We all know I love my epic fantasy tomes. Melanie Rawn, Michelle West, Brandon Sanderson, Brent Weeks...seriously its hard to convince me that the more pages there are the less interested I'll become. World building is one of my favorite things to read about, I mean come on I have countless companion books for the shows and books I love.

This may be a good example folks can hold up from now on however.

Its not that this was bad exactly. I just felt as if Manieri crammed things that may have served themselves better by being spread out throughout several books. Character revelations, character motivations, even relationships all seemed to shove each other around. They jockeyed for position like shoppers during Black Friday and in doing so fell short on development.

I realize this is part of a larger series, but Manieri seemed dead set on wrapping up some plotlines in that book instead of letting them come to a natural conclusion maybe later. I'm not sure if it was because she had all these great ideas and was so excited by them she couldn't figure out what to cut and save or if this will be a trend throughout.

She also treated every plot as super important to the overall series plot, but were really character stories that probably aren't necessary to the larger whole. It seemed to me that at times Manieri took side stories--interesting tales about the soldiers' interactions, curious asides between the conquered people, discussions about religion and faith--that a lot of authors are now putting out as 'between' book novellas/novelettes (or are used in anthologies) to flesh out the world and inserted them into the whole of the book. Quite a few of the asides could be left out or trimmed without affecting the overall book. It would have made the pacing faster and the book's focus tighter overall.

Can I recommend this? Mot so much. I'll be picking book 2 up, just to see if Manieri continues the trend of too many stories, but this won't be my go to example when trying to convince people of the benefits of epic fantasy.
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DNF. I didn't find the book offensive, but I also couldn't motivate myself to finish it.

Oh, the drama.

There are many aspects of this book that make me think "like a movie" - it's very concerned with things happening; the way it ends and starts and cuts between scenes; and the incredibly tight and yet quantumly fluid timeline of narrative events. (The first half of the book takes place in the space of 24 hours, but then there's both enough time for one character to heal from a major surgery, and yet apparently only twelve hours until the sun sets and the villain can do things. Er. What?)

By the end of the book, I like the characters and I admire the way they've grown through the intense happenings of the story, but while those intense happenings were... well, happening, especially in the first third of the book, I was rather stuck with characters I didn't know yet, undergoing revelations that weren't particularly shocking to me because I had no sense of the status quo. (It's rather like launching straight into "Luke, I am your father" without any sense of who Darth Vader is, or what Luke's been told about his parentage hitherto.)

But once I do get a feel for these guys, the final third has some great gut punches (though it also has some pretty ridiculous action nonsense) and I'm pretty satisfied with the way everyone's storylines end up. So satisfied I'm not entirely sure there's a need to pick up the second book, but on the other hand, I am curious about where various of them go from here, so maybe I will.

I just feel like there was way too much happening in this for me to really feel any of it. I wonder if it might have been better concentrating more closely on one set of storylines... and for my money, I'd have picked the Mongrel and Jachad all the way. Honestly not that into the quasi-vampire viking oppressors, sorry. ( )

DNF. Did not keep my interest ( )

I'm not a huge fan of epic fantasy, but this was really enjoyable on several levels. The writing was good, the characters were all fantastic, and each POV transition felt not like a jump, but a smooth shift from one to the next. Definitely recommend. ( )