***SPOILER TAG ISN'T WORKING - LOTS OF SPOILERS IN ALL REVIEW***

This book was such a mixed bag, and is definitely my least favourite of the series so far. 

 

Until the battle at Gramm’s hold (a good 400 pages in), the book was basically all just filler. There wasn’t anything happening apart from travel, tactic discussion, and skirmishes. In other books I wouldn’t mind this as much, but because Gwynne’s strengths are definitely in action scenes and twists, the filler wasn’t that interesting. His character work isn’t strong enough to keep me enthralled for that long. 

  

The one exception to this was the incredible tension he managed to create before the non-battle at Uthanden. It felt so eerie reading it, and the tension truly was palpable. 

 

I also didn’t enjoy Gwynne’s obsession with romance… Every character is pairing off, and every single couple is straight. There’s also a pretty unnecessary love triangle that starts to develop that I’m not a fan of. This is made worse by the fact that he’s clearly pretty shite at writing romances. They come completely out of the blue, and not a single one feels authentic, which is especially jarring seeing as he writes family and friend dynamics so well. Gwynne just seems to be including romances to add more tension and tragedy around possible deaths, but it doesn’t work because I don’t care about any of the couples. 

 

This made Fidele/Maquin’s sections particularly annoying to read. Maquin was one of my favourite characters in the first two books, but in this one he’s just been made into an idiot fawning over Fidele, going as far as to destroy a possible powerful alliance over her. And Fidele’s ‘trial’ for adultery was just weird. Their whole storyline just seemed to be a massive convenience for setting up plot points, and didn’t add anything to the reading experience, actually detracting from it at points.  

 

There are also some things that were mentioned briefly, apparently never to be touched on again. I know they’re probably leading to bigger things in the final book of the series, but I haven’t been left excited for answers, just annoyed by the lack of information. For example, Trigg’s bizarre behaviour – both saving and betraying people on the same side. We’re supposed to believe she’s been hurt by Gramm’s men enough to want them dead, but we’re never actually told why? It all seemed really weird and like Gwynne just fucked up her character arc, and made the weird escape/her misleading Ulfilas during the battle a confusing mess. There was also a point, either in this book or the last, where we’re told Corban’s dad wasn’t his biological dad, but it’s like this piece of information has been completely abandoned?? Corban didn’t ONCE have a thought about who his ‘actual’ dad is? The omission really started to get on my nerves. This could have been me misremembering something about that revelation, but obviously I don’t want to look it up in case I get spoilers… 

 

Another omission that annoyed me was that with all of Corban’s war planning/preparation, not one single person mentioned Veradis’ shield wall so they could figure out a way to combat it?? Towards the end of the book Coralen literally tells us that she remembered seeing his troops doing the shield wall in the past, but she never once brought this up to Corban??? Let alone any others from the rag-tag army who must have seen it. Absolutely wild. 
 
 

And while some of the betrayals were fun and made sense, Roisin’s really came out of the blue for me, along with Halion saying she’d tried to kill him in the past. But again, this could have been from me misremembering/forgetting something that was mentioned earlier in the story… 

 

Coming to the ending of the novel - the last chapter with Storm was obviously sad, but was also pretty gratuitous and unoriginal. It was obviously going to happen at some point, and ending the book with it felt almost cheap. 

 

I can also see from a mile off that the Ben Elim are essentially trying to take over the world in the same way the Kadoshim are, so I hope that isn’t meant to be a huge, dramatic reveal in the last book. And the seven treasures thing is starting to feel pretty gimmicky and kid’s treasure hunt-like, and I don’t understand why none of the ‘good guys’ who were escaping Drassil literally right next to the spear didn’t take it with them?? 

 

However, having said all this, I did enjoy my time reading the book overall. There were still really strong plot points, battles, reveals, and character work. 

 

One of the highlights for me was Ulfilas – he was a ridiculously chilling evil character. The way he thought was so creepy, and the part with the intestines at Gramm’s Hold was so fucking disturbing. He’s so rational, unemotional, and self-aware. He didn’t let anything distract him from the task at hand, unlike the majority of the ‘baddies’ in here who are irrational and stupid, always acting on emotions. RIP. 

 

I also really enjoyed seeing Veradis’ realisations throughout this book, and the mass breakout from Brikan was pretty cool. 

 

So overall, a good read, but by no means amazing. Hopefully all the groundwork I’ve waded through in this book will pay off in the last, which I am still very much looking forward to reading.