The Sword Defiant

4/5 - This review is after a reread before I continue onto the next book. On a reread I enjoyed it much more.

Hanrahan's Black Iron God book are some of my favorite books and when I first picked this up I was hoping for his creative world building. It was then a little jarring to come into a world so full of LOTR and DnD tropes. In my first read through it was distracting to encounter the aftermath of A DnD campaign in a LOTR copy and a few odd choices like calling the dark lord Lord Bone. On the reread I was able to ignore these elements and enjoy the story knowing it gets to new and interesting places.

This book really felt like a setup book to bring the setting from the typical end of the story everybody knows, the group of adventurers takes down the dark lord, to the story the author really wants to tell. That being what happens when to occupy the dark lords domain and the start of a civil war in the "good" alliance.

Alf's POV is the stand out in this book, he has the more interesting plot in the book and the better side characters to interact with. Especially the talking sword which is just always a fun concept. Alf is also a bit of a refreshing character as his backstory, age and personality make his displayed power feel earned rather than a chosen one trope.

Olva's POV suffers from being the audience surrogate. She has from stories and legends essentially the same knowledge that the reader can assume from the setting. In her chapters we get to see where the stories were wrong or exaggerated and that evil was not ended defeated with the dark lord. Her chapters were very slow, a large portion of her chapters are her waiting, being captured or traveling and only really useful to give the audience information for Alf's chapters.