Published 3rd March 2022 by Head of Zeus.
From the cover of the book:
The second in an action-packed adventure thriller series, where modern-day recruits compete in an ancient fight to the death in the streets of Edinburgh.New Season. New Rules. Same deadly game...
The Pantheon Games are the biggest underground event in the world, followed by millions online. New recruits must leave behind their twenty-first century lives and vie for dominance in a gruelling battle to the death armed only with ancient weapons – and their wits.
Last season's new recruits Tyler and Lana have lived to fight another day, but now they face a series of even more lethal clashes before the Grand Battle that will end the Season.
It's survival of the fittest, in the most brutal fashion imaginable. Lana must face the demons of her past, and Tyler has the mother of all targets on his back.
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The annual Pantheon Games, the biggest underground event in the world is in full swing, and fortunes are about to be made or lost on a whole new phase of bloodletting, by the anonymous figures that control the action from their luxurious penthouses and extensive estates across the globe.
New recruits to the Horde, Tyler and Lana are about to face their first Blood Season on the streets of Edinburgh, against their sworn enemies the Titans - the season that will culminate in a full on Grand Battle in an unknown location. Tyler is coming down from the dubious honour of being the Horde's White Warrior, having been able to gain them the advantage of all four Assets to use in the battle to come, but his status has just hit rock bottom once more, and his search for his lost sister Morgan is not going well. The rules have changed again in a way that leaves him with a whopping target on his back, in a contrived whittling down of numbers on both sides through cat and mouse skirmishes before the big event, and he now needs to make his first kill to show himself battle-worthy.
It's hard enough to keep yourself from being gutted in this shadowy world ruled by those who have little regard for the value of life when the rules are being followed, and this time even more dangerous enemies are opting to break them for their own advantage - and to keep their secrets. Tyler, and his friends are in greater peril than ever, both within and outside the Games...
Following on in close order from the cracking first part of this series, The Wolf Mile (my review Here), this book not only keeps up the pace and excitement of book one, but exceeds every expectation on the action, adventure and intrigue stakes. Tyler begins this story on a bit of a high from his success as White Warrior for the Horde, despite it being a poisoned chalice. His wits have protected him and Lana, and given him a name as someone not afraid to use lateral thinking to gain an edge in the new world he has willingly embraced, but it is impossible to avoid the fact that he is now even more of a target for those who would like to see him fail. The Blood Season finds him right back where he started for reasons he had not foreseen, and it's time for him to confront exactly what being a player in the Pantheon Games means, which allows C.F. Barrington to take us on more bloody escapades through the streets of Edinburgh - this time with murderous intent on a whole new level. Tyler is also forced to accept how much Lana means to him, and learns that she shares his feelings, but quite how they can ever hope to be together as things stand is difficult to imagine.
As the Blood Season plays out Barrington brings in some tasty little twists and turns with a change of scene that heightens the historical perspective of the notion behind the Games, as preparation for the Grand Battle gets underway. Shenanigans at all levels of the hierarchy and on both sides of the fence take us back and forth between time-honoured battle preparations with Tyler, and the desperate cut and thrust on the streets of Edinburgh with Lana, keeping things very interesting indeed. The bad guys are forced into making moves they would rather not make, some of which have very disturbing consequences, especially for Lana. Barrington tops it all off with a glorious battle scene that is good enough to grace the pages of any epic work of historical fiction... and if that wasn't enough, he then drops in a jaw-dropping cliffhanger to hook you into the final instalment to come....
I thoroughly enjoyed every moment of this little genre-busting gem, just as awed by the brilliance of the concept behind the books as I was when absorbing The Wolf Mile. This is wonderful stuff and I cannot wait for the final book in the series, The Hastening Storm!
The Blood Isles is available to buy now in paperback and ebook formats.
Thank you to Head of Zeus for sending me a paperback copy of this book in return for an honest review, and for inviting me to be part of this blog tour.
About the author:
C.F. Barrington spent twenty years intending to write a novel, but found life kept getting in the way. Instead, his career has been in major-gift fundraising, leading teams in organisations as varied as the RSPB, Oxford University and the National Trust. In 2015, when his role as Head of Communications at Edinburgh Zoo meant a third year of fielding endless media enquires about the possible birth of a baby panda, he finally retreated to a quiet desk and got down to writing.Raised in Hertfordshire and educated at Oxford, he now divides his time between Fife and the Lake District.
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