This my second time reading We Ride the Storm, I originally read and loved the self-published version a few years back and I’ve been super excited to reread with the updates now that it’s with Orbit. My first thought on opening the book was, wait, this is the wrong POV for the killer first line I remember. Then I read the new first line:
“They tried to kill me four times before I could walk. Seven before I held any memory of the world.”
Fuck, that’s a good hook. And Devin really jumps into the book, tension ramping up really quickly from chapter one. By the time the first chapter was done, I was no longer sad that it hadn’t been the original Rah chapter and was already wanting more Miko POV chapters. But then we got to Rah and the original, amazing opener:
“It’s harder to sever a head than people think”
Devin really has a way of hooking the reader into the book with the way she introduces each of her characters. Miko, Rah, and Cassandra all have amazingly written introductions which immediately leave you wanting more.
One of the things I really enjoyed about this book was that all of the POVs drew me in. I find in a lot of multi-POV books there’s always one that you want to skip over so you can get back to the POV you’re reading the book for. This was not the case with We Ride the Storm. Every time the POV changed, I was happy with it. All of the characters were fantastically written and very compelling, leaving me to love each and every one of them.
Devin also does a fantastic job with the worldbuilding. You get a good feel for all the different politics and agendas in play and the motivations of different factions. Small bits of world history are scattered throughout the book in ways which draw you into the world without info-dumping everything on the reader.
The plot of the book is quite fast paced, there is almost always something happening and it really makes the book difficult to put down as you so desperately want to know what happens next.
Miko faces the challenges of loyalty to her family or to their empire and must constantly fight her way through the political battlefield of Kisia. She is smart and cunning but is still young and has a lot to learn about the realities of politics and war.
Cassandra seems to be faced with an impossible choice. She’s given a job to assassinate a very important person, and quickly finds herself out of her depth and struggling to decide the best way forward. To make matters worse, the voice in her head seems to love making her life that much more difficult.
Finally, Rah just wants to be the best leader of his small tribe of exiled horse warriors. He is faced with many difficult decisions over the course of the book and is constantly challenged by his desire to follow tribe traditions and religion, or to move on and live like the people in the lands his tribe has been exiled to.
All three of these main POV characters have one key thing in common. Their entire world has gone to shit. In one way or another they all have their entire lives turned upside down and are forced to deal with situations well outside their comfort zones. They are thrown headfirst into one challenge after another with barely any time to stop and breathe. All the while, winding their way into your heart and making you root for them and that they can overcome all the adversity they face.
Overall, We Ride the Storm is a really fucking good book that’s incredibly well written and denies all attempts to be put down. The paperback and audiobook released on the 25th of June and the ebook has been out for a while. You can bet I’ll be throwing my paperback at my friends the first chance I get.
I would highly recommend We Ride the Storm to people who enjoy:
- Epic Fantasy
- Political Fantasy
- Well written characters
- Multi POV
- Female POV
- Darker fantasy novels
