Experience Priest Of Bones (War For The Rose Throne, #1) Imagined By Peter McLean File PDF

fell upon them like the wrath of Our Lady,
A glorious charge, in the light of the rising sun,
It sounds so grand,
It sounds like the stuff of legends, the act of heroes, Well, we were no heroes, and we were outnumbered, and exhausted and hurt, and it was a fucking disaster,

Priest of Bones by Peter McLean is the first book in The War for the Rose Throne series, and my god, am I kicking myself for not reading this sooner.
This was a sensational read from start to finish, which solidifies my love for gangster esque, grimdark fantasy,

Tomas Piety and his misfit crew return from the war in Abingon, They should be celebrated as war heroes, they should be praised for surviving the horrors that they have seen and been through but thats a far cry from what they receive though.
The war veterans return home to Ellingburg, a place thats now devastated with poverty, famine and plague, Tomas Piety soon discovers that the business empire he once owned, which helped to keep his streets thriving, has now been overrun by a foreign enemy, For a man like Tomas Piety, he simply cant let that pass,

Together with the help of his comrades from the war, Tomas resurrects his Pious Men a once feared and respected criminal gang, to take back all that is rightfully his.
What follows from then is a turbulent story of turf brawls, political intrigue and the fight for power, This is grimdark to its core, You see, Tomas has his own notion of justice, and may god help you if youre on the receiving end of his wrath,

So it may seem as though Priest of Bones is yet another grimdark tale, full of gratuitous violence, and all the other characteristics which the genre can entail.
Youd be wrong though. McLean takes the concepts of grimdark, and delivers them in a much more distinctive way, and Im all for it, For example, in the opening chapter, Tomas Piety slays one of his men who attempts to rape a young girl, Yes this is done brutally, bloodily even, and if youre someone like me who enjoys all those stabby stabby gory action scenes, then youll find it as entertaining as I did.
However my point is, it is not without reason this is not violence for the sake of violence, This was a scene I certainly appreciated, because it sets the tone for the zero tolerance towards abuse, which is a significant theme throughout,

Priest of Bones is fundamentally a portrayal of trauma, or PTSD, and how the affects of that trauma shape various characters, Battle shock affects many of the Pious Men for some it turns them savage, others have delayed reactions, and most just want to drink away all that they have seen.
The effects of the war in Abingon certainly hang heavily over the exsoldiers, Then there are those who have suffered through childhood abuse, Truth be told, the chapters that dealt with this did make me feel uncomfortable, and it was hard to read, but it did validate why certain characters acted a certain way, and it made the retribution that much more justified.
Like I said, in this book murder, bloodshed and violence, always serves a purpose.

Of late, Ive been reading a lot of epic fantasy that covers either many worlds, or vast lands, So I thoroughly enjoyed the closeknit setting of Ellingburg, and its seedy streets filled with poverty, and corruption, The portrayal of gangland warfare within Ellingburg, unquestionably held shades of The Godfather, and Peaky Blinders, I found this so entertaining as the former, I grew up watching continuously as I had an older brother obsessed with gangster films, and the latter, I only recently started watching because of this book.
What I particularly loved though was the volatile relationship between the two brothers, Tomas and Jochan Piety, which felt so akin to the brothers in Hell or High Water, which is one of my favourite movies of all time.


To find all these elements in a book, and one with such a compelling narrative voice, felt so refreshing, I usually find it takes me a while to warm to a first person narration, but not here, Tomas Pietys voice just reeled me in immediately, From the very beginning we see Tom is not a mindless, ruthless thug, Hes a thinker, a calculated, pragmatic character, and hes ballsy with it too, Whereas his brother Jochan is the polar opposite where Tomas would approach a situation with a well formed plan, Jochan would approach it with carnage and bruteforce, However, even a man like Jochan has his depths, and at his heart, we see that he too suffers greatly,

Jochan has always been wild, but there was a feral quality to his stare now that I hadnt seen before, I could almost see the flare of the cannon in his pupils, the clouds of dust from falling walls rolling across the whites of his eyes into corners that were as red as the rivers of blood we had waded through.


Other memorable characters included Billy the Boy with his intriguing magical abilities, Fat Luka with his ambiguous nature, who I couldnt quite wholly trust, and Bloody Anne who was a force to be reckoned with.
Each character fights their own personal demons, They have all suffered and through their suffering they find comradeship, and essentially find hope,

However, it is Tomas Piety who now holds a firm place in my all time favourite antiheros list, Hes in good company too, with the likes of Logen Ninefingers aka The BloodyNine, and Glokta from The First Law trilogy, and Mad Ben Stykes, from Gods of Blood and Powder trilogy, they make quite the violent Grimdark crew!

Tomas narrates Priest of Bones in the nature of an internal reflection on his life.
I wholeheartedly loved this style, Even when you feel yourself questioning many of Tomas decisions, you still rooted for him nonetheless, He is charismatic, seemingly stoic, and we alone get to intimately witness Tomas at his most vulnerable, and see a tender side through his bonds with Bloody Anne and Billy the Boy, but we must remember that Tomas is essentially an antihero.
He may hold to a personal moral code, but whether he is truly doing everything for the greater good of Ellingburg, or if his motive is solely to gain as much power as possible, remains to be seen.
Soldier, business man, criminal, priest, who is the real Tomas Piety That is what makes Tomas have such a captivating character psyche, Maybe ultimately, he is just the right man, for the right job,

I finished Priest of Bones contemplating the turns the story had taken, trying, but failing, to decipher what could come next, and I was left wanting more.
Thats on me though, because the sequel, Priest of Lies is already released, all I need to do is pick it up,
This is my second read of Priest of Bones and I meant to talk about it the last time that I read it, but I forgot, Although, I did give it a star rating of, and upon reading it again, I totally stand by this, It is well worthy of five and more,
It Is such a pleasure revisiting this book, and I think I enjoyed more the second time round in all honesty, In terms of reading it, I did a mix and match approach to the book coz I have it both as an ebook and as an audio book, so even when the dulcet tones of David Hale narrating the story was not in my head, I still read the book with his voice in my head.
Its just such a distinctive narration that it stuck!

Anyway, onto the book itself, The story revolves around Tomas Peity, a one time racketeer, and general gang leader who returns to the town of Ellinberg after three years away at war, He returns home to find his businesses taken over by a group of strangers that turns out to have wider implications than he first thought, We follow Tomas, who had been made a Priest in the army, as he and his gang take back both the streets of Ellinberg and also his former businesses, subsequently reestablishing the Pious Men as they come to known, as the leading criminal fraternity in the town.


Now as with all good things, the book has its roots somewhere, and with The Priest of Bones it seems to lie in hard crime fiction, The prose itself is gritty and clipped and this works so well, making the story flow at such a fast pace, In fact, it took me two days to read this again! I just simply could not put it down, even though I had already read it,

This book is just amazing, Every one of the characters jumps off the page, even the minor ones, Not only that, whilst the book is brutal and gritty, there are some absolute perfect bits of humour in there mainly in the form of Simple Sam who pisses in Tomass battle scarred brother Jochams brandy when hes asleep and also farts on peoples heads.
Cracks me up everytime!

The story itself is

told from Tomas Pietys perspective and charts his rise to power and the things that he has to do.
Tomas is a brilliant character, Sometimes, he can get a bit sanctimonious and get on his high horse about something, but that just adds dimensions to his character, However, for a gangster, he has a stubborn streak of morality about him and he will not stand for any mistreatment of anyone that does not deserve it, In fact, for a crime lord, Tomas has such a streak of socialism about him that he would make a grown labour supporter cry,

If you havent read Priest of Bones, I strongly urge you to do so, The book is so good that you wont notice you have read it till you turn the last page, Its that good!.