Dan
This is like the dark version of cozy fantasy. Super low stakes, no story just pain ans suffering for 400 pages. This reads more like a dark fairy tale, with fairy tale logic, unfortunately there is no plot. If this had some plot, some stakes, this would be 4+ stars. Looking forward to book 2 though.
I liked it but it was also frustrating. The Caeden chapters are abused as 90% Info dumps and it a very frustrating way. It is mostly flashbacks with names of persons/creatures/places/objects one doe s not know yet so it is very confusing to read without much value. So I never connected with those chapters nor got sucked into because I simply did not know what the author was talking about. That could have been so much better.
This is a weird one. I did not dislike the book itself but I dislike the message the author tries to impart on the reader. Like, 'we should hit our children more so they do not turn criminal' and the anti democratic message as a whole. Dude is cringe AF but the story itself, for what it was, was not bad.
characters and prose 5 stars, story 3 stars.
The story was really really weak and basically the same as book 1, same bad guy, not much revealed of the broader lore or the forgings or anything, just regal doing regal stuff, just as in book 1. The middle part dragged on and on. There are some decisions that only happened to the plot can go on, which is a bit sad. I don't think the content merits the length of the book. If this was half as many pages, it would have been a better book.
Prequels rarely work, and this book is no exception.
The author spends hundreds of pages building up to a revelation we already knew from Book 1, so there's no real suspense. It adds nothing substantial to the story that would justify its length. Honestly, this could have worked as a short novella—but not as a 600-page novel.
Skip it and hope Book 3 delivers something better.
Not even the Sanderlanche can safe this meaningless slogfest.
The whole structure of this book just does not work. Everyone knew nothing of importance happens in the first 9 days, most arcs were meaningless to the outcome.
The constant frantic PoV changes pulled me out of the story so much, no chance to sit with a character, really get into it and experience something, it gets interesting? Bad luck, PoV change.
I hope this was just a bad entry in an otherwise superb series and Sando can recover from this misstep.
