Winter is Coming.

Brian Ruckley’s masterpiece Winterbirth is a sure thing from the start. Using excellent world building skills, Ruckley develops a landscape that is quite different from any fantasy I have ever read. The various Bloods are reminiscent of medieval Scots or Celts. Each has a Thane that leads them, and each Blood, the True Bloods and the Black Road, have a High Thane. While the Bloods have quite the messy history themselves, there is currently an uneasy truce between the Bloods (who are Huanin, or Human) and the Kyrinin, who are also divided into clans. The Kyrinin are somewhat like elves, but Ruckley has done an excellent job creating a race of his very own that doesn’t adhere to typical standards. The product of a union between the two races are called na’kyrim, who have the ability to access the power of the Shared, a sort of nebulous consciousness. The na’kyrin are few and often hated by Huanin for their ancestry-there are stories of na’kyrim so powerful they used the Shared for their own twisted ambitions, often leaving a trail of death and destruction.

To make matters worse, years ago a cult was formed, saying that the Gods that had abandoned them would one day return. The Black Road follows this tenet while the True Bloods do not, and we are dropped right into a scene of political machinations, battles, and more.

As you can imagine, one of the only hitches reading this was simply understanding the civilization, names, and who was a True Blood vs Black Road, etc. It gets a little slippery and I found myself (at first) flipping to the front of the book to double check the character list.  However, don’t let that discourage you! It will all fall into place. This is an epic fantasy, occasionally reminiscent of GRRM in that we meet each character-we learn what pushes them to act as they do-making it harder to immediately hate the “villains” or choose a side since we understand their motivations.

The first thing I noticed about Brian Ruckley was his word use-it immediately reminded me of Latin poetry (without the dactylic hexameter). Ruckley uses gorgeous phrases like the following:

A horn sounded clear and sharp across the blue autumnal sky. The baying of hounds wound itself around the note like ivy on a tree.

The story unwraps rather swiftly, and we follow Orisian, nephew of the Lannis Thane as he witnesses an attack by the Black Road on Lannis lands. Orisian barely escapes and travels with his shieldman Rothe towards the unknown. The Black Road is only able to uphold this attack due to a new alliance with the White Owl Kyrinin, forged by Aeglyss, an unstable na’kyrim.

Orisian finds unexpected help along the way from the Fox Kyrinin, and is increasingly attracted to Ess’yr, his Kyrinin guide. Meanwhile, the Black Road, namely Wain and Kanin of the Horin-Gyre continue to eradicate all traces of Orisian’s Lannis Blood. To top it all off, we watch Aeglyss’ bitter path as he taps into a well of untold power.

Winterbirth is a must read for epic fantasy lovers–Ruckley doesn’t disappoint!