Vranr’s Curse (Legends of Karik #3) – Evan Oliver

“The small deeds are often more important than the mighty ones. Do not lose sight of those things which are truly important“

Once again I have found my way back to the Legend of Karik and learning the story of a man who was remembered for his great feats!

Vranr’s Curse is the 3rd installment in the Legend of Karik series and to be completely transparent was the slowest moving book so far. Don’t take that as a bad thing though, the story is still incredibly solid, but I was missing the awesome action scenes that Oliver has spoiled me with. Though that is not to say that there wasn’t any action in this, it just took a long to time to get to any of it.

Vranr’s Curse picks up right where Ylmi’s Saga ended, Ylmi is now Jarl and for the first half of the book it strongly focus on her journey and hardships of being the new Jarl. A lot of political storytelling is going on in this portion and for me was a bit a drag to get through, but as I stated before its because Oliver has spoiled me with his previous books in the series. I will say though that even though I found the first half to be on the slower side it was at least satisfying to see that Ylmi was struggling with being Jarl and that everything just didn’t magically fix itself after she gained the position. We also learned more about Jarhost and how he is an absolutely horrible trashbag of a king, there was some marriages within Ylmi’s settlement one that took me by surprise and one I was secretly hoping for and the way Oliver wrote it had me all “awww finally”!

Once you hit the half way mark the story starts to dive back into the original ongoing plot, Karik and his goal of getting through the Black Isles and getting to the west. We go on an epic sail where someone loses yet another finger, because why not right haha. Tensions start to rise, Jarhost has sent some of his men to go along on the journey, to of course be sneaky and underhanded. I won’t tell the outcome of the sail but it was dangerous and everything that come after brings me right back to what I love about Oliver’s story, the action! Although I would have loved to see Revik fight some more, I mean what I got I am pleased with I’m just totally in love with the guy and want more, although Oliver had me scared a few times with him during the sailing, don’t take my big strong battle man away from me!

As for one small thing that bothered me, a certain character announces she is with child and then proceeds to go on a crazy sailing adventure, gets the shit beat out her, kidnapped and starved, and comes out just fine. I won’t lie it felt like Oliver forgot that she was with child, like that is a lot a strain on the body and it would have felt bit more realistic if at times it was mentioned that she was making some effort to protect herself or if her husband had made any nod to her like “you all good, the baby good?!?!” like it was just brought up and then kind of slowly forgotten about.

The book ends on some new characters making their first appearance and leaving me wanting to know what Karik’s next plan of action is, and I can’t wait to see what that is.