July 4, 2014

New ‘Tower Lord’ review and last ever screen grab (for now)

By Anthony Ryan

Thanks to Joshua S. Hill for his review of Tower Lord on Fantasy Book Review.

Taking stock after a hectic, but very exciting couple of days, I have become increasingly aware that I’m checking my Amazon sales ranking is far too often whilst filling up my pictures folder with screen grabs. As this is probably not conducive to a stable mental state, and I real work to do, I’ve decided to stop doing it. Therefore I, Anthony Ryan, hereby swear to the Dark Gods I shall no longer check my sales ranking on an hourly basis nor take any more screen grabs… apart from this one which shows Tower Lord at number one on the Amazon UK fantasy chart as of this morning (last one, I promise):

amzncht1UK 04072014 0620

This entry was posted on Friday, July 4th, 2014 at 8:30 am and tagged with , , , and posted in Writing Stuff. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.

37 responses to “New ‘Tower Lord’ review and last ever screen grab (for now)”

  • Jordan
    July 7th, 2014 at 6:06 pm

    Tower Lord was awesome. When’s the next one…??

    Reply
  • Jason
    July 8th, 2014 at 7:39 pm

    What a great read!! My kindle says I am at 81% and this makes me sad.

    Reply
  • Evan Williams
    July 8th, 2014 at 10:27 pm

    Wow, just finished the book and I can’t wait for the next one!
    Is the third book going to consist of other character chapters too or focus mainly on Vaelin like the first? Or is that a question that cannot be answered at this stage? haha
    Keep up the awesome work!

    Reply
    • Anthony Ryan
      July 8th, 2014 at 10:52 pm

      Hi Evan,
      The next book will continue in the same vein. Glad you liked the book.
      Anthony

      Reply
      • Evan Williams
        July 12th, 2014 at 11:04 pm

        Can I ask how you found the transition from stricly Vaelin’s point of view to that of others? Would you say it was easier or harder to write than Blood Song?
        Thanks

      • Anthony Ryan
        July 13th, 2014 at 11:20 am

        I found it easier than expected. It was kind of refreshing to write new characters, it’s a bit like getting to know new people. Overall, the writing process for Tower Lord was faster but probably about the same as Blood Song for general difficulty.
        Anthony

  • Anis Ceton
    July 10th, 2014 at 2:28 pm

    Hello Mr. Ryan, as a huge fan of the first novel I wonder: when you wrote Blood Song, did you have an ending in mind, and did you write Tower Lord in focus of your first thoughts or did you change the style and story of the book ?

    I hope in book 3 we will return to all the unanswered questions from book 1 🙂

    Reply
    • Anthony Ryan
      July 10th, 2014 at 2:45 pm

      Hi Anis,
      I won’t start something without an ending, though it may change in the course of writing. Blood Song and Tower Lord, however, both pretty much turned out as expected though getting to it produced some unexpected results.
      Hopefully, you’ll be satisfied with the answers provided in Book 3.
      Best regards,
      Anthony

      Reply
  • Alicia
    July 10th, 2014 at 2:36 pm

    Congratulations. Just finished and it was awesome. Can’t wait for the next!

    Reply
  • Jonathan
    July 11th, 2014 at 1:39 am

    Coming up to the end of Tower Lord, and the prospect of only having to wait one year for the next installment is almost as exciting as the books themselves.
    Both books are very enjoyable and captivating. I look forward to reading your work for a long while.

    Reply
  • Tamoor ahmad
    July 11th, 2014 at 8:20 am

    What a great book! I was wondering are we going to see more of sherin in the next book?

    Reply
  • Tamoor ahmad
    July 11th, 2014 at 9:14 am

    🙁 I liked her character

    Reply
  • Faunt
    July 11th, 2014 at 9:59 am

    Congratulations Anthony, you actually surprised me with your writing as I don’t usually associate fantasy with creative writers but you absolutely blew me away with Blood Song (a ridiculously generic title wasn’t very inviting either haha).

    I’m halfway through Tower Lord and I love it. Looking forward to telling my friends “I knew this guy from the start” after you get the mainstream recognition!

    Reply
  • Christopher Harju
    July 11th, 2014 at 11:21 am

    Hi Ryan,
    Tower Lord was perhaps not what I expected in style, introducing multiple povs and sidestories, comparing to the strong focus&pace on vaelin in Blood Song . Just wondering if this is something you had planned as a self-published author, or is it a change made by the publishers?

    Thanks for writing us interesting books and greetings from Finland!

    Reply
  • Marion
    July 12th, 2014 at 9:44 pm

    Mr. Ryan,
    Although numerous POVs typically annoy me, I loved Tower Lord. I also appreciated that you do not kill off the characters arbitrarily like the author with the HBO series. It dilutes the cohesiveness and makes the story a random collection of episodic life changes. At any rate, I’m looking forward to reading Queen of Fire and I really hope Vaelin gets the blood song back. 🙂
    KInd regards,
    M

    Reply
  • Jennie
    July 15th, 2014 at 5:40 pm

    I thoroughly enjoyed both Blood Song and Tower Lord. Definitely looking forward to the next book in the series. I’m looking forward to seeing how both Lyrna and Vaelin recover from their experiences, and Frentis is quickly becoming one of my favorite characters. 🙂

    Reply
  • Veronica
    July 18th, 2014 at 8:50 pm

    I have been reading fantasy for 18 years now (I suddenly feel old..) and coming across a book such as “Blood song” really excited me. It is exactly what I was looking for: a nice balance between classic old school fantasy and modern. And I enjoyed Tower Lord as well, but there was a G.RR Martin shadow behind it..I couldn’t quite put my finger on it. Please leave Martin where he is! He’s a terrible writer no matter how good his ideas might be. The kind of writer that the-tv-show-is-better-than-the-book, and I’ve said it all. In any case I love your style, your writing and thank you so much for letting me forget I was at work and transported me into Vaelin’s world. I will definitely keep an eye on the third book!

    Reply
  • Dennis
    July 21st, 2014 at 5:30 pm

    Loved Tower Lord, a worthy sequel to Blood Song. So glad I will not have to wait 2 1/2 years for the sequel. My only complaint was no Sherin. Thank you for many enjoyable hours.

    Reply
  • Alan
    July 24th, 2014 at 6:15 pm

    Just finished re-reading Blood Song after finishing Tower Lord. Very impressive indeed Mr. Ryan. There are so many little hints and things characters say in the first book that play out and make sense after reading the second.

    I have learned my lesson; I will be sure to re-read the first two books before starting the third book when it is released.

    Congrats on a job well done! Looking forward to the next installment.

    Reply
  • Babalo reda
    July 24th, 2014 at 8:00 pm

    Hello Ryan,

    **spoilers**

    First of all Al Sorna is a legendary bad ass. Just his history and reluctance to fight, trying to avoid using the sword really built up the tension. You just know someone is going to get wrecked the second he uses it! ending was explosive, not disappointed.

    I loved the book, looking forward to Vaelin and Lyrna getting it on (crossing my fingers).

    My question is, can we expect to see the remaining brothers reunited in the third book, i.e: Norta, Canus and Vaelin?

    Reply
  • Richard Amichnd
    July 24th, 2014 at 11:33 pm

    I loved the first book. For me, Valein Al Sorna is best ever written warrior/leader character in any fantasy novel. A real bad ass. Its funny that whenever I read another fantasy book, I always compare the main character with Sorna, and get dissatisfied with the main character :). Its happening a lot recently.
    Second book, I liked it, because I would like anything even loosely connected to Sorna. But at the same time, book took away the extreme emotions from characters. Like it took aways blind faith of Sorna in 6th order, it also took away leadership from Srna in a way. He is much much softer.Lyrna is soft too. I loved the first book so much because of the extreme emotion shown by its main characters, like king Janus for example.The second book is dominated by female characters. Not only more than 60% characters are female, but at the same time female characters are much more dominant. I don’t mind dominant female characters, but this is so different from first book. Second book has three queens (in a way), Frentis is in control of another woman and last but not least Al Sorna is also always listening, discussing to a female character concerning issues, even more than his brother Nortah. I just did not understand that part, the woman met Sorna just few weeks ago. So all in all, whole book shifted from male dominated world to a completely female dominated world, at the same time extremities of characters is completely lost. But this does not mean that it was a bad book, it was nice book, and if you put Al Sorna in a nice book it becomes a really good book. Thanks Anthony for a great character, and a great book.

    Reply
  • Ngoc Nguyen
    August 2nd, 2014 at 7:16 am

    Hi there,

    I’m almost halfway through the second book and I’m really enjoying it thus far. However, I’m a little disappointed that there is barely a mention of Sherin in this book so far. To me, I really loved Sherin as a character and as Vaelin’s love interest in the first book. I guess I am questioning why she wasn’t included in the 2nd book and previous comments say she won’t be included in the third one either? :/

    Reply
  • sue brookes
    August 4th, 2014 at 7:51 pm

    Just finished the second book and it was fantastic. Weird when you are desperate to get to the end of a book to find out the conclusion but dreading it at the same time because you are enjoying it so much you don’t want it to end. Hurry up book 3!

    Reply

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