Tag Archives: malice

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.