.  Karen Henley’s offering Eye of the sword- Book two in the Angelaeon Circle definitely satisfied my hankering for a good fantasy story quite well, and even though I had not read Book one in this series, I was still able to follow along just fine and understand what was going on. 

 Our imperfect hero is Trevin who is revealed as being a “Nephili” or half angel, half human is on a quest.(There is always a good quest involved in a great fantasy book) to serve his King, King Laetham of Camrithia. His mission is to find the missing comains –the captains of the king’s army- and bring them back to Camrithia as they are needed because there is evil and rumblings happening in Camrithia.  Another part of his quest is to find 2 missing harps and bring them back to the princess Melaia who needs them to restore the stairway to heaven.  Trevin of course has an emotional attachment to Melaia and wants to prove his worth as well.  It is a dangerous mission with a time limit of one season in which to complete it.  Add in a dark and evil prince bent on wanting to marry Melaia to form an alliance between 2 kingdoms and you have an exciting fantasy book filled with angels, evil workings and interesting secrets that pop up to truly show the true worth of Trevin.

Strong points in this book really touched on Trevin’s identity, and struggling with his past decisions and mistakes and how that guilt impacted him now.  It begged the character to explore the question- “Am I the sum of my mistakes or am I able to be redeemed, move beyond them, learn and become someone with noble character?” I thought that was very well done and even encouraging if the reader goes deeper and asks themselves the same question.  I also have to say that I appreciated at the front of the book how the author had an easy referral guide, explaining each character and even the hierarchy of the different angels as it really helped me keep track.  I enjoyed this book very much and am definitely going to read the first book as well.

4 stars

I was given a free copy of this book from the blogging for books program in exchange for an honest review.  All opinions expressed are my own.