Nourez Rawji
I've seen this book described as what would happen if Cormac McCarthy wrote Dark Souls, and I have to say that's pretty much on point.
The Plague is raveging France, the Legions of Hell have begun to wage war on Heaven, with God nowhere to be found.
This is the initial setup for the novel which follows a brigand, a priest and a young girl who has prophetic visions on a journey to Avignon. It's worth noting that for a large portion of the novel, the above setup is more or less the only real story notes that are explicitly given, with the story instead taking on a far more episodic structure than I was expecting. Like the stories metioned above, Between Two Fires is perfectly content to feed the overarching narrative to you via contextual tidbits and through the worldbuilding itself. This initially threw me for a bit of a loop, as it did feel like the middle segment of the book meanders for a while with a bunch of loosly connected stories. However, once I started to piece together what was going on, the structue clicked for me pretty quickly. The end result is that the overall novel is fantastic, but I can also see myself simply going back to re-read individual chapters which work well as standalone stories.
And when it all comes together in the last act, I was absolutly hooked. The ending is incredibly strong, the perfect capstone to the characters journeys.
I also really enjoyed the writing style. The writing has fantastically grotesque imagery, it's incredibly bleak, but there's a suprising amount of levity in the dialogue. I found myself really enjoying the little moments where the main trio managed to get a little bit of time to simply talk to each other, it made the overall story so much better.
All things considered, this might be one of the few instances where a book that's been blowing up online may have exceeded my expectations. It's an easy 5 stars for me.
I've seen this book described as what would happen if Cormac McCarthy wrote Dark Souls, and I have to say that's pretty much on point.
The Plague is raveging France, the Legions of Hell have begun to wage war on Heaven, with God nowhere to be found.
This is the initial setup for the novel which follows a brigand, a priest and a young girl who has prophetic visions on a journey to Avignon. It's worth noting that for a large portion of the novel, the above setup is more or less the only real story notes that are explicitly given, with the story instead taking on a far more episodic structure than I was expecting. Like the stories metioned above, Between Two Fires is perfectly content to feed the overarching narrative to you via contextual tidbits and through the worldbuilding itself. This initially threw me for a bit of a loop, as it did feel like the middle segment of the book meanders for a while with a bunch of loosly connected stories. However, once I started to piece together what was going on, the structue clicked for me pretty quickly. The end result is that the overall novel is fantastic, but I can also see myself simply going back to re-read individual chapters which work well as standalone stories.
And when it all comes together in the last act, I was absolutly hooked. The ending is incredibly strong, the perfect capstone to the characters journeys.
I also really enjoyed the writing style. The writing has fantastically grotesque imagery, it's incredibly bleak, but there's a suprising amount of levity in the dialogue. I found myself really enjoying the little moments where the main trio managed to get a little bit of time to simply talk to each other, it made the overall story so much better.
All things considered, this might be one of the few instances where a book that's been blowing up online may have exceeded my expectations. It's an easy 5 stars for me.