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Black Powder Wars #3
Black Arrow
Tragedy rarely visits alone; when one hero falls, more usually follow, such is the nature of war.
Whilst Cheung travels Brisance and the Black Guild tears itself apart, Correia Burr rides for The Marches with her trusted Pathfinders, in search of an enemy they know nothing about.
But when her network of informers yield little, Correia makes a necessary decision to lead her closest companions beyond Altoln’s borders, into Sirreta and the unknown. What they find forces Correia back, and on again, in a race to Wesson, leaving far more than her friends behind.
Throughout it all: massing armies, shocking betrayals and devastating, heart-breaking losses, a familiar name continues to be whispered on the lips of many: Dignaaln, emissary.
Whilst Cheung travels Brisance and the Black Guild tears itself apart, Correia Burr rides for The Marches with her trusted Pathfinders, in search of an enemy they know nothing about.
But when her network of informers yield little, Correia makes a necessary decision to lead her closest companions beyond Altoln’s borders, into Sirreta and the unknown. What they find forces Correia back, and on again, in a race to Wesson, leaving far more than her friends behind.
Throughout it all: massing armies, shocking betrayals and devastating, heart-breaking losses, a familiar name continues to be whispered on the lips of many: Dignaaln, emissary.
448 pages, Hardcover
First published August 31, 2018
5 people are currently reading
76 people want to read
About the author
J.P. Ashman
9 books429 followersBorn Lancashire, England, J. P. Ashman is a Northern lad through and through. His parents love wildlife, history, fantasy and science fiction, and passed their passion on to him. They read to him from an early age and encouraged his imagination at every turn. His career may be in optics, as a manager/technician, but he loves to make time for writing and reading every day. Now living rurally in the Cotswolds with Wifey and their little Norse Goddess Freya, he's inspired daily by the views they have and the things they see, from the deer in the fields to the buzzards circling overhead.
Writing is a huge part of his life and the medieval re-enactment background and tabletop gaming lend to it; when he's not writing the genre, he's either reading or playing it. He plans to keep writing, both within his current series, and those to come, whether short stories or epic tomes.
Writing is a huge part of his life and the medieval re-enactment background and tabletop gaming lend to it; when he's not writing the genre, he's either reading or playing it. He plans to keep writing, both within his current series, and those to come, whether short stories or epic tomes.
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September 1, 2018IT'S HERE! SQUEEEE...
Order on Amazon Kindle now!
Edit on 27th July 2018: The blurb for Black Arrow has finally been uploaded.
Watch this space, or better still, join my horde of readers by following my newsletter by clicking here, and you'll receive a FREE ebook copy of Dragonship for your troubles!
Cheers,
JP
Order on Amazon Kindle now!
Edit on 27th July 2018: The blurb for Black Arrow has finally been uploaded.
Watch this space, or better still, join my horde of readers by following my newsletter by clicking here, and you'll receive a FREE ebook copy of Dragonship for your troubles!
Cheers,
JP
March 25, 2020
I give this one 4 out of 5-stars. I have marked it down a little because there is a rape scene that was upsetting for me, (just so that you know).
I am a big fan of this self-published author. I have liked pretty much everything I have read by him so far. The scope of his imagination is great and, (as Mark Lawrence says on the cover) "...the author's enthusiasm shines out of every page."
There is a lot of combat in this book and a great deal of dialogue too. He writes very much the way that I write; he sits down at the keyboard without a plan and sees what happens. The only problem with this method (as I can vouch) is that it is difficult to achieve closure on a story. The author openly admits that Black Guild and Black Arrow were originally one book. He took the advice of friends and editors and split it into 2 books.
This is a good series and I hope to see it completed one day, though the author is a young father of two now so his time is limited. My favourite characters from book 1 Black Cross did put in an appearance towards the end of this book, so that made me happy. It will be interesting to see where Mr Ashman goes with his next book. There are so many options with the wealth of characters he has created.
I will always follow and read his work. I'm not sure how I would describe his style to someone who has yet to read his work. Maybee; A combination of Mark Lawrence's writing approach, Joe Abercrombie's humour and a liberal garnish of Gary Gygax and Iain Livingstone's D&D gaming. His work is mostly in the Grimdark genre category, so it isn't for young children.
For those of you who wish to read his work, I would suggest the Kindle copies as the pages of my beautiful paperbacks are quite large with small type-face. You can follow him on Instagram
@j.p.ashman
Thanks for reading.
I am a big fan of this self-published author. I have liked pretty much everything I have read by him so far. The scope of his imagination is great and, (as Mark Lawrence says on the cover) "...the author's enthusiasm shines out of every page."
There is a lot of combat in this book and a great deal of dialogue too. He writes very much the way that I write; he sits down at the keyboard without a plan and sees what happens. The only problem with this method (as I can vouch) is that it is difficult to achieve closure on a story. The author openly admits that Black Guild and Black Arrow were originally one book. He took the advice of friends and editors and split it into 2 books.
This is a good series and I hope to see it completed one day, though the author is a young father of two now so his time is limited. My favourite characters from book 1 Black Cross did put in an appearance towards the end of this book, so that made me happy. It will be interesting to see where Mr Ashman goes with his next book. There are so many options with the wealth of characters he has created.
I will always follow and read his work. I'm not sure how I would describe his style to someone who has yet to read his work. Maybee; A combination of Mark Lawrence's writing approach, Joe Abercrombie's humour and a liberal garnish of Gary Gygax and Iain Livingstone's D&D gaming. His work is mostly in the Grimdark genre category, so it isn't for young children.
For those of you who wish to read his work, I would suggest the Kindle copies as the pages of my beautiful paperbacks are quite large with small type-face. You can follow him on Instagram
@j.p.ashman
Thanks for reading.
August 28, 2018
Full review is here, on my blog!~
In this volume, we catch up with the second half of the characters who appeared in Black Cross, while the events of Black Guild run concurrently. So in this one we’re following the adventures of four groups:
-The Pathfinders are traveling from Altoln to Siretta and get into plenty of shenanigans along the way. Then more shenanigans when they actually get there. Because there is some considerable stuff happening in the country of Siretta.
-The legendary Captain Mannino and the crew of the Sessio are docked in the Tri-Isles in order to have the ship repaired, and while there they get into a rather big kerfuffle with a local gang, which only gets the attention of The Three, a sibling trio of elves who rule the Isles at least partially by being scary and mystical. And there were many shenanigans.
-The chevalier Amis de Valmont is chaperoning Flavell de Steedon, daughter of a Sirretan nobleman from one city in Sirreta to another with plans on marrying her to another noble family there, so she’s traveled to them to woo the Senechal. Many, many shenanigans.
-Sears and Biviano, who are former Wesson city guards are still recovering from the events of book one. It seems that Sears has gotten himself into some trouble though. And many, many shenanigans were had, knowing Biviano.
I really did end up liking this one, but it admittedly took a really long time for me to get into it. But, certainly at times, found it engaging and rather an easy read that I spent many a lunch break on. But, that said, it had some issues that I struggled with at times, and I found myself floundering most especially in the first half.
My first issue was that there were just so many characters to take in that I kept confusing them all. It follows several different subplots to begin with, but then there are multiple POVs within each of them, and many characters that I either didn’t know or didn’t remember.
Here is an example of what I mean: Much of the first chunk of this story follows the crew of the Sessio, in which I pretty much only recalled the captain and first mate, Mannino and Hitchmogh from previous installments of the series. Now, to start with, there are 7 named crew members of various importance running around (not including Mannino and Hitchmogh). While they’re docked at the Tri-Isles, they get into an altercation with the local gang (4 named characters), which incidentally includes a couple locals (2 named characters), which eventually attracts the attention of The Three (….which actually has 4 named characters, hehe :D).
This entire section of events happens within the first 40% or so of the book. So, as you can see, this was a lot to process right in the beginning. I did eventually get a good feel for everyone, obviously, but right out the gate it was a bit confusing.
On top of that, there are a couple of characters introduced in this part that I just flat out didn’t like, and it was actually a bit hard not to skip their chapters. One is Emms, a woman so maddeningly daft that it made my eyes roll, and the other is Quin, a man so thirsty for this witless woman for some reason that it only made my eyes roll harder. I still have no idea what the purpose of these characters served at all in this book, other than to be annoying, but there we have it.
Sears and Biviano are introduced in chapter one, and then are not mentioned again until well past the halfway point, and I will admit to this being really irritating at first on top of the trouble that I was having to begin with, but you do eventually catch back up with them and we stay with them for a while once they are reintroduced. It also helped that their bits of the book were filled with the snark that I had been missing, so in the end I was okay with it.
So, I did have a tough time staying interested, but I stuck with it, and I’m really glad I did because once I hit about the halfway mark I found it much harder to put down. I read nearly all of the second half in one sitting. Some very interesting things happen after these subplots begin to combine a little. Correia and the Pathfinders have an interesting adventure on their way into Sirreta, and once they meet Amis de Valmont and the rest of the Sirretans, I was admittedly hooked. On top of that, we’re learning a lot more about Mannino and Hitchmogh in their POV chapters, and I liked that, because they are interesting characters who have been, up to this point, rather mysterious. They still are, but we get to see them in action a bit more in this volume.
The plot twists a bunch here and there, and I never guessed any of it, so I was suitably shocked a few times as things I didn’t expect to happen did, in fact happen. That said, there were a couple events that were shocking but also felt… rather a waste. One event in particular comes to mind, where a character who had been present for most of this book suddenly and inexplicably did something entirely out of character, seemingly out of the blue entirely, with no buildup to it happening and no explanation whatsoever as to why it happened… and then that’s pretty much the last we hear of them. There were also other times where characters who seemed really special or important were introduced and then never really mentioned again, but I still vaguely feel like I’m going to have to remember them in the future (and knowing me, won’t >.>).
All told, it was a good read that had both ups and downs, and things I liked and things I didn’t. So it goes! With a bit of a rocky start, but an engaging finish, I’d say I had 3.5/5 stars amounts of fun with this one. This wasn’t the strongest book in the series, in my opinion, but all the same I am excited to see where this goes in the next volume!
This review is based on a review copy. Thanks to the author for that review copy. :)
In this volume, we catch up with the second half of the characters who appeared in Black Cross, while the events of Black Guild run concurrently. So in this one we’re following the adventures of four groups:
-The Pathfinders are traveling from Altoln to Siretta and get into plenty of shenanigans along the way. Then more shenanigans when they actually get there. Because there is some considerable stuff happening in the country of Siretta.
-The legendary Captain Mannino and the crew of the Sessio are docked in the Tri-Isles in order to have the ship repaired, and while there they get into a rather big kerfuffle with a local gang, which only gets the attention of The Three, a sibling trio of elves who rule the Isles at least partially by being scary and mystical. And there were many shenanigans.
-The chevalier Amis de Valmont is chaperoning Flavell de Steedon, daughter of a Sirretan nobleman from one city in Sirreta to another with plans on marrying her to another noble family there, so she’s traveled to them to woo the Senechal. Many, many shenanigans.
-Sears and Biviano, who are former Wesson city guards are still recovering from the events of book one. It seems that Sears has gotten himself into some trouble though. And many, many shenanigans were had, knowing Biviano.
I really did end up liking this one, but it admittedly took a really long time for me to get into it. But, certainly at times, found it engaging and rather an easy read that I spent many a lunch break on. But, that said, it had some issues that I struggled with at times, and I found myself floundering most especially in the first half.
My first issue was that there were just so many characters to take in that I kept confusing them all. It follows several different subplots to begin with, but then there are multiple POVs within each of them, and many characters that I either didn’t know or didn’t remember.
Here is an example of what I mean: Much of the first chunk of this story follows the crew of the Sessio, in which I pretty much only recalled the captain and first mate, Mannino and Hitchmogh from previous installments of the series. Now, to start with, there are 7 named crew members of various importance running around (not including Mannino and Hitchmogh). While they’re docked at the Tri-Isles, they get into an altercation with the local gang (4 named characters), which incidentally includes a couple locals (2 named characters), which eventually attracts the attention of The Three (….which actually has 4 named characters, hehe :D).
This entire section of events happens within the first 40% or so of the book. So, as you can see, this was a lot to process right in the beginning. I did eventually get a good feel for everyone, obviously, but right out the gate it was a bit confusing.
On top of that, there are a couple of characters introduced in this part that I just flat out didn’t like, and it was actually a bit hard not to skip their chapters. One is Emms, a woman so maddeningly daft that it made my eyes roll, and the other is Quin, a man so thirsty for this witless woman for some reason that it only made my eyes roll harder. I still have no idea what the purpose of these characters served at all in this book, other than to be annoying, but there we have it.
Sears and Biviano are introduced in chapter one, and then are not mentioned again until well past the halfway point, and I will admit to this being really irritating at first on top of the trouble that I was having to begin with, but you do eventually catch back up with them and we stay with them for a while once they are reintroduced. It also helped that their bits of the book were filled with the snark that I had been missing, so in the end I was okay with it.
So, I did have a tough time staying interested, but I stuck with it, and I’m really glad I did because once I hit about the halfway mark I found it much harder to put down. I read nearly all of the second half in one sitting. Some very interesting things happen after these subplots begin to combine a little. Correia and the Pathfinders have an interesting adventure on their way into Sirreta, and once they meet Amis de Valmont and the rest of the Sirretans, I was admittedly hooked. On top of that, we’re learning a lot more about Mannino and Hitchmogh in their POV chapters, and I liked that, because they are interesting characters who have been, up to this point, rather mysterious. They still are, but we get to see them in action a bit more in this volume.
The plot twists a bunch here and there, and I never guessed any of it, so I was suitably shocked a few times as things I didn’t expect to happen did, in fact happen. That said, there were a couple events that were shocking but also felt… rather a waste. One event in particular comes to mind, where a character who had been present for most of this book suddenly and inexplicably did something entirely out of character, seemingly out of the blue entirely, with no buildup to it happening and no explanation whatsoever as to why it happened… and then that’s pretty much the last we hear of them. There were also other times where characters who seemed really special or important were introduced and then never really mentioned again, but I still vaguely feel like I’m going to have to remember them in the future (and knowing me, won’t >.>).
All told, it was a good read that had both ups and downs, and things I liked and things I didn’t. So it goes! With a bit of a rocky start, but an engaging finish, I’d say I had 3.5/5 stars amounts of fun with this one. This wasn’t the strongest book in the series, in my opinion, but all the same I am excited to see where this goes in the next volume!
This review is based on a review copy. Thanks to the author for that review copy. :)
August 6, 2018
I received this as a free ARC copy from the author.
4.5 stars rounded up to 5 stars
OK... I want to start out by saying I really loved this book. The reason I gave it unofficially 4.5 stars rounded up to 5 was that it was not as quite as good as the first two books by just a tiny bit. As great as this book was it was also a wee bit like "The Two Towers" in the Lord of the Rings trilogy. Meaning that at times it felt like I was witnessing events that though they were important to the overall story arc nonetheless did not in and of themselves move the main story along. Ok.. that said I have to say that the book was still a joy to read and it was so much fun getting to see more of Errolas and Correia. One of my favorite this about this book was the fact that after getting a brief glimpse of Sears and Bivano at the beginning of this book and thinking that was all I would get to see of them that they turned up later on as well. I have to admit that they are two of my favorite characters in this series. Over all I can't wait for book 4 and the chance to see where the series goes next.
4.5 stars rounded up to 5 stars
OK... I want to start out by saying I really loved this book. The reason I gave it unofficially 4.5 stars rounded up to 5 was that it was not as quite as good as the first two books by just a tiny bit. As great as this book was it was also a wee bit like "The Two Towers" in the Lord of the Rings trilogy. Meaning that at times it felt like I was witnessing events that though they were important to the overall story arc nonetheless did not in and of themselves move the main story along. Ok.. that said I have to say that the book was still a joy to read and it was so much fun getting to see more of Errolas and Correia. One of my favorite this about this book was the fact that after getting a brief glimpse of Sears and Bivano at the beginning of this book and thinking that was all I would get to see of them that they turned up later on as well. I have to admit that they are two of my favorite characters in this series. Over all I can't wait for book 4 and the chance to see where the series goes next.
April 2, 2019
I enjoyed this book and the series as a whole, however, I expected a trilogy, with this third book tying up loose ends from books one and two, so I was a little confused and disappointed by the introduction of so many new characters, and in that regard my expectations were not met. That is on me, I did enjoy the world building, and the further development of relationships of some of the characters from earlier books. I feel after reading book three of this series, in my opinion, book one and two would have been better as a two book series and maybe this book as book one of next series.
I enjoy reading, and like J.P. Ashman as a writer, his skills are solid, and I will continue to follow and read his work. I look forward to book 4.
I enjoy reading, and like J.P. Ashman as a writer, his skills are solid, and I will continue to follow and read his work. I look forward to book 4.
January 20, 2019
Awesome series that keeps getting better! High fantasy with so many great characters and plots!
August 25, 2018
What an amazing ride this book was...and for now, suffice to say it was all that I hoped it to be, and then a whole lot more! I received this as an ARC from the author, and I'll get back with a more extensive review soon.
In the mean time, I'd recommend a pre-order of this book. If you liked the previous installments in this series, the Black Arrow is not going to let you down...trust me!
In the mean time, I'd recommend a pre-order of this book. If you liked the previous installments in this series, the Black Arrow is not going to let you down...trust me!
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