Any reader who has followed the series
about THE
BLOOD and THE
BALANCE, a tale of a spacefaring race which settled new
planets and forgot their origins, will be delighted with
this concluding instalment. Allynn Riggs had the difficult
task of recapping earlier events and moving forward to wrap
up all the loose threads with the action in THE BLADES.
New readers will probably do better to read the earlier
books The Blood:
The Stone's Blade 1, and The
Balance: The Stone's Blade 2, before moving on to this
third book. A glowing blade is wielded by a fighter, and the
champion, a woman, named Ani, discovers that she can
communicate telepathically with a strange stone. The initial
book seems like a blend of SF and fantasy, but later the
revelation that alien life forms live as the singing stones
accounts for the strangenesses. Ani wins our admiration as
she has to quest for more stones and fellow telepaths, but
the blade users are challenged by the amoral man Treyder who
experiments on humans and wants to create a weapon that can
send opponents into a coma.
At the start of this story, Treyder is smarting from a raid
on the laboratory, in which the sheriff from Star Valley,
Taryn, was saved from his clutches. He's far from being out
of business, though, and the military guard is strengthened.
Ani who holds the Anyala stone, and her respectful, loving
partner Renloret, work harder to uncover more stones --
which may have been buried for a thousand years. Kela, a
telepathic dog, is Ani's loyal companion also, a very nice
touch with the effect of sometimes being a cheeky younger
sibling and sometimes a fighting companion.
As the science fiction adventure unfolds, the planets
Teramar and Lrakira provide spectacular moons and local
settings. We learn that an asteroid threatened to destroy
the planetary home of the original settlers, and when they
made a desperate escape, three Stones went with them to
Lrakira and three went to Teramar. Can they all be found and
reunited? What will happen if they are? Given that the
settlers face an existential threat, the risks may be worth
taking. In terms of grand scope, author Allynn Riggs has
outdone herself. Also, while the second book's locations
sometimes seemed too cosy, THE BLADES grasps the challenge
firmly, adding beasts, cloaking devices and conveyances as
required to spice up the narrative. I enjoyed the read and
hope to read a new series from this very talented author in
the future.
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