One of the better books I read in 2021. I love the focus on a single set of characters without the epic fantasy cut aways.

It was a good fantasy but the character development just kind of died mid-book and left me feeling let down. ( )

Aryan, Stephen. The Coward. Quest for Heroes No. 1. Angry Robot, 2021.
As a teenager, Kell Kressia joined a band of self-styled heroes to journey to the north to defeat the Ice Witch who was threatening the world’s climate. He returned victorious as the only survivor of his band. Now, he is an unhappy farmer but a local hero with a growing reputation because a bard has written a successful epic about him. His sword hangs on the wall of the local pub, and tourists pester him for war stories. They do not want to hear the unheroic truth, and he does not want to tell it. He feels himself to be a coward with a duty to protect the undeserved reputations of those who died. He suffers from a combination of what we would now call posttraumatic stress disorder and survivor’s guilt. His unhappy life changes for the worse when the king tells him to gather a band of volunteer warriors and journey again to fight evil in the north. To make matters even worse, a local religious leader sees his reputation as a threat and hires assassins to dog his steps. The Coward is a well-told sword and sandal quest epic enlivened by a strong central character. Four stars. ( )