The Rune Blade Trilogy

Kingmaker’s Sword, The Western King, Broken Blade by Ann Marston
Harper (1996, 1996, 1997)

This series falls victim to the good first book problem. The first book is very good, and I thoroughly enjoyed it. The problem is that the rest of the series, while good, did not really live up to the first book. It also irritated me by ending the series without actually ending the story.

I hate it when authors do that. I really like closure, and the third and final book in a trilogy should, if the world make sense, make a complete series.

That said, I highly recommend the first book, Kingmaker’s Blade. The characters are good, and I very much enjoyed the story. I very much like the development of Kian, and really liked the character of Cullen.

I was, however, annoyed by her use of dialect. Only Kian and Cullen seem to use it, and they don’t use it all the time. If they’re speaking a different language, I’d rather she just say that they were speaking a different language, then having them occasionally speak in a strange dialect. It was distracting, and didn’t do anything to develop the characters.

Her problem in the following books, The Western King and The Broken Blade, are that the main characters in those books are not nearly as compelling as the characters in the first book–I just didn’t care as much.

There is a second trilogy which, presumably, finishes the story. I looked into buying it used, but the third book is ridiculously expensive. I’ll read it at some point, because the first wasn’t a bad series, but it wasn’t so great that I have to know NOW.

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