Young girls dye their hair red in imitation. Fable is to the current generation of Grandual what Saga, Rose’s father’s band, was to the former. Fable is comprised of Bloody Rose herself, the plot device of Kings of the Wyld whom we only ever met towards the end, her druin lover Freecloud, Cura, named the Inkwitch for the magical tattoos that cover her entire body, and Brune, a big bear of a man who can turn into, you guessed it, a large bear. Our story is told, with an ironic twist given the grisly fate of Saga’s bards in Eames’ first novel, through Tam’s eyes as she quickly becomes songstress to Fable, the world’s most famous band. Tam is the daughter of two world-famous mercenaries, and like Rose, contends on the daily with the need to fill the shadows of her fighting father and minstrel mother. The Nick Carraway to Rose’s Jay Gatsby is a young bard named Tam Hashford. Scott Fitzgerald, he has shown himself to be the world’s foremost authority in dropping Final Fantasy ref-bombs, and if that weren’t enough to impress, he also writes the kind of fantasy that is both immensely satisfying and deeply human. What might have surprised me was how much more I would enjoy Bloody Rose than I ever did The Great Gatsby, because while Eames may not quite have the melancholy romance of an F. If someone had told me that I would be reading the fantasy equivalent of The Great Gatsby when cracking open Bloody Rose, the newest in Nicholas Eames’ Band series, I would have arched an eyebrow and then nodded excitedly because that’s an incredibly cool idea. Please take notice of the spoiler tags when reading – proceed at your peril!)))

((( Warning: The following review contains spoilers for Bloody Rose.

Bloody rose nicholas eames