One of My All-Time Favorite Series

Years ago when I was in America I stumbled across a book at the library. The cover looked interesting, so I checked it out and read it. The writing style was bizarre and at first I absolutely hated it, but by the time I reached the end of the book I had to know what happened next - and the book ended on a cliffhanger!

I went back to the library to find the next book in the series, only to find that it wasn’t there. Or anywhere in the U.S. In fact, the books were being remade - the series had originally been published as eight short books but they were now being combined, two at a time, into four longer books. I’d had the misfortune of reading the first longer book but the others still hadn’t been made!

I scoured the Internet and finally found the only way to read the other books - without waiting months or years, at least - was to buy the old versions on-line - directly from the UK.

So I scrounged up the money and counted the days until the books arrived, several of them apparently given up by British libraries.

Then I set to reading, reading, reading - and even though the narrator’s voice was so, so strange, still I couldn’t put the books down. I’d finish one and start the next. Right up to the very satisfying ending, I stayed up late and read until my eyes almost fell out.

Then, a few years later, I had the hankering to read those books again.  But here I was - in Korea! And my British library books were somewhere in America!  Fortunately, the new versions had been finished, so I bought them all again on Kindle.

Again, I stayed up too late reading them.

I rarely reread books (finding out what happens next is usually the major force that helps me finish - if I already know, there’s not much keeping me from doing other things), so I think it’s safe to say that this series is definitely one of my all-time favorites.

It’s Blade, by Tim Bowler. You can check it out on his website here or find it on Amazon here.