From Cold Ashes Risen

First off, this is my favourite book in the series so far! The rise of Eska as a kind of Dark Queen has been eluded to throughout the first couple of books but this is where we see it happen. Rob Hayes has managed a brilliant balancing act of making the actions of Eska both sympathetic and horrific at the same time. It is quite easy to understand her drive for revenge, and the way she achieves it is brutal and uncaring about any knock on effects, any innocents caught in the crossfire. Her epithet of ‘The Corpse Queen' becomes apt in multiple ways.

There is also some clever series construction going on here. This is the final book in the initial trilogy, with a decent sense of closure at the end, but the arc is left open to continue into the final two books of the War Eternal series.

This is proper grimdark fantasy with character driven morally grey action. This is the rise of what many would consider to be a villain if put in a different perspective. Brutal, violent and brilliant.