The Daughters' War

When I first read that the next Blacktongue book was a prequel covering The Daughters' War, I knew it was going to be divisive. Following up Kinch is big shoes to fill, and we've already been exposed to Galva's personality which was never going to carry the book for some people. I am not one of these people.

Thanks to the framing and Buehlman's methods of making the world feel bigger than it is, this felt like a historical fantasy and Galva's more dry personality fits for the subject matter of the third in a trio of wars so bad that the majority of the forces are made up of women and old people. There's a nice variety of characters, though we do mainly focus on a small handful, which rotate out throughout the book.

The writing maintains the level of quality I'd expect from Buehlman at this point and shows that he can switch genre/sub-genre masterfully as required by the story being told. Humour being exchanged from Blacktongue Thief for more horror and emotion here, with the war itself and Galva being forced at odds with her brother.

Probably the only disappointment for me is that Galva is tied to an experimental unit of corvid knights where each person leads two giant war-birds specially bred for fighting goblins, yet they feel like a relatively small part of the book for how big a part of Galva's character they make.