The Bladed Faith

The Bladed Faith is a new release from David Dalglish and it centers on Cyrus, a deposed prince in an island nation whose family is killed as a larger empire takes over and slays their patron gods. Cyrus is spirited away into a rebellion as Vagrant, the face of revenge against the Everlorn Empire, as the rebellion plans to loosen the grip that the Empire has across the world. Cyrus must learn how to be Vagrant, and how to work with his rag-tag team of revolutionaries each with their own skills in order to maximize the ability to stir the people against the Empire.

I kept almost DNFing Bladed Faith. It took me nearly the whole month to finish it. The beginning is very good and then the next 20-25% is a very long training section. It just went on and on and on. I also found the characters to be interesting separately but I never found their dynamic together to be elevated. We kept being told how much they liked and cared about each other but I never really felt it. I'm also tired of teens getting really strong fast, montage aside. The main character is a spoiled prince until he's 14 and then he spends about three years training, and then suddenly he is able to defeat some of the world's strongest fighters; I hate this trope. It just feels very unearned to me, and is such a slant towards younger fantasy protagonists. Skip forward a decade and have a 25 year old protagonist instead of 18. It will still get read, I promise.

I did really like the world, and the magic, and one of the villains, Sinshi. The last 10% of the book did some really interesting things and I may read the second book because of it...but for so much of the middle 60% of this book I was pretty bored. 6/10