A N D U N I N cradled the head of his son, his only son, in his lap. Slowly his fingers brushed back the dark hair from the boy’s eyes. The blood on his own fingertips left damp smears on the smooth skin of Tarlin’s forehead. A wind like Andunin had never felt before sliced through his soggy cloak as the rain fell cold and hard. Water slipped down his face under the curls of his thick grey beard and fell from his chin upon Tarlin’s face and neck. His hands, trembling from the cold, brushed Tarlin’s eyelids closed.
In the distance a group of armed men stood around a pile of bodies, slowly but steadily dragging more and more of the slain to the growing mound, but Andunin hardly noticed them. What did he care who else had died? The plight of some foolish merchant or farmer, or even one of the Novaana who had joined in a band of like fools to oppose his army, was no longer of any consequence to him. His son was dead.
Thus opens the first book of 5 in The Binding of the Blade series, by author L.B. Graham. I finished book 1 today, Beyond the Summerland. All in all, it's very well done and I'm quite anxious to begin book 2. Even though the symbolism is potentially too obvious at times (maybe not...the jury is still out), Mr. Graham's world, plot and characters are compelling and, for me, more easily accessible than Tolkien's revered Middle Earth. Don't misunderstand. I'm not saying that what he has created surpasses Tolkien, only that I connected with Graham's world more readily. His parallels were more ideologically consistent than most fantasy I've read.
In spite of its nearly 600 pages, this was a quick read and the somewhat shocking ending left me wanting more...NOW!
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