Griidlords: The Bloodsword Saga (Volumes 1-3 complete, Final volume posting now)

Self-Published

Community Rating

Description

The world started anew 802 years ago.  After unknown centuries of barbarism followingThe Fallof the old civilization, the firstTowersrose from the ground in the ruins of ancient cities like Chicago and Phoenix. With the rise of the Towers came a measure of control over theEntropythat covered the lands.  Where, before, this chaotic energy prevented any technology more complicated than a bow and arrow from functioning, suddenly theOrder Fieldsof the Towers allowed cities to banish Entropy to varying degrees; allowing steam engines and muskets, or with higher Order, even assault rifles and electricity to be returned to the hands of humanity. The Order wasn’t free.  Each year cities sent their armies to Falling Fields to gather Orbs, the lifeblood, the source of the Flows that were expended to manipulate the Order and Entropy fields.  Cities rich in Flows had tractors for their fields, air conditioning for the homes of the wealthy, and armies bristling with guns and tanks.  Those without struggled to survive, always wanting more. With the rise of the Towers came something more than control of Order and Entropy.  With the rise of the Towers cameTHE GRIIDLORDS.  Each city was granted 5 Griidsuits, making superheroes of their wearers, individuals with remarkable powers, each the match of a 1000 fighting men. Tiberius has been pushed to compete for the Sword of Boston by his father.  His father has amassed a great fortune as a merchant, he could buy and sell the castles and lands of the lords of the city, but there is one thing his money can't buy: nobility. Tiberius has been trained and honed to compete for the Griidsuit.  Winning the suit comes with the founding of a new noble house that would satisfy his father's grandest ambitions.  Tiberius must compete against the sons and daughters of noble houses.  These youths that have been trained by the finest tutors.  These youths come from lines of Griidlords themselves, they see the suit as their birthright.  These youths come from a class that disdains the very notion of a commoner competing for the suit, no matter his wealth. Tiberius must navigate his own doubts, his own inadequacy, and see if he can grow enough in the precious days of the Choosing to become worthy of becomingThe Sword of Boston.

Information

Status
Ongoing
Year
2024
Author
Tom Wrath

Tags

LITRPGACTIONFANTASYADVENTURESCI-FIMALE LEADPOST APOCALYPTICWAR AND MILITARYSOFT SCI-FIPROGRESSIONDYSTOPIASUPER HEROESRULING CLASS

Royal Road Stats

Rating
4.5/ 5.0
Followers
787
Views
608,667

Chapters(282 total)

What readers say about Griidlords: The Bloodsword Saga (Volumes 1-3 complete, Final volume posting now)

  • “I’ve already put one review up for Toms amazing new world that I am so in love with and I’m afraid I’ll run out of words before I hit the two hundred words needed to make an advanced review so I might wind up rambling a little bit to get there.A Throne for…”
    yovmonsterRoyal Road5.0 / 5
  • “This is my favorite ongoing serial fiction across any platform or media at the moment.  I'm a huge reader of manhua, manga, light novels, all that sort of thing.  I've player around on lots of different sites like royal Road and found some truly wonderful s…”
    DitzyfairyRoyal Road5.0 / 5

Reviews

No reviews yet. Be the first to share your thoughts!

Community Reviews(10)

  • yovmonsterRoyal Road
    ★★★★★ 5.0
    I’ve already put one review up for Toms amazing new world that I am so in love with and I’m afraid I’ll run out of words before I hit the two hundred words needed to make an advanced review so I might wind up rambling a little bit to get there.A Throne for a Blood Prince exists in the same fantastic intriguing world as A Time of Change and Broken Chains but it’s very different in style and story.  The style is a little more personable told from a first person perspective and has a lot more of the main characters thoughts quirks and humor.  The story is also much more focused, following the plight of Tiberius as he goes through the Choosing, a competition to choose a new Giidlord for Boston. The other contestants are beautifully fleshed out characters that really heightens the peril as they compete.  You dread for Tiberius losing but you also wind up fretting about other characters.this is Al augmented by the fabulously subtle augmentation of LitRPG elements. I’m not a Litepg fan, in fact I was never interested in them before, but Blood Prince has possibly converted me. I don’t know if Tom went after LitRPG to try and grab viewers from Royal Road or because he was infatuated with the style but I’m glad:
  • DitzyfairyRoyal Road
    ★★★★★ 5.0
    This is my favorite ongoing serial fiction across any platform or media at the moment.  I'm a huge reader of manhua, manga, light novels, all that sort of thing.  I've player around on lots of different sites like royal Road and found some truly wonderful stories but this completely stands apart for me.  It's the depth of this series that comleltely holds me. It feels huge! Like an unfolding media franchise.  Like the universe has barely been tapped in the first books.  At first it felt big and fascinating and new.  But as time has gone on the scope of everything has just gotten bigger.  I don't know how big it kight get but if feels like it is propelling itself forward in what could be a truly epic tale.
    Characters: Awesome. Best of anything I've read on this site. What makes them brilliant is their flaws and realism. From Tiberius on down these are characters that live and breathe because they have doubts, weaknesses, make mistakes, have foolish human impulses.  All backed up with phenomenally natural dialogue.
    Grammar: I can't say much about this. To my eyes I have detected few or no mistakes.
    Story: This is what catches your eye and provokes you to read and this is the overarching hook that keeps me reading each chapter. It's an absolutely amazing world, lore and history. The story that is unfolding is mysterious, epic, personal and expanding.
    Style: Accessible. There's a lot of voice in the first person perspective. I like the tone and language usage.
  • HairygarRoyal Road
    ★★★★★ 5.0
    I can't decide what I like better, the style of A Time of Change and Broken Chains or the style of Blood Prince.  Change and Chains is awesome,  a really grand story, sweeping and complicated and full of intriguing plots, deceptions,  big battles,  factions, lots of arcs and characters and jsut bigness.
    Blood Prince Is a story focused on one character told from his point of view,  it's an amazing way to explore the Griidlords universe but it's also got such great elements of LitRPG and progression fantasy,  the tournament is fantastic, really gripping because you don't know if Tiberius will keep going. I know he's the MC but there's an amazing sense of suspense and I can really imagine the story taking an unbelievable turn at any time.
    This is the best thing I've read on RR so far.  I like it do much that made an account just so I could leave a review for this and Change and Chains.  I read a lot of legacy novels and this stacks up against the best of them.  It would make an amazing game or movie, but especially a game, with the Order system and the world and the characters.  This is purest class I've read in a long time.
  • JTLomasneyRoyal Road
    ★★★★★ 5.0
    My review for "A Time of Change and Broken Chains" says it all, this is just more of the same with a different angle.  After the sweeping vastness of the other story, this is more self-contained, more character-focused, it's a bit like a YA novel, but a really really good one!
    LITRPG elements are very mild, enough to keep it interesting and different, maybe whet the appetite of someone who's LitRPG-curious, maybe not enough to satisfy someone who's totally hardcore, but right up my alley!
    I need to hit 200 words to post this as an advanced review so I'll waffle a bit but I'm going to be repeating a lot of what I posted in my other review for "A Time of Change and Broken Chains" (and yes, I wrote the whole title again for word count).
    Style: drscriptive, to the point, I usually like to get some strong "voice" from a writer but for this story it's so meaty that writing describes well, does action well and then moves along. Kind of like a good steak just needs salt and maybe pepper.
    Characters: Great cast of heroes, friends, enemies and unknowns.  I'm really undecided about some of the kind of in-the-middle characters and how they're gonna wind up behaving by the end of it.
    Story: Really well developed and planned, you can tell it's been laid out well in advance, nice rhythm between contest portions and off time.
    I personally know the author.  I swear this doesn't color my review of the work, but I am stating it here for full disclosure.
  • LEONOFZIONRoyal Road
    ★★★★★ 5.0
    I believe this novel is a legend in the making. The way the author speaks about the previous world and the current world is very interesting. It makes me wonder how the future will look and how they will view us currently. It’s amazing how so much has changed but politics has remained the same. The novel shows how good intentions can change over the generations and I love how the author shows it through the overlords.
  • kangareaderRoyal Road
    ★★★★★ 5.0
    I've been reading web novels across platforms for years and this one is strikingly good.  The writing is clean and relaxed, it is completely unselfconscious.  The writer manages the tricky of task of maintaining there own distinct sense of style, holding our attention, without seeking to try too hard.  The dialogue and characters are just exactly what you want, believable and not overly engineerd.  Check out this dialogue exchange from an early chapter and notice how it's not trying to be awesome and as a result simply delivers what we want, believability:
    I hissed quietly, "And you won't be smelling me for much longer. I'm a round away from being out of this thing."
    The voice answered, "That's tosh. You only need to not be last. You said so yourself."
    I searched my memory, unsure if I had even uttered that out loud.
    The voice said, "If you master the beam, if you can bring yourself to a 1.0, then you will be able to employ something that the others here can't approach."
    I scoffed, whispering, "I'll need to. I can't compete with them."
    The voice paused, then shed its excited, almost mocking tone for a moment. "You don't know what you can do yet. You were born different from them."
    I snorted. That much had been made very clear to me so far.
    The voice said, "Keep flexing your beam."
    I said urgently, "I can't keep doing that. I need a win, or I'm doomed."
    the story thAt unfolding is simple and easy to follow yet seems for be gaining the depth to be fascinating and intriguing.  The litrpg elements are perfectly scaled to please the litrpg enthusiast but equally not hinder the litrpg phobic.  A beautiful, easy but enthralling read and an instant favorite.
  • kayponeRoyal Road
    ★★★★★ 5.0
    World Building: You can really tell that the author spent a lot of time thinking about this world. There's a depth and mystery to the story that really makess you want to know it's secrets
    Characters: It's just getting started on the characters but they are interesting. There are some cliches but well see what gets done with them.
    Storytelling: This is where it really shines the most to me you really get a feeling from the main characters perspective and I like it
  • pizzasonmeRoyal Road
    ★★★★★ 5.0
    First of all, I'm such a putz, I usually read on my tablet at work and am almost never logged in.  I know what a pain that is, yes, because half the time when I sit down my place isn't saved and then I have to scroll through chapters trying to find where I left off.  Now that I'm leaving a review I'm not sure if it will say I'm reviewing at Chapter 1 or Chapter 40.  I tried to skipping forward to the end before I posted this review but I don't know if that will work or not.  Guess we'll find out soon.
    This is like a standalone story but there's a very strong sense that it's feeding into the rest of the series (rest, I say, there's one other book right now!).  I didn't understand when I saw this as "Book 2" but the author tagging it as "you can start here".  I get it now, this isn't even the same kind of story, this is more focused on one character (Tiberius) and his rise to power.  It kind of touches a little on the royal road meta but I would say it's quite apart for the hardcore LitRPG, fight, fight, fight meta.  It does have a LitRPG elements, and they're really important to the story, but they're not overwhelmingly central to the was the book is presented.  There's a lot of tension, a lot of story, a lot of drama.  I love the awful relationship between Tiberius and his dad, it feels like a classic narcissistic father/son relationship and I completely buy it, very real and believable.  and the small hint of romance, or tension, that's going on between Tiberius and "the other two" (I don't want to name names and spoil it because I didn't expect the relationship to emerge, very believable but i wouldn't have guessed before it started)
    This is great, really really great.  I've never been so compelled by a story on RR that I wanted to go to the trouble of writing an advanced review to help the author out, and now I've done two for Tom Wrath!
  • HazemaskRoyal Road
    ★★★★★ 4.5
    Et bien en tant que humble amateur d'histoire RR je donne vous donne mon avis
    -l'intrigue et original et bien avenu, le décors et posé
    -Le MC n'est ni op ni idiot, il a une bonne réflexion
    J'aime les armures et les histoires qui tournent autour de celle-ci et le personnage olaf que j'ai énormément apprécié.
    -Les seuls défauts que je peux trouver réellement et la longueur des chapitres qui sont beaucoup trop petit
    Amélioration:
    Je pense que basculer sur certain point de vue de tant en tant serait incroyable, et cela permettra d'avoir des chapitres légèrement plus longs, être sur le point de vue d'olaf aurai été génial ! :D
    Petite Référence à 12 miles Below de Mark Arrows que j'apprécie également et qui pourrait apporter des améliorations ici
  • 0ne5hotW1llyRoyal Road
    ★★★★★ 4.5
    This is a very fun take on a post-apocalyptic America. I just finished through book 1. The author does a very good job of keeping you on your toes. There are multiple times where you expect things to go a certain way, but he keeps it ambiguous enough that you're not really sure if it will happen that way. I'm very excited to see where the story goes, what lore will be revealed, and how Ti grows. Keep up the good work!!!

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