Tag Archives: faithful

Ruin by John Gwynne

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I had a long enough break between the last book and this one to reengage fully with the story and I enjoyed it all the way through this book.  It was pretty unrealistic at times, aside from the obvious fantasy elements.  The biggest example of this was the remarkable timing.  There were many times when certain events happened at just the right time, such as two groups of people meeting up just in time to join a battle that was all but lost.  But those were forgivable, as the story as a whole was still enjoyable.  I very much admire Gwynne’s ability to have all these different storylines and characters moving alongside each other and have them come affect each other and come together.  With this book, a lot of the stories converged and the overall story built significantly.  Very exciting and kept me up three hours too late last night so I could finish.
The actual writing is much the same as the first two books.  Still different than I am used to, but it is usually clear.  He does still have a habit of restating things.  Sometimes I understand why he does, it is from a different character’s POV, but it often offers no new information and I’m left thinking “we already know this.”  His use of thoughts still bugs me.  I am not a fan of direct thoughts in most instances anyway, but his use sometimes has no apparent use.  It often feels like the thoughts were added after the fact, restating something word for word.  And there is so much of it some places.  A few pages are half italicized and it feels off and distracts from the story.
Overall, I very much liked the book.  I do have some issues with how it is written, but they do little to detract from my enjoyment.  I still recommend the series and look forward to the next book. 

Valor by John Gwynne

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Pretty good.  Maybe not as good as the first one, but good.  It felt a bit long.  I liked the slow buildup in the first one, but by the end of this one I was getting a little tired of the story.  Going to continue reading them, but I definitely have to take a break before the next one.  There were more exciting events in this one I feel like, but they seemed a little overshadowed and rushed and the story is just going a little long maybe.  It is still enjoyable and I’m sure it won’t bother some people, but I was getting exhausted with it.  And I must say, the number of limbs that get severed and sparks that fly from swords in these books is incredible.  They really should get more calcium and I wonder if they decided flint was a good material for making swords with.

The writing itself is the same as the first one.  Not how I like to write and sometimes confusing to read, but not too bad.  There are times when it isn’t clear who is doing the action or talking and he sometimes seems to write exactly how he would think or say it, but it comes off as sounding a little weird and sometimes confusing.  There are some times when he repeats things and I can’t get past the fact that he just said it, it pulls me out of the story.  Then I found a decent amount of typos.  Mostly missing quotation marks, but a couple of other punctuation and spelling errors.  They could have benefitted from another careful look.

So I just listed everything bad with it.  I still enjoyed it and will continue with the series and if you enjoy fantasy epics, this series is great.  Everything good I said in my review for Malice still applies, I just started getting a little bored.  But I have a fairly short attention span, especially when it comes to stories, so you may not run into that problem.  Don’t let me scare you from these books.  If the size of them doesn’t, then my review shouldn’t.

 

Malice by John Gwynne

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One of my favorite books.  The definition of fantasy.  A great epic with magic and creatures and battles and deception.  The story is gripping right to the end, although the main conflict doesn’t start until near the end.  I have always been one for jumping straight into the conflict, but this one worked well doing it differently.  There are plenty of smaller conflicts to keep you occupied while the main one builds slowly, looming in the background and over the characters’ heads.  And the characters, they are amazing.  Each is unique and well-rounded and grows throughout, their development is wonderful.  The world is complex and deep, obviously having been well thought out ahead of time.

The writing itself wasn’t perfect.  He has a tendency to run on with his sentences and that, combined with his way of putting things led to some confusion.  He also loves his italics.  I’ve said before that I don’t really like using italics, particularly for emphasis, and he did that.  A lot.  Sometimes it felt like he was trying to emphasize every other word.  It was too much.  But overall, the writing melted away as the story gripped me, as it should.

This book gave me a lot to think about for my own writing and worldbuilding.  I actually started planning another story, or, rather, changed and expanded on one I had, thanks to this.  The actual plot of the story has nothing to do with Malice, but I am very inspired by how the plot unfolded and how we get to observe it.

This is a very short review compared to what it should be, but I stayed up way too late to finish the book.  I made notes throughout my reading and consolidated the main points here, but there is more I could say if I really wanted to get into it, but the main point is that I loved the slow building, yet gripping story.  I just ordered the next two books in the series and wait eagerly for them to show up on my doorstep.  I definitely recommend this book to any and all fantasy lovers.