This ended up being a lot of potential that didn't quite payoff for me. The Viking/Norse inspired setting is cool, and the concept I think it was going for also interesting.

In the initial chapters I was intrigued by our 3 main povs, and wanted to learn more about them and the wider world. But by the end I felt like I had just read 480 pages of setup for books 2 and 3. I read a lot of fantasy and the entire first book in a series shouldn't take this long to basically end where the action finally starts. The whole book felt extremely slow to me. On top of that I didn't feel like there was enough lore explanation until much later in the book and even that was minimal. And this lead to making it feel like once we got this information it was too late to do much with it until later books. And yet I was still able to guess how the multiple povs would eventually come together in a way that was too predictable. I think connecting to the characters was a challenge because they all have some kind of 'mysterious past' that they're hiding so we as readers are kept at arms length.

As for what actually happens in this book? A lot of violence and battles that don't feel super meaningful. I don't normally enjoy reading battle scenes and they happen so often here that they don't have any gravitas. Varg as a character and his storyline was the most interesting, but I also kept getting parts confused with Elvar's pov. I think all the characters traveling doesn't help. There are a million side characters mentioned, but I guess they're not all that important as they don't often go by much of a mention. I had trouble remembering what side characters were members of the Battle Grim or Bloodsworn.

Trying to find the positives: this is a world where women warriors are normal and badass. I also know I'm struggling when clinging to a barely simmering potential romance is one thing that kept me reading.

I'm undecided on if I will continue the series or not.