This is the first book in the Half-Orc series. Right now there are seven books in this series. This is a very standard “swords and sorcery” type of book. I ended up not finishing it because of the awful audiobook narration.

I listened to the first couple hours of this on audiobook and the narration was painfully awful. The narrator sounded a bit like a male robot and his voices for characters were distractedly fake. I keep getting in the car to listen to this and telling myself "the narration can't be as bad as I thought it was" and then the audiobook would start up and I would wince in pain at how awful it was...shudders...

In the first couple hours there wasn't anything in the story that grabbed my attention and given the incredibly distracting and poor narration I decided to stop reading this. The story basically follows two half-orc brothers who go up against a necromancer. As I said pretty standard old school fantasy fare. I think I might have enjoyed the story some if the narration hadn’t been so awful and distracting.

Overall this “standard fare” fantasy story wasn’t good enough to distract me from the absolutely awful narration of this audiobook. If you are going to give this series a try, do not listen to it on audiobook. ( )

I grabbed this book for my Kindle on a whim. Not my usual type of book, but I thought my daughter might like it. I read the first page, and could not put it down until I had not only finished it, but the second in the series as well. Now I've finished book three and have purchased the fourth-- these characters draw you in, make you feel for them, and the storyline is very believable. Amazing writing and very nicely done. There are not black and white good/bad guys here-- just "human" characters (who happen to be half-orcs).

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  This review is written with a GPL 3.0 license and the rights contained therein shall supersede all TOS by any and all websites in regards to copying and sharing without proper authorization and permissions. Crossposted at Bookstooge.booklikes.blogspot.wordpress.leafmarks.com by express permission of this reviewer.   Title: The Weight of Blood Series: Half-Orcs Author: David Dalglish Rating: 2 of 5 Stars Genre: Fantasy Pages: 228     Synopsis: 2 Half-orc [half-orc, half-elf] brothers team up with an avatar of death. One becomes a physical titan, hewing down all who stand before him. The other becomes a master of necromantic powers and plots to remove the avatar and take his place. And in the end they go their separate ways, mainly because of an elf woman.    My Thoughts: When I read A Dance of Cloaks by Dalglish I was not impressed with his non-use of any type of hero, but I did want to give him another chance with another series. In the afterword Dalglish says this series is about redemption. That might be the case, as the more physical of the brothers ends up regretting all the death he has caused, right at the end of the book. However, the first 95% of the book simply follows them as they slaughter, kill and commit other unsavory acts to further their own ends.   It left a very bad taste in my mental mouth and after Cloaks I am not willing to give Dalglish a 3rd chance. I am not, never have been and hopefully never will be, a fan of dark, gritty fantasy. I like my heroes to inspire me to be better, not drag me down in the blood, filth and muck. " ( )

Reminding me of Raistlin and his brother...but as dark as that book seemed, this was far darker. ( )

This book was fast-paced and easy to read. Very, very well edited and written. If you like fantasy, D & D, swordplay and bloody battle scenes, this book is definitely for you. I found myself rooting for the best of the evil guys at first and then found that there was much more at work in the character's lives. Nicely done. ( )