The Dark Blood

The continuation of the Long War series jumps straight in where the action of the first book left off. This is definitely a story in the middle of an arc - it mostly about progressing the characters along their respective journeys. Fortunately, their journeys are all great fun!

The world building in this book series is phenomenal - a really fleshed out and fully realized world with a complex interaction between the various peoples and nations, a full mythology and a real sense of history.

This second book sees the individual characters develop. Whilst the first book was pretty ruthless at killing off key characters this one is a bit more gentle and allows the read to bond with them a bit more. New POVs are introduced so the cast of characters is growing quite sizeable!

The action is pretty continuous. We are in the middle of a war after all. Seemingly major events can sometimes pass really fast, but this only serves to heighten the sense of scope and scale to an impressive level.

An excellent mid series book and I can't wait to see where the Long War goes next.