I very much enjoyed the character of Vellmar in the previous book and was happy to read more about her and her family. And I loved the way it was told and the little girl, who I so want to see in a future book set 15 years into the future because she's going to make a fantastic warrior! ( )

*I received this book from NetGalley and Ylva Publishing in return for a fair review.*

For better or worse I need to start off with a little unfortunate bit of warning. Though it is one that may or may not already be known (though GoodReads currently is ‘messing’ with people by having the series count wrong). While this specific story is the fifth 'thing' released in this series, which includes the short story Projection, it is actually the sixth 'thing' in the series (including short story), or 5th in series order (not including short story). Meaning that there will be a book published later which slots in, chronologically, before this story here.

There’s a blog post, I believe, that mentions what’s going on – that this was done and ready so it got released. Now I do not know how much of the actual fourth book is getting revealed here, maybe nothing much, but I do keep coming across references to things I have no clue about, so there might be more than ‘nothing much’. So if you can wait until book four is released before reading this here, and care about reading things ‘in order’, then that’d probably be best. Otherwise, this is/was a great story (and, again, ‘nothing much’ might have actually been revealed here – well, beyond the stuff one part of the story was giving away, but I’ll mention that next).

So, after that series paragraph section, I move to the structure of this story. There is a bit of ‘Princess Bride’ story telling gimmick going on here, and I specifically mean the part where an older man is telling a story to a kid (two here), nothing more than that. The story alternates – two kids are in bed with a ‘bed time story’ being told to them by their father (grandfather in Princess Bride). The story? Vellmar the Blade.

I’m not specifically sure how far in the future this story is being told, but the way the kids and the father act, their part of the story is far in the future of the events of both Vellmar, and the rest. Their specific part of the story consists of kids mumbling stuff, one or the other talking about how they want warrior like stories, bickering with each other, and the father saying stuff. It was an okay little gimmick, though I could have lived without it. To a certain extent, while it did take me out of the story too much for my own enjoyment/pleasure, it did have an interesting little tidbit of them discussing something that had occurred long ago in a manner subtlety different that what actually had occurred.

The other part of the story is Vellmar’s. And she’s preparing for, then competing in a world games (the kids section called it Global Games or something like that, though I’ve a vague feeling that Vellmar’s people called it something subtlety different).

Vellmar’s section was exciting, thrilling, and, strangely enough, caused a few misty moments on my part. There was a bit of action – sports action, a bit of family interaction, and a tidbit here or there of a tiny bit of romantic stuff (don’t go in looking for that though). Some action with some cats, which, I really enjoyed for maybe obvious reasons (maybe not so obvious reasons).

If only for the romance part, I’d suggest putting this off until the other book appears (though, for all I know, that aspect won’t even get a mention in that book). For all that I love the story, I have to say such. Though I did love it, and if a reader doesn’t mind reading things out of order, I do recommend it, tentatively (it has to be tentatively, since I haven’t read that fourth book yet either).

August 1 2016 ( )