Blade of Tyshalle

The Acts of Caine #2

by Matthew Woodring Stover

Twenty-seven years ago, they said Hari Michaelson didn't have a chance. He was just a loser, a street criminal from a disgraced family. He'd never make anything of himself. They were wrong. He made himself into Caine: Killer. Superstar. Hero . . .

THE BLADE OF TYSHALLE

Six years ago, Ma'elkoth--a god of Overworld--held Pallas Ril in his merciless grip. Earth's ruling elite wanted her dead. Caine swore he would save her. They said he didn't have a chance. They were wrong. He sacrificed his career as Caine to crush Pallas Ril's enemies and bring her home.

Now Hari Michaelson is the only man who stands between the soulless corporate masters of Earth and the green hills of Overworld. Caine's victory over Ma'elKoth opened a door between the worlds, and the faceless masses of Earth are killing everything he loves. Enemies old and new array themselves against him. And Hari's not even Caine anymore. He's just one man--alone, half-crippled, powerless. They say he doesn't have a chance.

They are wrong . .

Genres: Fantasy, Science Fiction, Fiction, Dark Fantasy, Epic Fantasy, Audiobook, Dystopia

738 pages, Kindle Edition

First published January 1, 2001

About the author

Matthew Woodring Stover is an American fantasy and science fiction author. He is perhaps best known for his Star Wars novels -- Traitor, Shatterpoint, Revenge of the Sith and Luke Skywalker and the Shadows of Mindor. He has also published several pieces of original work, such as Heroes Die, which Stover described as 'a piece of violent entertainment that is a meditation on violent entertainment'. Stover's work often emphasises moral ambiguity, psychological verisimilitude and bursts of intense violence.

Stover is deeply interested in various forms of martial arts, having trained in the Degerberg Blend, a concept that utilises the thought behind Bruce Lee's Jeet Kune Do as its foundation.

Reviews

[Stephen · Rating 5 out of 5]

Fact:

If Superman, the Boogeyman, Darth Vader, Conan the Barbarian and Sauron all ganged up to fight Hari “Caine” Michelson...not only would Caine WIN, but none of his attackers would even make it to the after party.

It’s simplyhow it is...Period.No debate, no equivocation, no qualification, no margin for error.

Caine is the mythago-like archetype of indomitably-willed, carnage-causing, badass kickassery. A take-no-prisoners, leave you battered, bloody and beaten force of destruction.

Yeah...I'm a fan.

Since I previously did a rather unmanly, squee-filled, bromantical love letter to Heroes Die, the first of the Caine/Overword series, I would ask that you cyber over to that review for more detailed background info on the series (e.g., world-building, politics, the corporate-based caste system, and the Studio...all of which make this a big bag of BOOYAH). Here, I'll just give you a brief refresher on Hari/Caine, along with a quick recount of the events of the stellar first installment.

Warning: the spoiler tag below recounts major spoilers to events that occur in Heroes Die.

Hari Michelson is 5’10” and weighs about 175 pounds.** Prior to the end of Heroes Die, Hari was the most popular, most successful Actor on Earth. As his alter-ego Caine, he was the deadliest, most skilled and most feared assassin on Overworld, the other-dimensional, tolkienesque world where Studio Actors are beamed to participate in “adventures” that are experienced vicariously by the masses on Earth.

**Yes, before you say anything, even at that size he still kicks all of the above-referenced ass six ways from Sunday. Now let's move on.

By the end of Heroes Die, following the climax of an adventure that was later titled "For Love of Pallas Ril,” Caine had, almost single-handedly:

(1) Bucked the wishes of the unbuckable Studio;

(2) Smashed the schemes of his former boss, the head of said Studio;

(3) Defeated a virtually omnipotent god;

(4) Gruesomely killed the unkillable Berne;

(5) Miraculously saved his doomed, dying goddess wife (the aforementioned Pallas Ril); and

(6) Taken a sword through the spine that left him crippled from the waist down.

OUCH!!

Which brings us to Book 2.

PLOT SUMMARY:

Hari Michelson, now f/k/a Caine, has been promoted to Administrator (in order to keep him quiet about the events of the previous book). He now runs the Overworld Studio in the position left vacant by his former boss, the now lobotomized Arthur Kollberg.

Hari's not a happy guy. In addition to having his Caine days behind him, Hari is having a seriously hard time dealing with the fact that he has zero feeling or motor control below the waist. His days are filled with self-loathing and pain, and his nights are filled with nightmares from which he wakes screaming, awash in sweat and his own excrement.

He's also become a "company" man...the unkindest cut of all. He tows the line only to keep safe both his step daughter Faith, who needs the security his new position brings, and his father, whose libertarian ideas of “freedom” had him branded a traitor and imprisoned at the Buchanan Detention Facility, where he was earmarked for a cybernetic lobotomy.

Fortunately for us, the reader, Hari’s world takes a turn for the “I'm gonna kick the shit out of everybody” when the following occurs:

-- An especially virulent form rabies, identical to the plague that wiped out billions on Earth, and led to the current corporate-controlled, caste-based society, suddenly appears on Overworld…and begins to spread.

-- The paternal grandmother of Faith, who hates Hari because he dispatched her son in Heroes Die uses her superior position a member of the Business class to obtain custody of Faith and have Caine’s father rearrested and sent to become Workerfied.

-- A massive conspiracy involving the unseen, all-powerful Board of Governors, and the highest echelons of power on Overworld, including some of Hari/Caine’s biggest enemies are working in concert to…I won’t spoil it.

With his father facing death, his step daughter held hostage, a vicious sadistic construct working for the bad guys and doing unmentionable things, and Overworld threatened with mass extinction...

...it's time, once again, for Caine to say…not on my fucking watch you corporate tools!!

THOUGHTS:

If I had to pick a favorite kick ass, pure adrenaline science fiction/fantasy novel, Heroes Die is it. While, in many ways, Blade of Tyshalle is superior to its action-junkie predecessor, it is also a very different novel. This novel is a far more philosophical/political tale. It's also considerably larger, both scope and content, and weighs in at about 800 pages of trade paperback containing fairly small print.

It is a big story and there is a lot a moving parts.

This is both good and bad...though mostly the former. The constant, full throttle rush of pure, violence-infested mayhem has been replaced with more targeted, more sporadic, but not less spectacular orgies of nut-stomping. Also, there are portions of the set up that tend to drag a bit too long.

However, the reader also gets a far more complex and involved plot, whose stakes and machinations are truly compelling. Plus, layered throughout the narrative are fascinating, at least I found them so, diatribes of strongly-opinioned views on both politics and philosophy.

We also get a significant amount of meat added to the character profile of Caine. We learn more about the inner-workings of Caine. His persona he grows, expands and matures, while, in many ways, remaining unalterably, unwaveringly Caine. Both familiar and completely new…a neat trick Mr. Stover. Well done.

As good as the rest of the novel is, the most amazing aspect of all is the character/concept/antagonist known as the “Blind God.” I don’t want to give much away about this, but it's an anthropomorphized form of entropy that plays a central role in the story. The descriptions and analysis on this...living force...are inspired and rendered me genuinely awed, both by Stover’s imagination and his ability to effectively deploy it.

Speaking of Stover, his writing is perfect for this story. Visceral, intense and brimming with anger. His descriptions, while often extremely graphic, are never gratuitous. His writing has purpose and direction, a desire to inject what I would call manic intensity into the narrative.

Still, some might be put off by his extremely graphic style.

Kollberg chewed on the finger, worrying it, cracking the bone like a dog sucking marrow; he turned his head to one side, wedged the finger back between his molars, bit down again, and yanked his head from side to side until the bone splintered at the knuckle and he could rip it free. Blood sprayed, and Kollberg fixed his lips to the wound, sucking greedily.

That is fairly mild compared to some of the more vicious, pain-filled encounters in the story.

There are definitely moments in which the violence and “creep” factor become as severe as anything I’ve read. One scene involving simultaneous rape, cannibalism and sadistic ecstasy is only the most shocking of these events. Be warned, there are a number of “gulp” moments that will leave you feeling unsettled.

However, there is also a philosophical element running through the entire narrative, always present as Caine navigates the seemingly insurmountable obstacles in his path. From clever throwaways like, “It's not always easy to distinguish between existentialism and a bad mood…” to eastern meditations on the nature of time:

There are some who say that Time is itself a hammer; that each slow second marks another tap that makes big rocks into little rocks, waterfalls into canyons, cliffs into beaches.

There are some who say that Time is instead a blade. They see the dance of its razored tip, poised like a venomous snake, forever ready to slay faster than the eye can see.

And there are some who say that Time is both hammer and blade.

They say the hammer is a sculptor's mallet, and the blade is a sculptor's chisel: that each stroke is a refinement, a perfecting, a discovery of truth and beauty within what would otherwise be blank and lifeless stone.

And I name this saying wisdom.

Stover is always trying to get you to see beyond what is happening on the page. These passages raise the level of the story and provide context for the motive behind the extreme actions of the characters. They also add to the sense of tension because they help qualify why what is at stake is so very important.

So, in summary...read this. Read it after you read Heroes Die, but definitely read this. It's a bit long, A bit long and a bit slow in parts, but is also as engaging and entertaining a story as you could ask for. Violent and philosophical, gory and gorgeous, and packed with both action and ideas. A dark, violent book about desperate people facing dire situations and making unthinkable decisions because it’s all they can do to fight the oppresive momentum of the Blind God’s progress.

5.0 stars. HIGHEST POSSIBLE RECOMMENDATION!!

[Laura Tenfingers · Rating 2 out of 5]

I've heard that when you take Special K you see God. And often die. Horse tranquilizers and humans don't mix.

I spent the better part of this book wondering if Stover had knocked off a veterinary clinic's supply closet.

The driving attraction of this series is Hari/Caine. The main disappointment here is that he plays second fiddle in this book. In the first part things go sideways for him, then down a deep well of darkness, then sideways a bit, then down a swirling vortex of pain and anguish, until he is so completely screwed that you really can't see him coming back from this. That's cool, we are reading grimdark after all. But there's no fun to be had, no humour, no sarcasm, no whitty life lessons he could only learn on his knees, waist-high in blood and shit.

And then Hari exits stage left and we move on to the Special K trip. A few people become gods, don't know how or why but yes, that happens. They can die but later take over a comatose body, sure. Then make themselves out of clay, yup. And communicate through space and time with people that have been absorbed by gods and are dying within this god's body in a parallel universe. OK gotcha. Flashing computer screens can make you an omnipotent and psychotic god, yup that too. And many more completely incomprehensible little funfacts.

I guess you had to be there to enjoy the Special K trip, but from the outside it's pretty fucking boring.

Admittedly, later on there is a Hari/Caine scene that is worth the entire book. The. Entire. Book.

Overall, I still think Stover is a great writer and I want to read more of his books, but this was disappointing.

[Mayim de Vries · Rating 1 out of 5]

“I am his epitaph.”

I really am because I do not intend to be diplomatic here.

To say that I am disappointed is to say nothing. I am not saying the potential is not there. It is, which in fact, is even more condemning. Already the ending of the previous book suggested changes in what would happen in the forthcoming instalment, but I did not expect such discrepancies. In essence, Blade of Tyshalle was as confusing as it was boring, and it was as boring as it was preposterously premised. The Author decided to expand all the motifs that I didn’t like in the first book: Gore turned into gore-tesque, lore into lorem ipsum, and transcendental went full-blown transcend-mental.

The power struggle continues, albeit on a slightly different scale and based on principles utterly alien to Hari. Michaelson is thrown into a whirlwind of events in which old enemies are waiting for his slightest stumble and plot how to take revenge in the most painful way possible for all the wrongs he has ever done to them. Please note, they don’t have to wait long because Hari develops a stumbling blunder into a fine art.

There is a charm in pushing one’s protagonist beyond a comfort bubble. In Hari’s case that would be: beyond a realm of close contact, brutal scuffles that solve all problems. Indeed, we start with a character that is incapable of doing many of the things you’d expect him to do (and which he splendidly did in the previous book). But here is the catch: it is taken to an absurd level. For the best part of the book, Hari is as lost as a Bambi in a jungle of intrigues. And not only is he helpless on the intellectual/psychological level, but also he cannot move, being so physically mauled that, in comparison, the late Stephen Hawking was a specimen of fitness and agility.

Not only the absurdity of the transition that irritates, but it is also the arduous length of taking the victorious to the point of the invincible protagonist to the corner of shame. Believe me when I say that you have a chance to die in the process much higher than any of Hari’s numerous enemies.

But also, the only quality that allows our MC to finally get there is very simple: naive stupidity, which is the last thing you’d expect from a seasoned fighter. Accidentally, it is also the last thing I tolerate in the protagonists. Hate me for all you want: I cannot stand stupid people.

And yet. While for me, the reader, what was going on was obvious, I had to wait for roughly 400 pages until Hari reached some sort of breakthrough conclusion . In the meantime, I was forced to watch him struggle and wrestle with the past as well as the present, in both a literal and figurative sense. It was like being forced into participating in cringe gore Big Brother (ugh, Kollberg). Additionally, for the most part, this book is its own wiki as Mr Stover, instead of pushing the action forward, focuses on explaining many of the worldbuilding issues: where what came from, how what works, why the world looks the way it does and what laws govern the Overworld (The virus-induced evolution of the dystopian system where sickness that escaped from a lab was used to butcher freedom was the only thing I have enjoyed because of the apparent similarities to the current developments). All the above is solidly seasoned with religious fantasies, pardon me, pornographies, which are both shallow and narrow-minded but pretend to be so profound as to swallow you whole. All this blabber is insufferable when none of the protagonists is exactly a Socrates. Not even a Coelho.

Merging metaphysics with what is effectively a hack and slash type of tale ended up with mystical musings interspersed with some gory details mixed with info dumps. Is this what people call action in their reviews? Because I call this poor storytelling. To make things worse (if at all possible), those various ideas are only loosely combined into a coherent story. The initial 100 pages, for example, are simply a prequel to Heroes Die.

It was only the last hundred pages or so that I got through in one sitting as things are put in motion. Also, the Author is in such a conundrum that he is forced to cut some corners.

How? I am glad you asked.

For instance, there is a magic sword. This, by the way, is the real blade, the real main character with agency, not some Tyshalle figurative bullshit. I kid you not, without this damn prop, nothing would have happened, whereas most things occurred without or against Hari (except for the last moment where he miraculously got a grip, which I have been begging him to do for at least 700 pages, mind you a grip that was innately predictable, and I if there is something that I hate more than naively stupid in my books, it is predictable). As if the magic sword is not enough (and the mess is so huge, sometimes it is not), there is another trick: no one dies in this book. They think they did, you think they did, their enemies think they did, their loved ones mourn them, and so you hope for an end, but no, nope, not so fast. We can always pretend the last 200 pages didn’t happen. And so, back to square one.

Don’t be surprised then that this book has nearly been a death of me. I mean, figurative death, as in the reading death. I thought I’d never finish and so will never be able to start anything new. The horror!

The first volume in the series was great; the second one is like Beethoven’s symphony performed by a circus of mad monkeys. So I’m giving a tentative try to the third one, perhaps the Blade of Tyshalle was a mid-life crisis therapy for the Author.

Also in the series:

1. Heroes Die ★★★★☆
3. Caine Black Knife ★★☆☆☆
4. Caine's Law

[seak · Rating 5 out of 5]

I got a Kindle last year and guess what was my first purchase? You guessed it, Atlas Shrugged! Okay, no, it was this one, Blade of Tyshalle. I was looking forward to it, but it's all but impossible to get in paper form unless you want to pay out the nose. And 10 months is surprisingly a good time for a book I bought to finally make it to my "currently reading" pile.

Because I had such a long wait time between this book and the first in the Acts of Caine, Heroes Die, I had lots of time to read reviews and such and opinions are actually quite divisive.

On one side, you have those who absolutely adore the book and yet acknowledge how different it is from Heroes Die. These people tend to like Blade more than the Heroes. On the other side, you have those who just hated it, hated that it was a completely different book with a simple premise. I found myself in the former category (hence the 5 stars I guess).

I went into Blade not really knowing what to think, but having this idea that it would be a completely different book than it was. I had this picture that it would be a philosophical treatise almost. I was wrong. Not completely wrong, but very wrong nonetheless.

The thing is, Blade of Tyshalle is everything you would expect in a sequel to Heroes Die. It's easily one of the bloodiest, action-filled, killfests around. This was, for some reason, a big surprise to me. There is constant action.

At the same time, Blade is a very introspective book (this is where the philosophy comes in). There are lots of ideas thrown around about life and about living. I didn't even necessarily agree with all of them, but it got me really thinking.

Stover's "about the author" in some of his books reads something like, "Matthew Stover believes everything you need to know about life can be found in his books." I always thought that was pretty conceited, but now I'm starting to see why he believes this way.

One of the main arguments he puts forth here in Blade of Tyshalle is that you can really do anything you want. If you want it, do it. It's that simple. This kind of thinking really jives with me. I very much believe that life is what you make it, even as cheesy as that sounds. If you want to be rich, you can do it, you just gotta work your butt off to get it. Same goes for fame, for anything.

I think most of us fall in the category of 1) having multiple passions, which means all suffer and/or 2) getting comfortable where you are (or lazy in my case), which is why we're not rich or famous, but probably a lot happier. I'll stop before this takes over...

Anyway, tangent aside, the world that Stover has created is incredible. If the fact that his world contains a futuristic caste-based society that sends "actors" to a medieval fantasy-type world to reek havoc and practice magic purely for entertainment doesn't make you want to read a book, I don't know what would.

Seven years after the ending of Heroes Die, the first in the Acts of Caine, Caine finds himself it a bit un-Caine-like situation. He no longer has the use of his legs, what with that whole magical sword, Kosall, running him through to his spine. In fact, he hates when people remind him he's Caine.

His best "friend" (i.e., not really his friend at all, but worst enemy), Tan'elKoth, formerly known as Ma'elKoth or the bad guy from Heroes Die who found himself "transcended" to Earth, is the only one he can really talk to.

While "Caine" (or Hari now) pines for his old life, he now lives with his wife, Shanna, and daughter, Faith. He was even bumped up a caste to Administrator. So really, he's got it made. Well, not really at all because then we wouldn't have this fun story here.

Being Caine, Hari ticked of his share of people on both Overworld and Earth and that doesn't bode well for a nice, peaceful life of luxury. With a mix of old grudges and dark powers arising, Blade of Tyshalle ups the ante from Heroes Die in so many ways.

Not only does Blade deal with a medieval world that can be accessed from Earth, but the ideas Stover presents are epic themselves. Is it worth saving the world when you can't save a loved one? Is the world even worth saving? Is it worth saving one world while damning another? What if the first world has billions of more people, and especially children? These are just a couple of the questions that really had me thinking.

If there's anything I hate, it's plot-lines where the main protagonist, the hero even, loses his powers. This didn't work for me in Spider-man 2 or in Batman Returns. Although I still enjoyed the latter, I didn't love it because of this aspect. In this book, that seems to be the case, that Caine has lost his Mojo. It could be argued so, and I was definitely of this opinion for most of my read, but it's really not the case. Is it really the physical parts of you that make you you?

While at the limits of my gag reflex, Blade of Tyshalle comes highly recommended. It has EVERYTHING you could ever want from a fantasy and so much more. The pages turn themselves, the writing's spectacular, the world is insane and fully fleshed out (much more here than in Heroes Die too), and the action is the best you'll find. This isn't just puffery, I challenge you to find better action.

As bloody and brilliant as you would expect from the awesomeness that was Heroes Die and yet Blade of Tyshalle takes everything up a notch. Action-packed mayhem and ideas that make you think? Yes, you can have it all. Bloody brilliant.

5 out of 5 Stars

[Choko · Rating 4 out of 5]

*** 4.25 ***

Wow! Another very powerful book by Mr. Stover. However, I have to confess that as much as I appreciated both the characters and the story, it was not an easy book to read. Not that it was complicated or inaccessible, but the author had decided from the ending of the previous volume to almost the end of this one, to put the main protagonist through the ringer, in such a cruel and unforgiving way, that the reader, or at least me in this situation, starts feeling the depression, despair and hopelessness heaped upon them as well. I actually had to take breaks by reading something much lighter, because I was projecting that helplessness turned into anger, upon everyone around me. Not only is the life on our future Earth in a dystopian state, but Mr. Stover doesn't spare us the scenes and sensations of abuse and humiliation its inhabitants inflict on one another. I would definitely advise younger readers to wait a while before deciding to read it.

Apart from that, the author does a great job dissecting human emotion, the need for higher power, and who created whom and why... There were moments where philosophical theory was prevalent over storyline, and thought I personally don't mind that, it could be distracting from the main ark. So, if you are going into it for the entertainment value of a born killer doing what he does best, you might be surprised at how little of it you may get, being instead given an emotional, at times self-indulgent portrait of human inequality, power abuses, economic imperialism and colonialism, pain and finding the limits of human endurance...

I still think these have been two very strong, very unique books in the series, since I have only read those two so far. I would recommend them to all adult Sci-Fi and fiction fans as well as to anyone who likes to get a deeper look into the human psyche as a whole. I personally plan on reading something fluffy and light before proceeding with the next book in the series. 👍

[Bradley · Rating 5 out of 5]

Where the hell can I begin? I'd like to say I'm speechless and drowning in a god-river of awe, but the fact is, I could write twenty-odd pages or more just to expound how much I love this book, and by natural extension of story, Heroes Die.

They're both of one piece, but what really blows my mind is the fact that it's not only as good as the first, but it absolutely refuses to back down and aims for something much, much greater. I'm very afraid that I can't come even remotely close to doing a review justice without revealing not only a dozen great plot turns and surprises from the first novel, and then it gets much worse because there are two dozen great reveals in the second.

With your permission, I will try to gently gloss over What Makes This Book So Great, but be forewarned: Here There Be Spoilers.

The first book was a self-contained masterpiece with equal parts Hard SF and High Fantasy, where the networks vie for ever higher ratings by sending real humans to a distant world where magic actually exists, where all the High Fantasy tropes are gritty reality, and the Actors (Actirs on the other side) cast their POV adventures back to an overcrowded and very advanced Earth who hail them as celebrities. Hari/Caine was the most popular. His ex-wife, also an Actor, had gone missing/unresponsive on this side and since he still holds a flame, goes over to save her. Of course she doesn't care to be saved, in fact, she's working to free the enslaved and downcast over there. Jump through tons of truly awesome and SMART adventures and overwhelming odds that ended with a huge machiavellian finale to take down a literal and actual god that ended with Hari/Caine's ex-wife dying and being reborn as the goddess of all the waters in the world and fighting the other god for supremacy, and you've got yourself 5-6 fantastic novels wrapped all into one.

When it ended, I wondered how the fuck this author could top it. I mean, Caine's lover is now a nearly all-powerful god, Hari has taken over the network and has built up a little empire of his own out of revenge for what the assholes on Earth had done to him, and Hari/Caine pulled-off one of the funniest and impressive god-takedowns I've ever read. He brought him back to earth, penniless and powerless, with only a fraction of a fraction of his mind left. How could it ever get any better?

Well, it did. He fucking did it. There's never a wasted word, never a wasted sub-plot, and never a wasted moment of character development. And it's 800 fucking pages long. :)

Up the stakes. Oh my god, he just upped the stakes something HUGE. Okay, so we open with a paraplegic Hari heading a losing-money network, his best friend is hugely diminished god from the other world that he defeated, and everyone's setting up some real hell for Caine as the incarnation of satan among all the churches and empires on the other side. After all, he only brings chaos wherever he shows up. Life is pretty bad, years have made him lose any edge (or legs) to stand on, and his relationship is back in the shitter. So how the hell do we get from there to the returned machiavellian re-ascension of the deposed god, learn that there's another that can roll him, and start throwing nuclear bombs, tanks and airplanes at the other world as it gets annihilated by a horrible plague that Earthlings made and almost killed us, AND have Caine win and throw out some really fun surprises on top?

That's the amazing shit, right there. Becoming a god doesn't mean you've landed yourself a story-stopper. This shit is AMAZING, and despite what I said about giving you spoilers, I've still left 90% out.

Only a truly gifted writer could pull all this off, to keep it always entertaining, moving quickly, with ever-deepening character explorations that makes most SF OR Fantasy authors look like amateurs.

These books are multi-faceted and deeply layered stories that rely more on action and plot progression and revelation than anything else, and it does it so well that even intended themes sneak up on you and they're not just right, but they're necessary to me as a reader.

To say that I love these is to just laugh in my milk. I just spent an hour gushing over the novels to my wife while I was attempting to write this review, and my mind is still spinning from all the little things that happened to it while reading this oh so excellent novel. :)

They may be long novels, but they read quick. I can't honestly believe that people aren't gushing about these novels even now. They're very modern, with modern SF/F sensibilities, and much better than almost any Hard SF OR High Fantasy that I've read in decades, and each side stands with its head high in either. :)

This is no fly-by night operation. This is a SERIOUSLY well-planned, a well-developed, and a blood-sweat-and-tears masterpiece of fiction. It SHOULD be on everyone's must-read list, if you're at all interested in either SF or F. :)

[Justin · Rating 2 out of 5]

Two things to say about this:

1) I loved reading a character that was incapable of doing many of the things you expect a character in a fantasy book to do.

2) WTF? I feel like Stover was trying to be a little too clever. The villain, if you can call it a villain, is almost impossible to conceptualize. I found myself constantly rereading passages and being no clearer on what happened than I was the first time through. The fun that the first Caine novel had is almost completely gone.

[Algernon · Rating 5 out of 5]

Tyshalle Deathgod is also called the Limiter, and the Divider. Tyshalle himself is the energy of change; he is the outer darkness beyond the edges of organized reality. That's why he's the God of Death: death is the primary change. The big one. Change is, itself, the structure of experience. Think about it: The absence of change is stasis - which is also the absence of experience. Experience is reality. That's what reality is to us; no more, no less. Reality is change. That's all it is. The Blade of Tyshalle is the leading edge of reality. It's the knife that cuts everything.

Caine of Heroes Die was already bad news: nicknamed The Blade of Tyshalle, he is an avatar of destruction, an accomplished assassin, a catalyst of social upheaval, a ruthless killer who lets nothing distract him from his target, a world class actor whose role is to risk his life in interesting ways on Overworld for the vicarious entertainment of billions of fans back on Earth. What is left for him to prove in a second book?

WARNING! : may contain spoilers about events in the opening book in the series. I will try to speak as little as possible about the actual plot in this adventure, about who dies and who survives. I believe it's better to read these books in order of publication and not try to jump ahead.

- I won goddammit. I got everything I goddamn wanted: fame, wealth, power. S--t, I even got the girl.
- The problem with happy endings is that nothing is ever truly over.

This conversation takes place between Harry and Tanel'Koth, former deadly adversaries on Overworld, now circumspect friends on Earth, united by their common bloody history and by the blandness of their current environment after the adrenaline rush and the boundless magical powers of Overworld. For Harry in particular, his Pyrrhic victory is hard to swallow, as it transformed him from a man of action into an Administrator of Studio business, a passive observer guiding other Actors on their quests. Caine / Harry has also left behind a legacy of hatred and envy on both worlds and these negative forces are coming together to bring him and the ones he cares about down.

A powerful enough metaphor grows its own truth.

A powerful hero needs a powerful evil overlord to fight against, and for Caine the author has been ruthless by pitting him against the Blind God - a semi sentient composite of all the dark thoughts and deeds of the teeming billions of individual lives, acting at a remote through avatars and minions - the actual people controlled by the hive mind. I was initially tempted to use a Star Wars analogy for the Sith Lords and the Dark Side of the Force, a similar use of metaphor for the fight between good and evil that Stover is familar with from writing some issues in the francise, but there's an even better example in the book when former Administrator Kollberg gets his mind altered by the AI entity representing the Studio Board of Directors and later harvests the
minds of millions of virtual reality online game players .

We treat our planet as an enemy, to be crushed, slaughtered, plundered. Raped. Everything is opposition - survival of the fittest on the Darwinian battlefield. Whatever isn't our slave is our potential destroyer. We kill and kill and kill and tell ourselves it is self-defense, or even less: that we need the money, we need the jobs that ruthless destruction temporarily provides. We even treat each other that way.

One way in which the metaphor plays out can be seen in how Pallas Rill, whose role as an avatar of Nature and Growth and the Life bringing force of the Great Chambaygen river, is opposed by the Blind God's efforts at destroying the environment and the people in the most despicable ways through strip mining, pollution, deadly viruses, a rape of the Overworld and its people for which genocide seems too tame a word.

I got carried away a little, so I will go back to the beginning at the novel and talk a bit about the literary structure and the way it reflects the main themes. There are four storylines woven together, each with more than one POV character, some told in first person, some in third. The first and shortest one is a flashback to the early years Harry Mikkaelson spent at the Actor Academy, and improbable friendship he makes with one of the students and the early signs of his no-rules, no-mercy, no-quarter approach to fighting. The second thread is the dystopian society of future Earth, giving more background of the cataclysm that has entrenched society in its current top-down pecking order, with the caste rules enforced by the Social Police, where the Leisure and Business people have all the perks and the lower castes live as drones whose only escape is the entertainment provided by the Actors on Overworld. The third thread is of course Overworld: : a land of dragons and demons, of hippogryphs and mermaids, of hedge wizards and thieves, master enchanters and noble knights. It is a million dreams come true. . The once inpenetrable barrier between the two worlds is starting to crumble, making this Paradise vulnerable to the greedy eyes of Earth Corporations. The subtitle of the Acts of Caine books give some indication of the scale of the conflict. This second volume is labelled as Act of War raising the stakes from the personal revenge at the core of the 'For Love of Pallas Rill' adventure to a conflict between worlds.

The fourth and last story element is the mythical dimension, the metaphoric level at which the characters play out a timeless epic that seems taken out of the ancient Vedic texts, where each of them can be seen as an avatar of a bloodthirsty Pantheon. I thought these lyrical introductions to the gore and ordure filled, foul mouthed, action packed chapters were a bit of a gimmick, but I got a very satisfactory explanation of them by the end of the novel . They are the record of the history of the Blind God War as told by the Immortal King of the elves, Harry's old school friend.

On the day the dead man named himself, that naming became a clarion, calling the heroes to battle. They came severally, one by one and together: the mad queen and the dead goddess, the faithful steward and the dark angel's spawn, the crooked knight, the dragoness, the child of the river, and the god who had been a man.

These heroes are for me one of the reasons I liked book two better than book one: better fleshed out secondary characters, with a more important role to play in the final outcome than the lone wolf vibe I got from Caine in his first outing. The changes imposed on Caine by his physical limitations and by the tragedies piled up on his shoulders are another reason I found the sequel more interesting. I am aware that some (many) readers were disappointed that Blade of Tyshalle was not a repeat of the gore fest, non stop bad-ass action from Heroes Die. Their complaints are valid : the book is slightly too long and repetitive in exposition, the build up to the explosive final chapters is too slow, the ick factor steers much too close to the nauseating, disgusting and obscene, and for most of the book Caine the action hero is a passive pile of meat bad things happen to. I for one believe these choices in presentation are deliberate on the part of Matt Stover. He is trying with these books to expose our sick infatuation with violence and to force us to reevaluate the comfortable lies we live our lives by. Caine as the existentialist assassin, endlessly dissecting his life choices and taking responsibility for the results of his previous actions is the perfect soundboard for the author's philosophical musings. The lessons taught to Caine are almost always delivered through pain, both physical and psychological - at a level that would make biblical Job's plight a walk in the park, an illustration of the often used concept that pain is a better teacher than pleasure and that adversity is the tool best used to reveal the inner core of a character. ( Scars are the key to power. Each of us is the sum of our scars. ). He is well supported in this journey of self discovery by the other characters who engage sometimes too readily in saloon type arguments pro and anti Cainism (the 'do as you will' religion that has sprouted on Overworld in the wake of Caine's adventures):

Every day, every thinking creature decides which rules to follow, and which to break. Our reasons for following or breaking these rules may be wildly different, but the fact of choice is identical.

---

It has been written that when one contends with monsters, one risks becoming a monster. This is not true.
The true risk is that one might discover the monster one has always been.

---

Without destiny to guide him, he was lost in a vast, whistling darkness. Any direction he might choose was purely arbitrary; it would make no more sense, offer no more hope, than would sitting still. Which offered neither sense nor hope at all.

---

Darkness is a knife that peels away the rind of what you think you know about yourself. The shades of your pretenses, the tones of your illusions, the layers of deception that glaze your life into colors that tint your world - all mean nothing in the darkness. No one can see them, not even you.
Darkness hides everything except who you really are.

---

Everybody spends their whole lives pretending that s--t isn't random. We trace connections between events, and we invest those connections with meaning. That's why we all make stories out of our lives. That's what stories are: ways of pretending that things happen for a reason.

It is a bleak and desperate universe that Caine inhabits, and the reader, sitting comfortably in his armchair with a dram of vintage Tallisker at his elbow, will be hard pressed to refute them, wondering how he could possibly deal with a cruel life and death decision thrown unexpectedly at his feet. Stover sets out and generally succeeds in building up these situations when ethics, morals, laws and traditions are irrelevant to the issue at hand. Only the will of the individual and his determination to see things through to the end will decide the outcome. I would still like to be able to come up with an alternative to the chaos and arbitrariness of Cainism. Until I am able to express my views as clearly and succintly as the author, I will once again go to the bookmarks I made in this volume:

Resist the Blind God. The greed of your worst should not be allowed to triumph over the conscience of your best. Fight it.

There must be something good in human nature, something that has stopped us from slitting our own collective throats until now, something that is worth fighting for and preserving.

Two-valued systems break down in contact with the real world. True or false, right or wrong, good or evil: those are for mathematicians and philosophers. Theologians. Out here in the real world? Sure, there are sheep, and there are wolves - and there are also shepherds.

These shepherds come in many guises and colours: Gandhi, Martin Luther King, Buddha, Jesus himself, so many other unsung heroes of the little people. I will let you discover for yourselves his/her incarnation on Overworld, the one ray of sunshine that relieves the depressing black and blood-scarlet tonality of the novel.

Another expression of the path to redemption is offered in the form of the narrative itself: Myths are stories that offer a perception of order within the chaos of existence. . Most religious texts start out as stories that capture the imagination and the hearts of the audience, until a critical mass is reached and they become more than the sum of their words. The chapter introductions are thus revealed as the parables laying down the myth of Cain.

I have chosen for my final remarks a passage on the role of speculative fiction in relation to so called 'serious literature', one I would like to aim at those who deride fantasy, horror and science fiction as escapist fluff:

There will be those who will try to tell you that Fantasy is the opposite of reality, that it is the same as lies, that what you have seen is impossible - that it is a lie 'because' it is a Fantasy. I tell you it is not so. It is the greatest gift of my people, that we can bring our dreams to life for other eyes. Fantasy is a tool; like any tool, it may be used poorly or well. At its best, Fantasy reveals truths that cannot be shown any other way.

[Sade · Rating 3 out of 5]

3.5 stars
If like me you read Heroes Die and were expecting the same amount of bad assery from Blade of Tyshalle you'd be somewhat disappointed. It's not like the book is terrible but it's so vastly different from what you'd expect after reading the first Act of Caine book.

Although Blade of Tyshalle does have the signature bad ass action sequences that i've come to associate with the series, this book is more philosophical than the first one. You find characters searching for meaning for their actions, life.. Discovering and learning to accept themselves which really i have to say was not necessarily a bad thing. It definitely made me raise my eyebrow like umm TF is going on but i wouldn't have minded so much. Ultimately what didn't endear me to this book as the first one did, was that i felt Stover went out of his way to make this book as difficult as possible to understand. This isn't simply something that occurs just in book 2, even in book one you'd be hard pressed to figure out how the magic works (mind view ish and channelling the flow stuff) however what makes that easier to overlook are the action sequences. Book 1 is basically straight forward, no messing around action so magic is few and far between. Book 2 though has got magic in droves and let me tell you it's sort of hard to follow.
Then the bulk of the scientific jargon that was in the book. My thoughts on putting purely scientific stuff is books is this - DON'T!! Chances are even if you do decide to do a little research to know what the heck is going on in the book you're still not even going to understand what the heck you're reading.

Considering though that the book was able to keep me spell bound up until close to the end i'd say it wasn't a bad book, i just wasn't able to appreciate some parts of the plot due to the lack of understanding with the whole magic/ god ish and all that scientific jargon. So in the end i liked this addition to the series but i didn't love it.

[Anete · Rating 5 out of 5]

4.5/5 Hari Michaelson piedzīvojumi turpinās. Un ja lasītājs ir lolojis cerību, ka spēs paredzēt, kādā virzienā autors vedīs šo antiutopijas-varoņfantāzijas stāstu, droši var mest šīs ilūzijas grāvī. Vienīgais, kas ir nemainīgs no sērijas pirmās grāmatas, ir cīņas ainu apraksti ar detalizētu reālismu. Un tagad tam nudien ir krietna filozofijas piešprice. Ne visam spēju 100% izsekot līdzi, grāmata ir pamatīgs smadzeņu vingrinājums atmiņai un dažādu konceptu vizualizēšanai.

Grāmata sagādāja arī negaidīti aktuālu jautājumu - obligāta vakcinācija!

[Mike (the Paladin) · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is one of a few books I've finished lately that I find a bit hard to rate and even hard to describe. First this book has significant flaws that weren't present (or at least weren't as present) in the first volume of this "series" Heroes Die. So...I'm going to say some slightly negative things about the book AND I'm going to be giving some significant warnings about it. Still please note that I have settled on a 4 star rating. Some books do transcend an "I like it" or "I don't like it" review. I considered dropping the rating to at least 3 and explaining why I would still recommend it "TO SOME PEOPLE" while dropping the rating but as I went on I decided I needed to keep the rating higher.

So, what's the negative? Well in the "simple column" the book at times gets a bit repetitive. You will I suspect feel that you've occasionally gone in circles. Also the storytelling isn't "quite" up to what it was in the first book so as a "pure novel" as a "story" it's good but not quite where it's predecessor was.

Beyond that we now leave actual negatives about the novel and move into the area of "BE AWARE OF THIS":

This is a dark, dank, oppressive, blood, vomit, deification (though the words used here are notably and purposefully more crude as in s_ _ t), mucus smeared story that many will find stomach turningly disgusting. I'm not using hyperbole here. If you have a weak stomach and scenes of violence, abuse, torture and rape are things you can't stand this is not the book for you. It's a well plotted well thought out book but the writer PURPOSEFULLY goes for the groin.

The book is also long on philosophy and philosophical debate. This is not in itself a negative and can be ignored (if you set your mind) but you should be aware. I am in disagreement with some of the authors conclusions and assumptions but that doesn't keep me from finding it interesting. And I do agree with much of his reasoning...but not all.

If someone who disagrees with your view of the world will annoy you to the point of distraction go into the book advisedly. The writer is not supporting a Christian world view (or for that matter a worldview that will support most religions), I am a Christian...a practicing one, but I still think the book worth reading.

I can't use the terms "like" or "enjoy" here, at least not comfortably. But I can say that I think most will be drawn into this novel and not only find it absorbing but thought provoking. While not agreeing with many conclusions and ideas promulgated here I do recommend that you try this if you think it won't badly offend. It's excellently written and I plan to get the next.

[Wanda Pedersen]

This book was to be part of my Science Fiction and Fantasy Reading Project. I read the first book, Heroes Die, and liked it well enough for some of the ideas in it. So I expected the same with this novel.

Unfortunately, this is just not for me, at least not now. I've read 140 pages (18%) to give it a chance, but I just can't force myself to read another word. There's just too much anger and not enough other emotion to balance it. Hari Michaelson is just too much of a one-note character for my taste.

There are two more volumes in the series, but I'm going to remove them from my TBR. There's a lid for every pot, so I'm certain there's an audience for this out there, but I'm not part of it.

[Jason · Rating 5 out of 5]

5 Stars

“AND EACH HAD his own role to play: the crooked knight defended the part-time goddess; the part-time goddess served the land; the acolytes of dust and ashes fed their master’s hunger.
The dark angel made war.
He answered the call of the crooked knight; he used the part-time goddess to work his will; he named the god of dust and ashes his enemy.”

Blade of Tyshalle is one freaking awesome dark fantasy read that continues the story of the hero Caine/Hari, that some may deem the baddest ass good guy of all time. This book is better than the first by leaps and bounds even though I am sure that the first will always be more popular. This is a deeply complex, philosophical, and thought provoking piece of head decapitating, throat cutting, and major ass kicking. It takes place immediately following the events of Heores Die. I will not summarize the plot as many others already have done a much better job than I would.

Why I loved it so much:

1. Stover is not afraid to take things up the proverbial shit creek. This novel gets dark and dirty fast, real fast. Caine and the many other POV’s all suffer to one degree or another. Then Stover tightens the screws and they all suffer more…a lot more. The fact that at one point during this book that Caine comments that lying face down in his own shit is probably the happiest that he has been in years sums up how bad.

2. The plot is very deep, a bit complex, and all twisted together. It made for a very exciting read that the amazing action scenes were complimented so very well by such a complex plot “net” that continued to tighten around the characters of this book.

3. Caine is easily one of my favorite characters all time for his brutality, for his outlook on life, and now thanks to this book, for the character of the man that he is. Stover fleshes out the details in Hari/Caine, giving the reader a tremendous amount of character development and backstories. Hari develops personal relationships with several characters in this book that make this read so enjoyable.

4. Hari & Ma’elKoth … enough said.

5. There are so many amazing side characters in this book, and awesome alternate POV’s that all come together in the end.

6. There are some really bad baddies in this book.

7. Stover’s writing style and action sequences are top notch in the fantasy industry and I rank him on par with Joe Abercrombie.

8. I love the whole Overworld / Earth / Studio relationship.

9. I felt like I was reading about the “Bloody Nine” again as there are so many laugh out loud one liners that add to the fun of this series. A deep and funny philosophy from this book.

““And you can call a turd a sandwich, but it still tastes like shit, hey?””

10. Every chapter ends with a great fairytale like telling of the story:

“The crooked knight did not lose hope; he turned to various guides for help and direction. His first guide was Youthful Dream. Later, he turned to Friendship, then Duty, and finally Reason, but each left him more lost than had the one before.
So the crooked knight gave himself up for dead, and simply sat.
He would be sitting there still, but for a breeze that came upon him then: a breeze that smelled of wide-open spaces, of limitless skies and bright sun, of ice and high mountains.
It was the wind from the dark angel’s wings.”

11. Much of this book is philosophical and theological debate from the characters. This will turn many off but to me it is what made this book so great. There are a lot of very heavy themes weighing down on the main storyline, from god and religion, to destiny and choice, finally to the meaning of life and death. Kris sums up most of the book and most of what Caine is all about and Caine realizes this:

“Each of us is the sum of our scars.
Because if any of it had been any different, I never would have gotten the chance to be Caine.”
Slight spoiler from Heroes Die:
““What if it’s Hari Michaelson who is the fictional character? What if the middle-aged paraplegic is just a role that Caine plays, so that he can get along on Earth?””

I will finish this by saying that much of this book strongly reminded me of book 3 in Brandon Sanderson’s Mistborn series Hero of Ages. The deep philosophical themes and religious overtones are on par with each other and make for a terrific read. Caine and the entire Overworld series is much more than simply gratuitous violence from a man that is really hard to kill. I loved this book, it is a must read for ALL fantasy lovers that are not squeamish…

[Sumant · Rating 1 out of 5]

Really a waste of my time, should have stopped reading this book far earlier, but could not take it more after 75% of book and finally took the decision to stop reading it.

I think stover has done a big mistake of including metaphysics with story in this book because clearly he has done a mess of it in this book. I really enjoyed the first book which was full of action from the word go, but this book has people doing disgusting things to each other for the heck of it and metaphysics filler rest of the time. And this blind god concept was a dumb thing to introduce without giving any background whatsoever.

Really poor story telling I give this 1/5 stars.

[Adam · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is shaping up to be one of the best series I’ve read, full stop. It covers so much territory - caste society, violence as entertainment, philosophy, science fiction/fantasy mashup, incredible action scenes, gut-churning horror, towering prose.

[Dreamer · Rating 3 out of 5]

I enjoyed the Hari/Caine parts of the story, also the parts involving the man elf Deliann. BUT there is a hell of a lot of esoteric bullshit in this 738 page book which required some extensive skimming (perhaps I'm just shallow?) As Caine would say: '..yadda, yadda, yadda, horseshit.'

"What if it's Hari Michaelson who is the fictional character? What if the middle-aged paraplegic is just a role that Caine plays, so he can get along on Earth?"

[Soo · Rating 5 out of 5]

Mix of Audio + Book

Note - It's totally possible to read the first two books of the Acts of Caine and be happy. The main story arc that started in the first book is wrapped up well in this one.

Mini-Review:

Woot! This book confirms it. I added another author to my favorite list. Despite the parts that are rough and bits that are not that plausible, I loved this book. Part of the story is rather abstract and there's a lot of philosophical tangents that jump around, fly and scream like hyper two year olds. In an odd way, the story is very real in how it portrays people. All of the flaws, fears, motivations, excuses, relentless drive, insanity and degrees of love are carefully presented in a way that make you notice. The thinking bits are not as sharp or clear cut but I cannot help but see each piece and have my mind go off in a countless leaps of connections.

It is not a simple story. Nor is it a happy one. Yet, I find myself coming away from the end of each book with a smile and bright hope. This is a story about a man who becomes the best of himself by experiencing the darkest depths of tangible nightmares.

[Lancer · Rating 5 out of 5]

I don't believe I can properly describe this series other than to say: read it. This book was far more philosophical than the first but still retained all the things that made the first so great. Hari/Caine is definitely up there for my favourite characters.

I know there are parts of this story that likely went over my head and will need to be reread at some point to fully comprehend it, and I look forward to the day that I do.

To anyone who enjoys grim dark or darker SFF I highly recommend it as Stover was writing it before it hit the mainstream.

Check it out.

[Knigoqdec · Rating 4 out of 5]

История, обхващаща цели светове, безмилостна и безпощадна, унищожаваща триумфа на един човек и доказваща, че невинаги има "хепиенд", когато някоя книга завършва с "и заживяха заедно".
В "Острието на Тишал" се водят титанични битки. Срещу богове и богини, срещу самото съществуване. Прах и пепел покриват света на героите. Отвъдие се превръща от сцена за забавление в сцена на оцеляване.
Борба срещу древното зло, в неговото модерно проявление. На ръба на смъртта, ръка за ръка с болката, която тласка всеки към блажената забрава.
Теология и философия се сблъскват с бруталната реалност. Варварска, безпощадна, кървава истина.

Трудно е да обхванеш с думи толкова много болка и страдание. Нужно е време да изградиш за себе си тази огромна нова реалност. Фантастичният свят на нашето бъдеще се сблъсква със средновековната магия - една война, в която сякаш е ясно кой ще остане победителят... но дали?
И изобщо има ли някаква "Съдба", че да сме категорично сигурни...

"Острието на Тишал" е книга, търсеща отговори предимно на теологични и философски въпроси. Съвсем различна от "Героите умират". Разбива целия свят на малки парченца и после го съединява наново в плашещи краски, докато някой друг не се опълчи на новото и... не го пресъздаде по своя си начин... и така до безкрай.
Ако изобщо Слепият бог може да бъде надвит...

[Emily · Rating 3 out of 5]

I really loved the first book, but this one is much weaker - it gets a 3 star rating instead of 2 star, just because I liked Caine and Kris Hanson. It starts out well, but then it just spirals down into the ridiculous and unbelievable. The last 40% of the book is especially bad. It's mostly filled with metaphysical and philosophical nonsense, and you will have no idea what is going on half the time. Everyone is living inside someone else's body. Everyone is literally crawling around in shit and their legs are rotting off - the gruesome details get to be really tedious. Suddenly everyone has godlike powers, people that are dead come back to life, plus Caine, can suddenly not only walk, but run and fight . This one is so different from the first book, you won't even recognize it. I'm going to read the next book, just because I already bought it, and hope that it returns to the form of the first book instead of the deus ex machina word vomit of this book.

[Chris McGrath · Rating 1 out of 5]

This one was a huge disappointment. I loved Heroes Die, but this was nothing like that book. I found it to be confusing and boring for all but the first few flashback chapters (which were actually really good). The whole book seems to be promoting some weird philosophy about humanity that I just can't even remotely get behind, it's just too out there, even for a fantasy novel.

Plenty of people love and recommend this book, but I just didn't get it. A shame, too, because I'd bought the whole series in anticipation of loving them as much as I loved the first, but I'll be selling the latter 3 books straight away.

[Beena · Rating 4 out of 5]

Wow, this was hard.

Word of warning/advice: Do not read this if you are unwell in anyway- physically or mentally, in a bad place emotionally, stressed out by anything or just going through a rough time in general. That's not a challenge. Even if you are perfectly happy and hale, this is a hard, hard, book to take.

Stover is relentless- this is by far the grimmest/bleakest book I've read; grimdark in its truest sense. He has a gift for taking an already horrendous scene and adding little twists that make it even worse. Most popular grimdark is told in a manner that makes the awful stuff entertaining, a veil that allows you to partly forgive and even enjoy utterly horrifying subject matter. Not so with Stover. This has none of Lawrence and Abercrombie's humour to offset the really grim scenes. Where Nell made cannibalism entertaining, Stover will have you severely repulsed. And there's an entire stomach-heaving slew of shit and perverse sexual elements, more than any other grimdark book I've read- don't attempt to eat anything whilst reading either.

This might put you off reading, granted, it's most definitely not everyone's cup of tea, but it is still a great story. Incredibly multi-layered and thought provoking. Multi- dimensional, fallible characters capable of growth and change. Every time something pivotal happened, I thought I knew how it would play out and every single time Stover took the story in an unexpected direction.

It's seven years later and here we see what life is like for Hari after the climactic events of the last book. He may have won out against his enemies then, but here he discovers that his happily ever after, isn't actually happily ever after for him. The grim reality of taking a sword through the spine and living to tell the tale has set in. Relationship issues abound, with his and Shanna's inherent differences and a breakdown in communication. He has grudgingly settled into the life of an administrator, taking Kollberg's place overseeing various actors and their adventures, given the untimely demise of his own career. His life drifts along in this drudgery until one day, a situation on Overworld that could be catastrophic, is brought to his attention. Hari immediately takes action, setting plans into motion to save them and donning Caine once more in a last bid to prove himself. Only, this time, his actions come back to bite him and he is hit hard, over and over and over again. Enemies coalesce on all sides and an impossible task lays in his hands; to the point that you wonder if he's ever going to climb out of the sheer black hole that he finds himself in.

As I said above this story was hard to digest; Hari/Caine is beaten down so hard and so thoroughly, that he himself loses all hope and will for the vast majority of the book. I'll admit I did wish for a story with the standard heroic fantasy protagonist a few times, just to catch a reprieve, but I persevered in the end. (It probably is a good idea to alternate with another book/show that is actually happy to be honest). Nevertheless, it's a strong story with many interesting elements. The prologue opens on a teenage Hari in the midst of his training to be an actor on Overworld. He is aided and befriended by one Kris Hansen/Deliann. We see them fresh faced and at the start of their adventures; in a normal epic fantasy we would then experience their adventures with them and the realisation of their dreams coming true. Instead, we see them on the other side; fast approaching middle age and the reality of what their dreams have cost them. A great perspective on two older, jaded heroes fighting to save the world.

Kris/Deliann is probably the best thing about the book for me. His gentle soul and abhorrence of violence and death make for a stark contrast against Hari/Caine. Yet he is not above doing what he needs to, to achieve his goals, including some darker acts. However, his inherent goodness remains a lifeline throughout, with his scenes being the most fascinating, inspiring and hopeful. The chapter containing his flashback in reverse chronological order was one of the best.

The overtones of the story are very Avatar-like, -only with the beauty excised out- Stover renders a searing condemnation of how humans have destroyed, corrupted and greedily pillaged Earth and now wantonly destruct Overworld to the same end. Alongside this, the entire book is also highly introspective; there's a thorough examination on the essence of the characters, how they have come to be the way they are and their effects on one another; a compelling exploration into human nature. Lastly, the magic system is delved into much more deeply in this one; the metaphors and imagery used were absolutely fascinating. The concepts underpinning the use of Flow and other magical aspects were well-reasoned and believable- there's a part where Stover drew on Hinduism to explain Black Flow, which he seemed genuinely knowledgeable about and fused well with his story in a manner I could respect. (Being of Indian origin/Hindu myself, I deliberately ignored Hari's name in the first book, thinking Stover had just borrowed it because it sounded cool, but I was pleasantly surprised to find he had a good reason for doing so.)

However, there are some flaws to the book too. The riddle-like metaphor for the characters and their arcs at the end of each chapter was incredibly confusing, made more so because it was fused into the main text of the story. There are many more POVs; although essential to be able to tell the story in a way that makes sense, some sections weren't as interesting as others and I found myself wanting to get back to specific characters. There were also a few info-dumps in places which I thought weren't really necessary. Stover's story-telling is brilliant, but his prose isn't the most accessible, there are a lot of complicated words and the way he forms his sentences sometimes isn't the easiest to follow. There were a few times where some simply made no sense at all to me, which is probably the most apparent in the section where he is waxing lyrical about various guns and weapons towards the end.

I'll be amazed if anyone can actually say that they loved this book from cover to cover, and I'm not sure enjoy is the right word, more like horrified fascination; however the ending brought it all together in a really satisfying way and made all the revulsion and pain worth it in the end.

[Julia Sarene · Rating 4 out of 5]

This starts of with Harry's youth, so if you're waiting for the sequel to start off where Acts of Caine stopped, you'll be in for a surprise. It does continue the story later, so fine be afraid to be kept hanging.

It was even grimmer than the last, and some scenes really had me flinch. There's a scene for example where a woman is raped and her breast eaten at the same time for scale of how bloody this can get. So it's really another step up, and if you want to avoid such violence, this might not be the right book.

Otherwise I really enjoyed it - we get a deeper inside into the characters. Caine has to grow as he is crippled after the events in book one, and has to somehow learn to live with that. This story also won't be a nice cup of tea for him, and things only get worse. Lots of action, lots of betrayal, old friends resurfacing, new allies found, and quite some twists kept me well entertained and interested all the way through.

Also I really liked the end - though I obviously won't spoil it. ;)

[Troy G · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book has been described as better than its prequel "Heroes Die". It may be. But since I read "Heroes Die" first, it felt like much of this book was a retread. The pace of "Heroes Die" was so fast that it didn't leave me room to stop and question plot points, or inconsistencies in the world. With "The Blade of Tyshalle" because I was more familiar with the world I started questioning things.

I appreciate that the focus character isn't a pure hero, but Stover here tried to have it both ways with the adversary. He tried to justify his actions as motivated by simple human emotions of Greed, but then he also tried to turn the villains into complete irredeemable monsters. It became a little too far for me.

All that aside, there is much to like in this book. The central character is interesting, the action is well done, and the worlds are somewhat novel. I would recommend this book to those that read and liked "Heroes Die". Those with reservations about Heroes Die are going to find them magnified here.

[Sabetha Ablar · Rating 2 out of 5]

The premise is that I only managed to get to 85% of this book.
It started good and..well, reasonable. Then it became a feverish, sick dream, incoherent and a tad forceful. It starts with psychic pain, procedes into psychic sadism. Then physical degradation and filth is everywhere and described as hideously as he knew how and MANY times. This book is quite grim dark, but it isn't about evil. It's about filth and slime, and the hero or anti-hero journey is quite overwhelmed and buried into madness and stench.
I like Hari's character to the bones, but I can't force myself to reach through so much grime to read about him anymore.
The volume of a book has never scared me, but here there are just too many useless words. This book could have been 2/3rds of what it is while giving the whole idea, without describing ick stuff quite so many times and in such detail. 2,5/5

[Paintedbear · Rating 5 out of 5]

Believe it or not, this book has actually helped me in my job as a mentor to teens in a mental health facility. I use the quotes "keep your head down and inch towards daylight" and "we are the sum of our scars" at least once a week to show how determination and hard work can help achieve goals, and that you never "get over" bad things that shape you as a person.

For an actual book review, here's this: I love the concept of a world we routinely invade for entertainment. I love the dark gritty violence shown, and that the protagonist is a completely selfish and unlikable son of a bitch, but not unadmirable. It is over the top and fantastic for being so.

[Liz · Rating 1 out of 5]

All of the weakest facets of Heroes Die expanded and magnified. Wallowing in the putrid isn't really that interesting or clever. And goodness did a ton of metaphysical blabbering need to be axed by an editor. Thumbs down.

[Metodi Markov · Rating 3 out of 5]

По-слабо и доста объркано продължение на първата част.

P.S. Издателство Колибри зарязват недовършена поредна серия, при издадени две от четири книги общо... :(

[Terri · Rating 4 out of 5]

I was recently reminded that I hadn't read past book 1 in this series (it utterly blew my mind), and I was delighted to find book 2 in my library's ebook system.

Well, now I'm going to DNF at 14%, because a) there's no way I'll finish reading even half of it before I'd have to check it out again, and b) I can't imagine continuing as it is. There is so little action. I get excited at the bits of hints of things to come, but they are (apparently) so far off that I just don't care enough to keep slogging. YMMV, of course. The older I get, the less patience I have for boredom, and that's no reflection on the novels. That's me.

Note: the kindle file has some missing scene breaks, which are jarring, despite the next scene's first four words in all-caps.

[Jakyro · Rating 4 out of 5]

I started "Blade of Tyshalle" with the knowledge that not everyone likes this book as much as "Heroes Die". I always thought those people must be wrong and Blade would be just as awesome as "Heroes Die". That one had great writing, amazing characters (Caine!!!), a very intruiging world, a good story throwing you from one action sequence into the next, a lot of blood and gore and a great ending on top of all this. It would be difficult for Blade to match all that, but more of the same would still be great. Problem is ... Blade isn't entirely more of the same and I think that's exactly the reason why I didn't like it as much as the first.

I still liked Blade a lot (otherwise I wouldn't have given it four stars). It has many of the strong points from the first book, starting with an interesting world that's even more fleshed out now than it was in the first. The writing is still great and we still have a lot of amazing characters; Caine and Tan'elKoth are great characters returning from the first book, but there are off course some great new characters as well (e.g. Raithe). Also Kosall plays a very important role again in all the events throughout the story. BUT ...
I still feel the first book had more amazing and fleshed out characters than the second one has. Further, it needs to be mentioned that Caine is a different man after the events in the previous book. It takes a long time to get some glimpses of the Caine we know from the first book. With Caine being one of my all time favourite characters this was a bit of a let down; it seems my expectations weren’t really in line with the actual story. But I can admit that Stover did a great job with his writing; his 'broken' Caine was very convincing, as were Caine's motivations throughout the book, even until the very last chapter. Once more it is emphasized that Caine really strives for his goals without any regard to the consequences for anything or anyone else. This makes for a great character!

The story is good as well. In "Heroes Die" the story was clear from the start, but this time Stover really takes his time to built his story and it takes a while before all the pieces fall in place. Stover is very ambitious with Blade and throws in a lot of ideas, some philisophy, multiple plot twists ... and at times it felt to me that he dragged it out a bit too much. After finishing I can say it was maybe necessary to do so, but at the moment itself I didn't especially like it. Also because it didn't always have a good influence on the pacing of the story.
Luckily there are plenty of great action scenes throughout the book that reminded me a lot of the first book. The number of such scenes has however been turned down a bit. The story that's being told is very different, more profound, and needs less of such scenes. Still, the ones we have are very thrilling. What finally pulled me over to REALLY like the book was the ending. This was very nicely planned out by Stover; it's a very long sequence of events that turns out perfectly. Once the roller coaster starts, it's all action-packed mayhem. It's also here that we can see Caine really shine again and recognize the character like we've got to know him from the first book. I thought it was absolutely amazing how everything played out in the end.

I highly recommend this book, but everyone should be aware that it doesn't provide exactly the same as the first book. This irked me a bit at the start, but the more I think about it the more I appreciate "Blade of Tyshalle" for what it is. I'm definitely going to reread it somewhere in the future, and now that I know what to expect, I think I'm going to like it even more on a reread.
Rating: 8/10