Valor by John Gwynne

The Banished Lands is torn by war as High King Nathair sweeps the land challenging all who oppose him in his holy crusade. Allied with the manipulative Queen Rhin of Cambren, there are few who can stand against them. But Rhin is playing her own games and has her eyes on a far greater prize... Left for dead, her kin fled and her country overrun with enemies, Cywen has no choice but to try to survive. But any chance of escape is futile once Nathair and his disquieting advisor Calidus realise who she is. They have no intention of letting such a prize from their grasp. For she may be their greatest chance at killing the biggest threat to their power. Meanwhile, the young warrior Corban flees from his conquered homeland with his exiled companions heading for the only place that may offer them sanctuary - Domhain. But to get there they must travel through Cambren avoiding warbands, giants and the vicious wolven of the mountains. And all the while Corban must battle to become the man that everyone believes him to be - the Bright Star and saviour of the Banished Lands. And in the Otherworld dark forces scheme to bring a host of the Fallen into the world of flesh to end the war with the Faithful, once and for all.

An interesting although slightly tedious book in the series. Interesting. Book 3 is looking juicy.

This one took me so long, it's not even funny. Not because it was bad, it wasn't, but there were certain elements that made it a bit... more difficult to read.

By now we know for sure Corban is the good guy and Nathair is the bad. It's obviously.
So his group needs to escape, to find a safe place while war is going on.

Here is the thing, this book did really feel like a kind of middle one in a series. Why do I say that? So much of it is about setup. Forming the big factions, the characters travelling around, trying to get in position.
Also, a lot of new characters are introduced, which is one of the things bogging it down; book 1 already had a LOT of story lines and characters and things going on. Individually, they are all great. I don't think there are any characters I dislike (other than them being bad people, but even then, they are well-written). But because there is so much going on, I don't think every single one can shine.
The format also doesn't help. The chapters are short. So short that often I felt like I wasn't as invested as I should have been, because I only got a few pages of a character and then we skipped to someone freaking walking on some mountains and I KNEW it was going to take a long time to circle around and get back to this person.
The parts with action and stuff going on were fine, great. But it wasn't easy going. I still liked it a lot, I jsut hope the next ones will be a bit more fluid. Even with the deaths, we still have too many people around.

Still quite enjoying this, though it is not as good as Malice. First, it wades too much into YA territory for my liking, especially because of a new character, Coralen, which I absolutely hated (not in the good way, like the Lannisters, for example, but for being a badly written one and purely annoying). Second, each ruler in this world has an advisor and each advisor is secretly a traitor - which gets really boring and unsurprising. Third, there's a lot of evil being done by some characters, yet all those around them, in their thusands, are all incredibly dumb and never even have doubts, which is not believable. Also, the magic is just a deux ex machina to force forward some moments. On the good side, I still love the writing, and some characters do evolve or devolve, which is well done. There's also more giantish POV, which I liked, and more about the Vikings, sorry Vin Thaluns, which are much more credible antagonists than Nathair (that seems rather dull and not too smart in this volume). Hope the next book in the series is better and with less (everybody) running around.

It's rare for me that a book lives up to the hype but this one is such case. Gripping from the beginning to the end.

The boring slow paced worldbuilding of Malice is gone, replaced by constant action and emotion. I gave Malice benefit of the doubt because its finish was great and the story was promising. Here Gwynne builds upon what he set up in the first book to deliver one of the best paced books I've ever read. Seriously, this is masterfully paced and exactly what I was hoping this series would be before I started it based on raving reviews.

Characters go through hell. I thought it was actually a bit much because until the last 100-150 pages everything goes wrong for the good guys and everything works out for the villains. It was too obvious but it did work as I couldn't stop reading. Another thing that annoyed me but works for the book's benefit are short chapters with cliffhangers. It's annoying to read three pages only to leave me hanging for another 20 until the author decides to return to that POV or location. Not a fan of short chapters. But... they work.

Next two books are allegedly even better so I can't wait to dive back into Banished Lands but first I think I'll take a break for a bit with something shorter.