Where Heroes Were Born

This is the third and final installment in the Pillars of Peace trilogy. As many of you know I've been following along (quite loudly) since book one, and I still firmly believe every person on earth should give these a read!

In this third installment we get a new group of perspectives. As ten years have passed, it's not that Tom is doing away with the original main characters, he's simply telling others' stories now. For starters we get a heavy dose of Francine. 10 years older, she's now a young adult and the chosen shield to Queen Mathilde. We also get a heavy dose of a new character named Locke (who we technically briefly meet in No Place For Peace). Locke is a very troubled and tormented individual. Not necessarily a good or bad man, but perhaps cornered into bad decision making, the author does a great job of giving us an entirely different feel with him.

The author is another writer that simply gets his characters. Even the characters that aren't given the fully fledged attention of being a perspective are fleshed out and have depth to them. He's able to take the characters we know and love and age them 10 years, with experiences and hopes and desires we may never know about, and yet their character development still shows a believable change. I'm looking at you King Cyrus!

The action is big, the emotion is better. There's such a fine line while weaving the two of those things together and the author just hits it perfectly time and time again. We need the action for the harder hitting emotions, and emotions are what drives these characters to action.

Considering the three novels as a whole, the author's writing has progressed and matured in every single one. There are some sentences and pages that I don't believe could have been written without the first and second novel existing first. Both in terms of literal content of course, and the growth as a writer. I've often likened the author's ability to weave perspectives to George R.R. Martin, and I've seen his character building likened to Joe Abercrombie as well. I'd personally put these three novels by Tom up there with any of them!

I know many of you won't have read this yet, but I will be bombarding you about it regardless. This book is perfect, a flawless close to a fantastic trilogy.

“Battle was where Heroes were born.”