Book Reviews and #TackleTBR update – day 13

Only one more day to go in the Tackle your TBR Readathon for this year.  On Monday I’ll do a final round-up post, including the winners of my Challenge (see Wednesday’s post). I’ve been a bit distracted this week by the illness of one of my guinea pigs, so haven’t got through the latest in the K’Barthan trilogy as quickly as expected, but here is today’s update and mini-reviews of books read this week.

Week 2, day 13

What I read Friday: One Man, No Plan (K’Barthan Trilogy #3) by M T McGuire
Number of pages read:
Today’s finished books:
Total number of finished books: 4
Reviews of finished books:

The King’s Sword by C J Brightley

This is a difficult one to review.  It’s a nice tale, in fact it’s pretty much a knight’s tale, although the hero is not strictly a knight, but he is an ex-warrior, betrayed by the king’s advisers and dismissed without a penny, the only one to survive a trap.  Now he has found a boy in a wood not far from the castle, the old king is dead, and the adviser appears to have seized the throne…  As I said, it’s a nice tale.  I felt it was well padded, and nothing much happens for long periods although it gives the author a chance to give us lots of backstory about the kingdom and the various factions, and also the different races that are on its borders.  Lovely detailed world-building, but in truth, I started to skip it from about one third onwards, picking up the action when that happened.  There’s plenty of growing up on the part of the boy, heroism on the part of the hero, and politics on behalf of, well, everybody.  All the characters are engaging, although the other warriors introduced later are just introductions.  Maybe it will develop well in books two and three, but I don’t feel sufficiently engaged to find out.

The House at Sea’s End, Jungle Land,Rounding the Mark (Montalbano #7) – see last Saturday