Michael Sullivan's The Riyria Revelations series

[pat5150]

No, if you say that bloggers have been raving about it, I believe you. :)

I guess those books somehow got lost in the unending flow of novels I receive every week (about 700 of them in 2010 when all is said and done). They probably didn't stand out enough, or maybe I received them in the same batch that saw me pick up something I was really looking forward to and thus they were overlooked. . .

Oh well. . .

Patrick

[aidan]

They're small press, so it's likely that you didn't get a review copy. Lucky for me, the eBooks are nice and cheap!

[Tom the Merciful]

No, if you say that bloggers have been raving about it, I believe you. :)

I guess those books somehow got lost in the unending flow of novels I receive every week (about 700 of them in 2010 when all is said and done). They probably didn't stand out enough, or maybe I received them in the same batch that saw me pick up something I was really looking forward to and thus they were overlooked. . .

Oh well. . .

Patrick

OK, now seriously. Liviu of Fantasy Book Critics regarded it highly, same as Scott on Iceberg Ink and many others.

Question is - since it is a small press publication (Ridan Publishing), what are the chances it is reprinted as MMPB?

EDIT: Forgot to post a question to Aidan: where do you buy ebooks and which format they are in?

[aidan]

OK, now seriously. Liviu of Fantasy Book Critics regarded it highly, same as Scott on Iceberg Ink and many others.

Question is - since it is a small press publication (Ridan Publishing), what are the chances it is reprinted as MMPB?

EDIT: Forgot to post a question to Aidan: where do you buy ebooks and which format they are in?

Kobo has them for about 4 bucks. ePub.

[Tom the Merciful]

epub rulez!

Now we're talking! Hello Riyria!

I hope they deliver outside US?!

[Switchback]

I just read where this series got picked up by Orbit. They're going to repackage it as a trilogy, each consisting of 2 parts (books), to be released in consecutive months starting in Nov 2011.

I've only read the first 2 so far, but really enjoyed them. Great fun. Cool to see he's made the big leagues with it.

[Songstress]

I picked up the Kindle version of Avempartha (book 2) for $0 on Amazon in January - I finally got around to reading it last month, and loved it. Went back and picked up books 1, 3 and 4 right away... and right when I was about to finish book 4, they started pulling the Kindle versions of all of them down. Will have to wait for the Book 5/6 compilation from Orbit in January '12. Have recommended the series to some of my friends who are fantasy literature fans - I'm so glad I ran across it!

[rsullivan9597]

Hey all,

I'm Robin (Michael's wife) and his self-appointed publicist. I'm glad to find you guys talking about his series on this site. A lot has been going on and I wanted to just stop by and fill people in.

As Switchback mentioned the series did indeed get sold to Orbit and they fast-tracked the release. They are putting the six-book series out as three books as follows:

Theft of Swords (Nov 23, 2011) - contains The Crown Conspiracy & Avempartha

Rise of Empire (Dec 15, 2011) - contains Nyphron Rising & The Emerald Storm

Heir of Novron (Jan 30, 2012) - contains Wintertide and Percepliquis (that has never been previously released).

These first five of the original versions of the books are out of print and only available via used booksellers:

The last book in the "old series", Percepliquis, will be released as a standalone book coinciding with the Heir of Novron release in January 2012.

Also...Michael just recently released a prequel short story that we are providing for free (or $0.99 on Amazon and Barnes and Noble because that is the lowest price we can do). No prior knowledge of the series is required as it is a standalone book that introduces the two main characters. It is just 5,400 words long so it can be read in 30-60 minutes depending on your reading speed and is a nice easy way to "try out" the series.

Here is a bit about that story:

Eleven years before they were framed for the murder of a king, before even assuming the title of Riyria, Royce Melborn and Hadrian Blackwater were practically strangers. Unlikely associates, this cynical thief and idealist swordsman, were just learning how to work together as a team. In this standalone first installment of The Riyria Chronicles, Royce is determined to teach his naive partner a lesson about good deeds. Join Royce and Hadrian in this short story (5,400 words) about one of their earliest adventures..

There is a lot of other new developments such as many foreign translations, a UK version of the books, hardcover book club edition, and an audio edition that is in the works but I've already made a rather long post so if you have any questions I'll be checking back from time to time.

Thanks again for the nice things people have been saying about the series - and please let me know if you try the short and what you think about it.

Robin.

[Werthead]

Reading the first Orbit omnibus now. And it's very solid stuff. Enjoyable and light, with the 'classic fantasy' approach not meaning 'outdated and lame, y'know, like Eddings'. Fast-paced and fun with some rather subtle worldbuilding (even if the map's lack of a scale is highly confusing: we are told that the human lands are vast, yet 10 miles seems to take you from one side of a kingdom to the other). I particularly like the fact that when characters meet a long-lived individual born a thousand years earlier who hasn't hung out much with the rest of the world, they can barely understand him and it's like a modern British person trying to talk to Chaucer. They can do it, but it takes time and patience (of course, being a wizard he eventually overcomes the problem, but it's nice it's mentioned).

As of the first book (about 200 pages into the omnibus, so about 2/3s of the way through the original first volume) it's shaping up to be a fun read. As a debut novel, it's much stronger than Scholes, Weeks, Charlton or Sanderson, which I really wasn't expecting given it's self-published origins. Nice one.

[jdiddyesquire]

Reading the first Orbit omnibus now. And it's very solid stuff. Enjoyable and light, with the 'classic fantasy' approach not meaning 'outdated and lame, y'know, like Eddings'. Fast-paced and fun with some rather subtle worldbuilding (even if the map's lack of a scale is highly confusing: we are told that the human lands are vast, yet 10 miles seems to take you from one side of a kingdom to the other). I particularly like the fact that when characters meet a long-lived individual born a thousand years earlier who hasn't hung out much with the rest of the world, they can barely understand him and it's like a modern British person trying to talk to Chaucer. They can do it, but it takes time and patience (of course, being a wizard he eventually overcomes the problem, but it's nice it's mentioned).

As of the first book (about 200 pages into the omnibus, so about 2/3s of the way through the original first volume) it's shaping up to be a fun read. As a debut novel, it's much stronger than Scholes, Weeks, Charlton or Sanderson, which I really wasn't expecting given it's self-published origins. Nice one.

I just finished it over the weekend. The first book is great, the second slows down a bit, but finishes super strong. Will probably pick up the second omnibus soon.

[Rob B]

I finished Theft of Swords about a week or two ago and loved it. Great pacing, solid and engaging prose, plus Michael does a very good job of revealing the layers to the story and world as the story progresses.

My review will go up at SFFWorld in about a week.

[Werthead]

At about the 500 page mark, it's gone off the boil somewhat. The initial refreshing feeling of reading an old-school fantasy has worn off and significant flaws in characterisation (particularly of our two main characters, who have not really developed or been delved into much at all) are becoming more apparent, whilst the 'blank prose' is somewhat wearying after that amount of pages.

I think it was a mistake putting these books out in omnibus. As bite-sized snacks between richer fare, they probably work much better. In 630-page instalments, they really need more depth to them to work.

[jdiddyesquire]

At about the 500 page mark, it's gone off the boil somewhat. The initial refreshing feeling of reading an old-school fantasy has worn off and significant flaws in characterisation (particularly of our two main characters, who have not really developed or been delved into much at all) are becoming more apparent, whilst the 'blank prose' is somewhat wearying after that amount of pages.

I think it was a mistake putting these books out in omnibus. As bite-sized snacks between richer fare, they probably work much better. In 630-page instalments, they really need more depth to them to work.

I quite agree with the omnibus notion. Takes forever for the second book to get going at a time you should be really getting into the plot of a 630 page novel. The depth does come in a bit more as the novels go along. Each one becomes progressively more in-depth I found.

[beniowa]

Interesting how a few of you are having issues with the second novel as I personally enjoyed Avempartha a bit more than Crown Conspiracy.

[jdiddyesquire]

Interesting how a few of you are having issues with the second novel as I personally enjoyed Avempartha a bit more than Crown Conspiracy.

It finishes well Ben, but I think it has more to do with it being in the middle of a 630 page omnibus.

[Werthead]

Riyria Revelations #1: Theft of Swords

Hadrian and Royce are partners in crime, a mercenary and thief who make a living working for the various nobles who rule over the lands of Avryn but spend most of their time feuding with one another. One particular job ends with Hadrian and Royce being arrested and charged with regicide. Determined to prove their innocence and take revenge on those who framed them, they set out on a quest that could change the fate of Avryn and the whole world.

Michael J. Sullivan's Riyria Revelations series is already a proven success, with both small press and self-published editions of the books selling well. Orbit have picked up the series and recast the original six books as three omnibuses, bringing them to a wider audience. Whilst this laudably rewards the author's success, it also raises the stakes: standing out from the crowd in self-publishing is one thing, but how does Sullivan's work stack up compared to the current fantasy heavyweights?

The answer is...okay, actually. Sullivan's ambition with this series was to create a series that in a way beat against the current trend for adult, edgy, violent and explicit fantasy novels in favour of something more straightforward or 'classic'. Something that evoked the spirit of say Eddings or Brooks without being as dire. Sullivan lists Harry Potter as an inspiration, particularly the way it welded together accessibility and a classic structure with darker elements (such as major character deaths), and that's certainly a reasonable ambition.

Theft of Swords (which combines the first two novels in the series, The Crown Conspiracy and Avempartha) is a fast-paced, straightforward read with a fast-moving plot and easy-to-read writing. Sullivan's risk in aping the simpler form of fantasy fiction is that he might skirt towards blandness, and this is certainly a problem in the book. He has a fairly blank prose style which is effortless to read, but also somewhat forgettable. His skills with characterisation are somewhat stronger, but still not as great as might be wished. Particularly odd is that his central characters of Hadrian and Royce are not very well-developed at all, and many of the secondary characters are more interesting and better-drawn. The central duo do get a bit more fleshed out towards the end of the second half of the book and we also get a possible reason for why Sullivan had to hold back on certain revelations about them, but it is a bit of a challenge to read a book where the two heroes are so (apparently) shallow.

Other issues can be found in the worldbuilding, particularly the existence of apparently substantial kingdoms with walled cities in them that are only about 20 miles wide. Sullivan aims for some consistency here - a couple of hundred soldiers forms a large army in this world, presumably because populations are correspondingly tiny - but it's still a bit odd. On the racial front, things are fairly traditional: dwarves are geniuses for stonecarving whilst elves are long-lived, pointy-eared types. The only dwarf we meet is a grubby villain, whilst the elves are (in this first book anyway) kept firmly off-screen and are the enemies of humanity, but these are minor (and not particularly unprecedented) twists to the established formula. Naturally, the main storyline also revolves around prophecies, chosen ones whose arrival will signify the end of the world and so on, and it won't take a genius to guess who the chosen one is going to be.

The principle problem with the book is its very predictability. At first, reading an epic fantasy without blood spraying over people's faces every five seconds or two mandatory graphic (and usually badly-written) sex scenes per book is a refreshing change of pace, and feels like a valid direction to take at this time. However, the book's embracing of classic tropes without doing much (or, at times, anything) to subvert or challenge them eventually gets dull. Brandon Sanderson, for example, is also writing classic epic fantasy but remembers to put in plenty of interesting twists: a post-magic-apocalypse setting, a Wild West angle and, of course, lots of original magic systems. These flourishes are absent from Sullivan's debut work.

Theft of Swords (***) is an easy, relaxing read but also one that lacks depth or originality. It's fun enough to warrant reading on (and the series rep has it improving massively as it continues), but I do wonder if publishing these stories as 650-page omnibuses rather than their original 320-page, bite-sized chunks was a mistake. A fun popcorn read, but ultimately not much more. The omnibus is available now in the UK and USA.

[mjgambino]

Has anyone else been following the blog nerd fight that has broken out between Fantasy Book Critic and Strange Horizons over this book? It's pretty funny stuff.

[Rob B]

You mean this? http://www.strangehorizons.com/reviews/2012/01/theft_of_swords-comments.shtml#comments

[mjgambino]

You mean this? http://www.strangeho....shtml#comments

Yep, I sure do. Here too. http://fantasybookcritic.blogspot.com/2012/01/on-some-recent-reviews-by-liviu-suciu.html

The reviewer for SH ripped the book apart. I guess Liviu from FBC took offense to tone of the review and posted on SH to say so. Needless to say it has spiraled into a hilarious quasi-flame war.

[Larry.]

Yep, I sure do. Here too. http://fantasybookcr...iviu-suciu.html

The reviewer for SH ripped the book apart. I guess Liviu from FBC took offense to tone of the review and posted on SH to say so. Needless to say it has spiraled into a hilarious quasi-flame war.

There's much more than just that, but what do I know but snark? :pimp: