House of Blades (The Traveler's Gate Trilogy Book 1) Kindle Edition

As a child, Simon is traveling with his parents when he is forced to witness to two Travelers murder his father and destroy his mother's mind. He is saved by another Traveler, who intervenes before they can kill Simon and kills both of the attacking Travelers.Years later, the village in which Simon has been eking out an existence, caring for his mother with the small amount of money he is able to earn and the occasional handouts from others in the village. Suddenly, his village is attacked. The Overlord has declared that the year's Sacrifice will come from the village, but the soldiers and Traveler sent to gather the nine individuals who will serve as sacrifice do not do so peacefully. Killing indiscriminately, the village is nearly destroyed. Of those taken for sacrifice is Leah, one of Simon's only friends in the village.Determined to save her, Simon returns to the site of his father's murder in search of the Traveler who had saved him. After several days, he finds Kai instead. Kai brings him into Vallin Hall and begins to help train him as a Traveler. Will Simon gain the skills he needs to save Leah? And what about Alin, who discovers he is also a Traveler, and he is apparently a prophesized Traveler? Will Alin's ego help him or hurt him?I really enjoyed his introduction into this world. Both the character development and the world-building were good. From the beginning of the book, I was drawn into the story and found myself cheering for Simon. In addition, though I initially found myself glad that Simon would have a second Traveler on his side through Alin, Wight did a wonderful job of writing Alin's character development such that he could easily go different ways. I look forward to reading/listening to the next book to see how that goes. Finally, after that revelation at the end, I definitely want to see what's going to happen between Simon and Alin, and whether or not Simon will reveal the knowledge he gained about Leah when he was rescuing her.I also had the opportunity to listen to part of the audiobook, newly re-recorded by the wonderful Travis Baldree. I started listening to the audiobook about halfway through, as it was just released yesterday. I look forward to listening to the other two books as Travis Baldree is one of my favorite narrators.

Travelers are men and women who have been granted immense abilities thanks to their connection to Territories. When Travelers come to Simon's village, the villagers are helpless to stand in their wake. People Simon has known his whole life are captured and killed in the process. While all that's happening a young man from Simon's village manifests prophesied powers and vows to save the captured villagers. While others are encouraged by the young man, Simon is determined to save the villagers himself. Without powers of his own he can't stand up against Travelers, but there is still one hope for Simon to gain what he needs.House of Blades was an unexpectedly delightful read. I added this book to my to read pile years ago, but only recently got around to it. The description wasn't particularly compelling and I honestly just forgot about it, until recently. I wish I read this years ago.House of Blades has an intriguing magic system. The magic users gain their power from gates to certain territories. The territories are magical domains where people can gain access to the power the domains possess. The abilities aren't given they must be earned. If everyone's experiences are as difficult as Simon's then it's truly amazing that anyone has magical abilities. Simon sought his power from Valinhall. Valinhall is a territory where nearly everything in it tries to kill those seeking to earn it's powers. It makes for many sleepless nights.The characters were so so in the novel, but I particularly liked Simon. Simon's life became difficult when his father died before his eyes and his mother was driven insane. As a mere boy he became the caretaker to his mother. Simon hates being helpless, but there is little he can do about it until his mother dies. Simon has more guts and determination in him than skill by far. Seeing him struggle for such selfless reasons was inspiring.House of Blades was a pleasant surprise and I hope the rest of the trilogy is as good or better.

Liked this book from the first chapter. Usually takes me a bit to get into a new series but this one caught me from the moment I picked it up. Hoping the rest of the series doesn’t disappoint

I thought it starter out pretty slow and almost put it down but I picked up enough to keep my interest . so I'm going to read the rest of the series.

Decent book storyline i felt developed quite fast and didn’t seem as intricate or enveloping as I’d like but I continue to enjoy Will Wight’s books as he progresses as a writer.

Afraid that I've abandoned this at 20 something % as I just can't get into it. I read a LOT and, in between more serious books, like to occasionally throw in something a bit quirky and the synopsis made me think this might be something that I would like.Unfortunately I'm finding it a bit "young adult" in its tone and it's not gripping me. One of the main characters (at this stage I'm not entirely sure WHO is supposed to be the lead) is Simon and, so far, he's just driving me nuts with going on about his mother. Thankfully (yes, showing my cold hearted side) she's died a few chapters ago - but even that couldn't endear me to it.The author has a vivid imagination and clearly has put a lot of work into inventing an unusual World / Galaxy / Characters. But I suspect that I'm too old for his target audience.

Big fan of Will Wight and I began by reading Cradle which I love. So far I feel Cradle is his best work.There were a lot of interesting ideas in House of Blades but I often felt a lot was not explained and it left me without the detail I wanted. Also the power scaling is rather loose and I don’t feel satisfaction when a practitioner of a few months beats those who have been using their power for a lifetime. None of the main characters have a good or honest relationship either so this is missing too. The only person I found myself invested with was Simon.All in all I felt it warranted a 3 stars for average.

The narrative world is interesting, I want to know more about Valinhall lore. I would read a whole book dedicated to recruiting the original 'dragons'.I'm not interested in the young love squabble. The female character is very much not a damsel in distress, it's nice that she is critical and unimpressed with both young male characters' actions. Having this multi-perspective narrative made some of the narrative driving motivations very shallow, it's easy to criticise the characters, so it also made it easy to dislike the characters. House of blades wasn't a page turner for me. Despite this, it is a well written book.

I really enjoyed this book and bought the sequel immediately after I'd finished. Easily worth 5 stars at the bargain Kindle price.The magic system is the most obvious aspect about the book that is original and well thought through. The concept is that there is one main world where everybody lives, but there are eight other "territories" that exist separately. If you can find your way to these magical realms and survive in them, you will be rewarded with spectacular abilities, the nature of which are very much specific to your territory. People who have these powers are known as Travellers. Add in a further two "special" territories and the fact that some Travellers can belong to more than one, and you have an extremely rich magic system that lends itself well to magical duels or more epic battle scenes, as well as more subtle uses of the various powers.Less obvious is the author's deliberate twists on standard conventions seen in the majority of Fantasy books. Here there are two warring factions, but there is no clear dividing line to say one is Good and the other Evil. In fact, both of them commit atrocities and acts of benevolence alike, and as the story progresses a good job is done in showing how both factions can reasonably consider that they are "in the right". In other words, it's more realistic in terms of human nature, politics and the wielding of power than you might expect.Also novel is that the main protagonist has a tragic childhood, develops amazing powers in his teens and goes adventuring. So far, so very ordinary (not that there's anything wrong with that trope per se). But, there is a twist in that despite all of this, from the perspective of the world at large, he is very much an incidental character, being overshadowed by a bigger player, whom he resents. I won't go into any more detail for fear of spoiling things, but it's a subtle, welcome change to the norm.Finally, what makes the book are the characters. They are likeable, quirky and interesting, which pretty much ticks all the boxes for me.I especially like the addled swordsman with an unhealthy fetish for his dolls...My only subjective criticism is that the speech of many of the characters uses some modern expressions that I personally find jarring. I don't expect fantasy characters to have to speak in "Olde Englyshe", but I do find that too modern a tone can spoil the escapism a bit for me.

In summary its a bit too simple and daft for me, but I still enjoyed it and the next book Is far better so I am hopeful about the series.Back to the review. The main character, Simon, is decent and the author makes a decent job of fleshing him out. However none of the other characters were particularly interesting, they either just fitted in to well known archetypes or didn't get any time to grow. In fact with many characters they weren't even just uninteresting they also seemed pretty silly and unbelievable.The plot was so-so, I liked some of the ideas like the magic system which seemed to have a lot in common with the magic system in Steven Erickson's books. However I felt like the author was using another idea from Erickson's books, namely covering up for nonsensical plot elements with vague references to larger terms/ideas which then weren't explained. I found that approach annoying in Erickson's books and the same is true here.I also found that the few actually interesting ideas were poorly dealt with. In particular (spoiler alert) the idea that the house and in particular the Nye were trying to kill Simon and all other guests was quite nice. However the idea was ruined when it later it turns out some guests get a free pass.Other than that I'm not sure what to say. Its a pretty short and simple book with very few original or decent ideas, but it that wasn't too bad a read especially at the price.