Blog Tour: A Sacred Storm by Theodore Brun

Earlier this year I reviewed A Mighty Dawn by Theodore Brun on my blog as part of a blog tour with the wonderful people over at Corvus and now I'm reviewing the second book in the series (thanks for the early signed copy)! We all know by now that fantasy is one of my favourite genres, along with historical fiction, so I knew I was going to love this two book series.

*A Sacred Storm by Theodore Brun (688 pages) ★★★ (3.75...so so close, again)

The first book in this duology had a stunning cover (thankfully so does the second) and it had a similar number of pages, although this second book is a little longer; however don't be put off my the length of the books as even though they're over 600 pages, they read like 400 page books as you don't want to stop reading, it's an 'easy' read and thankfully the text is pretty large - tiny text is one of my bookish pet peeves!

Within the first book we follow Hakan, son of the Lord of the Northern Jutes, who experiences a life changing tragedy which forces him to find himself, re-evaluate his life and find his purpose which leads him on an arduous adventure with hardship, friendship and peril along the way.

The second book carries on from the events of the previous book so I can't say too much about the plot as it would definitely spoil the first (go and read the first book, it's only 99p as an e-book on Amazon). However, I can say that it has the same tone, action, camaraderie and viking warriors as the first book along with forbidden love, power play between kingdoms, revenge and a fair few sex scenes (some were relevant/pertinent to the story but a couple were a little unnecessary) as well as some epic battles, gore and a rather gruesome sacrifice! The latter point reminded me of a few scenes from the History channel TV show, Vikings (which I love).

As with the previous book I loved the quick, easy and engaging writing style along with the viking age setting and the camaraderie, friendship and relationship between two of my favourite characters, Erlan and Kai. I loved the battles scene, general fight scenes and the elements of magic as well as the main characters and the classic adventure storyline/themes.

A Sacred Storm received exactly the same star rating as the first book which was incredibly close to a solid four star read or more but there were a couple of negatives for me including the apparent need of almost every woman that Erlan meets to sleep with him...really. Additionally, I wanted more! I loved the world Brun has created, the characters of Erlan, Kai and Lilia as well as the unexplored magic elements so I wish there were more books in this series. Considering both books, I think the first is my favourite but it's a very close call!

Have you read the first book, A Mighty Dawn? Do you like fantasy books, TV shows or movies? What are you currently reading?