 Hello and welcome everyone, welcome back to the channel if you're a long time viewer and if you're new, thanks for joining me. Today I'm going to be doing something very special, as I have been meaning to review Rob Hayes' last two books in the Warranty Nails series, I thought I would do these video versions of some older reviews, namely of the three books that make up for the first trilogy in the Warranty Nails. Rob Hayes is one of my favorite fantasy authors, certainly a wonderful, excellent author of green dark stories which have stayed with me and I thought to myself why the hell not give him whatever small platform I have, I know it's next to nothing but I love these books and I'm never gonna shut up talking about them, so what better way to do it than on here YouTube. Without further ado, let me jump into it and say that what Rob Hayes did with Along the Razors Edge back in 2020 cemented his place as one of the masters of green dark fantasy. If that was ever even in doubt, this book is the first of the ambitious five book series that the Warranty Nails has come to be by the end of 2022. I am of course recording this in 2023 but that's besides a point. Rob released this along with its first two sequels over several short months back in 2020, starting on March 31st, just a little over a month as of the time of the original writing of this review. There's plenty I wanted to say back then and I began to us. As soon as I was finished with Razors Edge I was desperate for more. Perhaps this doesn't sound like great praise to you but keep in mind only a few fantasy authors in my adulthood have awoken in me the desire to dive into their fictional worlds without so much as a breadth of something different in between. Writers like Brandon Sanderson, Joab Cromby, Brown McLean, Stephen Erickson, Adrian Tchaikovsky, Arkady Martin. Although, admittedly, with that last one it was very difficult to get the second book because she had only released the first one. Anyway, distractions. No one escapes the pit. At just 15, Esquire Helsing, fought in the greatest war mankind has ever known, fought and lost. There is only one place her enemies would send a sorcerer as powerful as her, the pit. Her prison sunk so deep into the earth the sun is a distant memory. Now she finds herself stripped of her magic, a young girl surrounded by TUs, murderers and worse. In order to survive she will need to find new allies, play the inmates against each other and find a way out. Her enemies will soon find Esquire is not so easily broken. Indeed, Esquire Helsing is a sorcerer of great potential, capable of holding up to five sorcery stones in her stomach. At any one time she serves as a deadly trump card for the Aryan Empire and a fierce combatant against their Pterolan foes. Or, she did. Anyway, before the side she fought the war on lost. Now, Esquire is a captive, one of thousands of the foes of the victorious Pterolans. Stuck in the pit, a hole in the ground in which the prisoners are forced into performing Cicifian labours, every day of their miserable existence. Digging rocks, dragging them out and then digging yet more rocks. Maybe it was just punishment. I quote here, never ending, pointless toll down in the dark. The sure unwavering knowledge that nothing we did or said meant a damned thing. A punishment worse than death. Irrelevance. The pit is made to break people. Not just physically but psychologically shattered them as well. But Esquire will not be broken. Despite betrayal by her closest friend and her beatings or the hands of a sadistic foreman at the opening of Fraser's edge. Despite the lack of food and rest and even sunlight. This 15 year old girl refuses to surrender. She draws strength from the daily cruelty's perpetrated against her. Turns all of it into smoldering fury. An all-consuming rage is perhaps one of the most surefire mechanisms of survival and it serves Esquire well. But like the sauce inside her belly, it too is poisonous the longer she carries it inside. Do not mistake this for flat characterization however. So Esquire is dominated by fury and pride. Her emotions go further. It's the inability to express them that speaks of a character deeply scarred and emotionally curbed from childhood. What she uses as a crutch is her power. Quote. I wouldn't trade my magic for all the meals and sleep in the world. I love the power far too much. unquote. Esquire defines herself through her sorcery even in the pit. The strongest element in Hyza's work has to do with character voice. The narrator is none other than Esquire herself. But an all-the-world weary Esquire, one for whom the pit is in the far-off past. Though it's obvious through her narrative that it's a gangrenous wound that this older sorcerer has not wholly escaped from. For shadowing, downright, can add so much to a work of fiction. Rob does it right, as well as Gene Wolfe did it in the genre defining... Or genre defining? Book of the New Sun. So these are two very different stories. They share strands of DNA not in voice alone, but also in the primal fear of deep, dark places far underneath the surface they both see. They share two well-crafted prose. Every word fitting into the greater whole, like pieces of a puzzle. So often I come across self-published fantasy works, because occasional smattering of modern parlance comes across as a staggering discrepancy. Indeed, I recall even the first of the author's books I read, City of Kings, had the occasional incongruity in this way. Not so with, along the razor's edge, or any of its sequels. Another strong element of this title is the magical system, a cool imaginative twist under schools of magic. You might be familiar with the magic in this world is internally consistent and what I'd call hard magic if we were to use Brandon Sanderson's understandings, anyway. It's powered by saw stones inside the sorcerer's belly, which means that any sorcerer has to swallow these pieces of, well, fossilized magical essence. There's plenty more to this system than what you will see along the razor's edge. The discoveries made along the way are nothing short of fascinating. I think it's one of my all-time favorite... Yeah, it is one of my all-time favorite magical systems in fantasy, not a stretch to say so. Anyway, you will find a lot more out when it comes to that magic system as you read, but I will move on now, because I would be remiss not to mention the cast of characters. I don't intend on calling each one out, I have to commend Rolf for his handling of the dynamics between Eskira and her fellow sorcerer, Joseph. Few in the picture are what you might call nice people and Eskira is nowhere near as good at making friends as she is at making enemies, but a few allies are nonetheless in the cast for her and the intricacies of their relationships intertwine make for an additional layer of human drama, and that's only in the first novel, before we so much as grasp the complexity of the bonds that we see interwoven here in the future. The novel is an intelligent work about the costs of perseverance fueled by the basest human emotions, as thrilling as this first chapter in Eskira's life is, it offers caution too, so Enger keeps her alive, and that's no great spoiler, as the older Eskira's narration makes immediately evident the urge to lash out at those around her costs are protagonist immeasurably much. Shall I tell you of the cover art? Felix Ortiz continues to outdo himself with every follow-up in this series, and if you don't believe me, well best you check the cover out of the next book in this series, the lessons never learned. In the end I was excited, excited to see the world outside the pit, excited to see Rob follow up on what was one of the best examples of foreshadowing I had to come across since Gene was the book of the new son, excited for more of Eskira above all else, even now having finished the series I can tell you as a matter of fact this excitement has not gone away it was one of my favorite openings of 2020, the fact that Mora Quirk the narrator of one of my favorite series The Locked Tomb by Thames and Moi also narrates this audiobook well it made me return to Eskira last year with a great deal of excitement as I was preparing to jump into since of the mother and death beating hard the fourth and fifth books of the series what constitutes a sort of duology to the trilogy that begins with the lessons never learned pardon with along the razor's edge the lessons never learned is the second one and I have suddenly misplaced from memory the title of the third book I will remember it soon enough if you'd like to learn more about that one more about the second book more about this entire series The Warrior Cell keep a watchful eye on this space if you enjoyed this video please share it with your friends like it don't forget to subscribe why the hell not and I will see you next time thanks for watching bye