Gift of Griffins

Gift of Griffins- V.M. Escalada
DAW/Penguin Group
Release Date: August 7, 2018

Rating:
📚📚📚📚📚

Warning: Potential Spoilers Ahead!

Synopsis: Kerida Nast and her companions have succeeded in finding Jerek Brightwing, the new Luqs of Farama, and uniting him with a part of his Battle Wings, but not all their problems have been solved. Farama is still in the hands of the Halian invaders and their Shekayrin, and it's going to take magical as well as military strength to overcome them. 

Unexpected help comes from Bakura, the Princess Imperial of the Halians, whose Gifts have been suppressed.  As the Voice of her brother the Sky Emperor she has some political power over the Halian military, and she will use it to aid the Faramans, if Kerida can free her from what she sees as a prison. But whether Kerida can help the princess remains to be seen. If she succeeds, Bakura may prove their salvation. But should Kerida fail, all may be lost....

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In Gift of Griffins V. M. Escalada continues to show her talent in world building, weaving together well crafted characters and a beautifully textured, intricate, magically real world. You feel the wind in your face and the ground beneath your feet.  Her characters continue to be entirely believable- imperfect people in a far from perfect world, learning what they are capable of in overwhelming circumstances.  Kerida Nast and the Princess Imperial Bakura are especially well-written- watching them grow into strong, confident women who are willing to stand up to adversity even when they are terrified made it easy to forget how young they are in pure years.  They have had to grow up quickly and are the equal to any of the more experienced adults by the end of the book.

Unlike many second books in a series, Griffins didn't disappoint after Escalada's amazing first book, Halls of Law.  The emphasis has shifted from mere personal survival to the overthrowing of the Shekayrin determined to control the people, but the story is still told through the personal experiences of a few people.  We also got to see a lot more of the griffins here than in Halls, which was a lot of fun.  I thought Escalada did a great job giving us a griffin's point of view of things, and having the griffins and their way of thinking and prioritizing being very different from that of humans.  I also appreciated how nuanced the motivations among the humans themselves were- we don't get a generalized 'good' versus 'evil', but layers of loyalty and betrayal that will keep the reader guessing until the very end.    

Gift of Griffins is a must read for fantasy lovers looking for a new series to enjoy. You may first be drawn to Griffins because of the beautiful cover art, but you'll stay immersed in this wonderful fantasy world thanks to Escalada's beautiful writing style and amazing characters.  I hope to see many more books to come in this series!

 I would recommend starting with Halls of Law, since Gift of Griffins is very much a sequel instead of a stand alone book.

Halls of Law

Halls of Law- V.M. Escalada
DAW
Release Date: August 1, 2017

Rating:
📚📚📚📚📚

Synopsis: Seventeen-year-old Kerida Nast has always wanted a career in the military, just like the rest of her family. So when her Talent is discovered, and she knows she'll have to spend the rest of her life as a psychic for the Halls of Law, Ker isn't happy about it. Anyone entering the Halls must give up all personal connection with the outside world, losing their family and friends permanently. 

But just as Kerida is beginning to reconcile herself to her new role, the Faraman Polity is invaded by strangers from Halia, who begin a systematic campaign of destruction against the Halls, killing every last Talent they can find.

Kerida manages to escape, falling in with Tel Cursar, a young soldier fleeing the battle, which saw the deaths of the royal family. Having no obvious heir to the throne, no new ruler to rally behind, the military leaders will be divided, unable to act quickly enough to save the empire. And with the Halls being burned to the ground, and the Talents slaughtered, the Rule of Law will be shattered.

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Halls of Law begins a thrilling new series by V.M. Escalada.  Invasion is tearing apart the Faraman Polity, the royal family is dead, the military scattered and trying to decide who they should take orders from.  The Talents, who have always served Faraman as agents of the law, are being killed- their Halls burned, their powers outlawed, and any suspected of helping them killed alongside them.  Kerida Nast escapes the destruction of her Hall and joins young soldier Tel Cursar in journeying to a remaining military outpost.  But on the way they become a part of a far larger plan, one that might save not only their own lives, but their entire world.

Book One in the Faraman Prophecy skillfully creates and shatters an established world, leaving the survivors to find their way in the wreckage.  Escalada has a talent for world building while at the same time not explaining the world as if to an outsider.  The reader is immersed in a new world, one whose sights, scents, and sounds are as organic as the people who populate it.  All of the characters, especially Kerida, are multidimensional and complex. They have their strengths and weaknesses, their talents and blindspots.  Escalada is excellent at making sure none of her characters is fully "just" one thing or another.  Just when you are sure you can classify all the invaders as "evil"- and my skin crawled with some of the scenes when the invader mages "purify" and "pacify" locals- you find some level of sympathy, or at least humanity, in the main enemy as embodied in Shekayrin Svann.  There are Faraman men on willing to join the invader Halians without considering what that means for their world, particularly the women, and then right at the end Escalada gives a surprise twist among the Halians that promises more complications, uneasy alliances, and gray areas to come in Book Two.  

Halls is a fast-paces, intense, and absorbing story and I was sorry when I reached the end and had to leave it and the characters I'd come to know and love behind. I loved how we learned things through the characters, not ahead of them, and that those characters were not the leaders but more of the 'everyday' or lower level people dealing with the upheaval after it happens.    

V.M. Escalada creates a world of swords and magic, griffons and soldiers, heroes and everyday people trying to get along, harsh difficulties and the warmth of friends becoming family.  Readers who enjoyed Class Moss' From Unseen Fire, David Weber's Honor Harrington series, and Mercedes Lackey's world of Valdemar, will love the new world of Halls of Law and be waiting eagerly for the next book in the series (Gift of Griffins, release date August 7, 2018).