Once again, Malorie Blackman has ripped my heat out and smashed it to a pulp within the space of two pages. That ending was horrific.
This was an excellent sequel to Noughts and Crosses. It continued to not only be an intriguing story in itself, but deal with heavy real world issues. However, I didn't enjoy this one as much as the first. The plot wasn't quite as good and I really missed you-know-who.
I loved the way the characters were portrayed. It was a bit painful to read at times, as they were all very messed up because of the events in the first book. I especially enjoyed reading from Jude's point of view. True, he is a hate-filled rage monster but you also see a bit of the goodness in him, and how he really does believe he's doing the right thing. It was very intriguing.
I loved that I had no idea what was to come. It really made this an exciting read and I completely devoured it. Can't wait to read the next one!

Matthew Wolf, you had me when you picked a book cover with dragon on it. Luckily, this time, my attraction to anything dragon related turned out to be a good thing because I enjoyed reading The Knife’s Edge, the first book in the The Ronin Saga.

The Knife’s Edge follows Gray, a young man, who has no memory of his previous life. The only clue is the tattoo on his wrist and the sword he owns. Gray’s training with stern mentor is cut short by a surprise attack and that’s how his adventure starts. There will be epic battles, magic, betrayals, big confrontations, …

Plot of The Knife’s Edge reminded me of The Wheel of Time by Robert Jordan (WOT):

• The Origin of a hero is unknown
• The hero is learning to master his magical powers. There is a lot of struggling with darkness and his resistance to succumb to it.
• On his travel hero gathers large group of friends and allies. They even were similar to WOT characters, not in an appearance but in the behavior and in some character traits (Karil & Rydel – Moiraine & Lan).

Please, don’t get me wrong, there are a lot of original features in The Knife’s Edge. I am just talking about the general feeling. Also, The Knife’s Edge has so many things happening – it’s like you squeezed 3 or 4 WOT novels into one (for epic fantasy) short book.

That’s the biggest flaw of The Knife’s Edge – it needed more pages. When I started reading I was overwhelmed. I can not accuse Matthew Wolf of info-dumping. The story has a nice flow. But there is just so many things you need to remember. The scope of The Knife’s Edge is huge with a big land, long history and a lot of characters. I took Anya‘s advice and gone with the flow hoping that I will eventually memorize names of all countries, towns, kings, heroes, … More pages with more descriptions and time for us to process all the data could have solved this problem.

On the other had, if it was thicker, The Knife’s Edge would not have been such a page-turner as it is now. There is always something new happening and the intrigues and surprises keep you reading, because you never know what is going to happen next. I didn’t care that, sometimes, I could not place some names or remember how some creatures looked like. I was glued to the pages because I had to find out what will happen next.

Oh, and if you are wondering about dragons. The cover does not lie, they do appear in The Knife’s Edge. But dragons are evil and usually their biggest part of the story is that they fly down from the sky and skewer someone with their sharp talons.

IN THE END…

The Knife’s Edge is an intense start to a new epic fantasy series. If you are not easily overwhelmed with complex world building, it will be a real page-turner for you. Or maybe you will just go with the flow, like me, and enjoy it nevertheless.

Recommended for fans of classic epic fantasy adventure series like Wheel of Time, Lord of the Rings etc.

Disclaimer: I received this ebook from Kismet Book Touring in exchange for a fair and honest review.

Oh no. What a disappointing follow-up to Noughts and Crosses.

I was blown away by Noughts and Crosses the first time I read it and this week when I read it for the second time I still highly enjoyed it. But Knife Edge just didn't really do it for me. I wanted to know what happened to Sephy and the baby, yes, and I got that. I also got a look into who Jude was and that he still has weaknesses and a vulnerability (interesting!). But I feel like more could have been done with this. The world building really could have been explored and more dimensions added. I liked how more of the rest of the world was developed through Jude's interactions with Cara and when Sephy sang in the band at clubs, but at the same time there was a lot of nothing going on in this book. Sephy's first few chapters are boring, saying only how she hated her daughter and then all of a sudden her feelings changed, new mother stuff. Sephy was still quite naive at the beginning, although her voice had matured. I feel like she's lost her fight though, and that's upsetting, because I had always loved her spunk and how she believed in equality.

The look into Jude's mind was interesting. He's a very angry, hostile young man but it feels like for him, the fight is not about equality. Its about vengeance. This is something I picked up in the previous book and was glad that Morgan challenged him about it. I was disappointed, though, that this was not further explored. There was a lot of potential for this to go somewhere and instead it became something Jude neve thought about again.

I'm still interested enough in the story and the characters to continue reading the two remaining books, but I was still disappointed with this one and hope they will improve and return to the same calibre as Noughts and Crosses. 3.5 stars.

Short, but it works well. I'd expected something darker than it really was. Dub-con at least. Really glad it wasn't, since I hate dub-con.