Review: The Ninth Rain by Jen Williams

Title: The Ninth Rain
Author: Jen Williams
Series: The Winnowing Flame Trilogy #1
Genre: Adult Fantasy/Magic/Epic Fantasy
Publisher: Headline
Publication Date: February 23rd, 2017
Edition: Paperback, 544 pages
Source: Purchased
Purchase: Amazon US | Barnes & Noble | BAM | Book Depository | Bookshop | Powell's | Thriftbooks

 

 

 

 

 

Synopsis:

   The great city of Ebora once glittered with gold. Now its streets are stalked by wolves. Tormalin the Oathless has no taste for sitting around waiting to die while the realm of his storied ancestors falls to pieces - talk about a guilt trip. Better to be amongst the living, where there are taverns full of women and wine.
   When eccentric explorer, Lady Vincenza 'Vintage' de Grazon, offers him employment, he sees an easy way out. Even when they are joined by a fugitive witch with a tendency to set things on fire, the prospect of facing down monsters and retrieving ancient artefacts is preferable to the abomination he left behind.
   But not everyone is willing to let the Eboran empire collapse, and the adventurers are quickly drawn into a tangled conspiracy of magic and war. For the Jure'lia are coming, and the Ninth Rain must fall.

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This review is a long time coming. It took me five months to be in the right head space to finish this book. A stress filled summer kept me from picking this book up as often as I would've preferred. I found out about this book/series through Elliot Brook's Youtube channel, and it sounded really interesting so I grabbed the trilogy.

This is one of the most interesting and unique worlds I have read in a long time. There's a lost history, an ancient enemy that only Ebora remembers how to fight, and they are a dying race. Ebroans used to get their long lives by drinking the sap of their Tree God, but the tree started to die and Ebora turned to blood to sustain their lives but at the cost of what they call The Crimson Flux. Kind of a double-edged sword. If they drink too much blood, they die faster and in more pain than if they don't drink blood at all. 

Tormalin, the Eboran wee follow the most in the book is an interesting complex character. I don't know really how to describe his character. He portrays himself as aloof and that he doesn't really care one way or another about much of anything. But there are cracks in that facade from time to time. He complains a lot about really anything he can. It might be part of the front he puts up with others.

 

I loved Vintage. She's an older black woman, around her 50s I think. She's an adventurer, a scholar, a researcher. I like that one of the protagonists isn't a young person. Yes, Tor is older than her by about 100 years, but he acts like a 20-something most of the time with his complaining about sometimes frivolous things. She's great. For a lot of the book I had no idea what her motivations were, but once I learned them, all her actions made so much more sense.

Noon, might be my favorite character, and I have a feeling that (keeping it spoiler-free) a certain person from Noon's past lied or exaggerated about what happened that got Noon sent to the Winnowry. There is just something that isn't fully adding up, and I hope to learn more about that in the next book.

This is a really fantastic start to a trilogy.