A Time of Dread

⭐⭐.5 Dearly beloved, we are gathered here today to review this "titan" of a book. The praises were seen and read (yo!! this book is really popular) but a girl was never going to read this book because i know to take glowing reviews with a grain of salt -🤔 might still be salty about the let down that was M.J Sullivan's Age of Myth. Also, am i the only one who feels like MJS and Gwynne's writing are similar? just me? ok I'm digressing - but thank fuck for 99p sales cos I would not have purchased this otherwise. 🖤 Alright, so i'm just going to state this up front. I don't buy the hype. I don't believe this book or the story or even the writing is something of epic proportions that will make you feel like 'damn, this is the best book i've ever read in my life' If i'm going to stack this book against my 5 star fantasy reads, there would be a HUGE ass gap before this book popped up on my radar if it even popped up. So the plot of this book is nothing new. A plot based on good vs evil is pretty much on brand for most if not all fantasy books. Maybe not as overtly spelt out as in this book but at the crux of most fantasy books is the eternal good vs evil struggle. What makes all the difference in this seemingly basic foundation that most fantasy books build everything on? CHARACTERS!!! CHARACTERS!! CHARACTERS!!!!! This book follows 4 main characters: Sig, Drem, Riv and Bleda but to a certain extent it was more Riv and Drem than the other two. Riv is our eye for what's happening in Angel land and Drem for what's happening in the north. Sig and Bleda pop up when i guess you need to bridge the plot. Gwynne's characters' had a specific script to follow and as the reader it felt more like the characters' were reacting to already set plans by the author instead of having the feel that their actions were actively moving the plot. (view spoiler)[ ❗ Take Olin dude discovers a starstone...dude hides the startstone because hello, STARSTONE!!! People were killing for that shit in the previous series...dude makes starstone into sword...dude starts brandishing starstone around in a place where there are hostiles. like dude c'mon, what did you think was going to happen? ❗❗ Let's circle to Fritha and points for that reveal cos I definitely wasn't expecting that BUT also, were she and the others just i dunno waiting for him to make a starstone sword??? What if he didn't make the sword??? They wouldn't have been able to do the mutating thing??? Did the plan hinge on him making the sword?? how did they know he would make the sword?? ALSO WHY THE HECK DOES NOONE JUST SHOOT PEOPLE WITH ARROWS?? ❗❗❗ The Ben Elim really just had to stage a coup at that time🤔🤔🤔🤔??? Like Israfel's was sooooo obsessed suddenly with publicly dealing with all that abomination ish when all that demon sacrifice thing was happening? When they had just been attacked and someone had stolen that Asroth hand thing??? And he was like 'you know what's really way more important than keeping our already depleting numbers which I'm worried about by the way? Why arresting someone for abominable acts of course. Like Really??? ❗❗❗❗ Also what was the deal with the white bear??? It followed them???? why??? WHY?????? It had food, it was winter. For what kind of reason please did it track them and follow them all the freaking way to their town. (hide spoiler)] I dunno, i guess i expected characters' with a lot more emotional range than these ones were written to have. As characters' to move the central plot along, they honestly did nothing for me. Riv was suddenly angry all the time for no reason at all (view spoiler)[also why on earth did it take that long for her to mutate? Like you're 16 and then bam big wings just sprout out of your back? (hide spoiler)], Jin was a bitch for i don't know what reason. At this point I'd just like to point out that authors' are allowed to write female characters' in general that don't become irrationaly jealous because of another random girl. I promise that writing a female character to just bitch about some other girl is not something that's normal. How many Male characters' are built around just being bitchy to other Male characters' just because they have it in their head that some other character likes another character they feel is theirs? This is a tired representation of female characters' in fantasy. Fix up please. Bleda was basically some expressionless dude, picture Aang when he went to meet Kol the face stealer, Drem was okay i guess,he was just i dunno there existing, like hey look that's Drem, Sig was a giantess. These characters were just existing with the occasional Truth and Courage, yell and For that is the way of Elyon intonation. 🖤🖤 Which brings me to why exactly did this series need 3 more books to wrap the whole thing up? No, I haven't read the first series. Yes, I am aware of how this makes me look. But to be honest, Gwynne rehashes a whole bunch of things important to this book from the previous series so honestly you ain't completely blank plus wiki pages are your friends. So back to my first question, did it really end in a way that everything could not be wrapped up in the first four books???? Because i was more than 50% into this book and all i'm thinking is: Like sir, what was the reason? Hand to the book gods i cannot say what exactly this book was about. It felt like the book was way more into the sub themes than whatever the central plot of the book is supposed to be about. I really cannot tell you the point of this book. 🖤🖤🖤 Non epic worthiness aside, it's not a bad book . There were some holy shit parts which if you really think about don't really make sense because, are you freaking kidding me???? but we're not going to think about them because we need something good out of this book. Anyways, you might come out bemused as to how this book/series became lauded as some epic epic you are about to have book orgasm type of book but you definitely won't want to burn this book. p.s: I don't know why this needs to be said but why exactly could female angels and kadoshims not exist in this book??? Angels can't have boobs? Demons can't have boobs? You fantasy authors' need to do better. p.p.s: Why are the Kadoshims so gaddamn ugly? Wasn't the Asroth fallen angel being a Ben Elim too? Why are his followers just ewwww?

You can find this review and more at Novel Notions. “Sometimes the only answer is blood and steel.” I have very mixed feelings about this book. On the one hand, I loved getting to revisit the Banished Lands, which is among by favorite fantasy worlds. On the other, seeing the way this world has changed in the over a century since the events of The Faithful and the Fallen (TFatF) was painful. But that’s part of the point. While Gwynne’s original series set in the Banished Land had a lot of warring and sadness and character deaths, I wouldn’t call it grimdark. There was a hopefulness to the story that in my opinion negated that genre. However, I would say that this first book of the followup series is undoubtedly grimdark. The brightness that managed to shine through in the first series isn’t present here, which made me sad. That said, I get the reasoning behind it. The world that the cast of TFatF fought for has been preserved, but at a high price. It has been undeniably altered, and not for the better. Looking back on the events of the first four books, this alteration saddens me because it makes the fight feel like it wasn’t worth the cost. But that’s not true, and I’m hoping that in the second installment of this followup series, we’ll see a bit more of the hope that defined TFatF. We have a cast of mainly new characters who had no part in the events of the first series. This makes perfect sense, seeing as over a hundred years have passed. But we do have a couple of carry-over characters, which made me incredibly happy! I won’t tell you who they are, because I don’t want to spoil anything, but anyone who loved TFatF will be pleased to see some familiar names. Gwynne did a great job with his four point-of-view characters; they all brought something different to the table and showed four very different views of their world in its current state. Three of these characters, Bleda, Riv, and Drem, are new and young, and have been raised on stories of past. The characters of the original series are legends to these three, which is always an interesting leap for readers. Also, Gwynne continues to write wonderful animal characters, and great relationships between man and beast. That was one of my favorite aspects of the first series, and I was very happy to see that continued in this book. The setting of this book is very dark, at least compared to the preceding series. I don’t want to give anything away by explaining why it’s so dark, so I’m just going to say that you need to prepare yourself for a nearly unrelenting atmosphere of darkness when you pick up this book. There was some disturbing stuff within these pages. I feel like I would have enjoyed it more if I would have been more in the mood for something this bleak. However, Gwynne did end the book on a high note, which alleviated some of that bleakness for me. I really appreciated that writing decision. While I didn’t love it as much as the first series, I’m really excited to see where Gwynne takes the story. His writing has improved (though I thought it was wonderful before), and this series is already less tropey that the one before it. While I enjoyed the first series because of the tropes, I’m incredibly interested to see what Gwynne does outside of them. If you haven’t read Gwynne’s first series, The Faithful and the Fallen, I can’t recommend strongly enough that you read those before reading this book. While this is the start of a new series, it’s going to pack a lot more punch if you’re already familiar with the world Gwynne built in TFatF. There are a lot of things that I caught and loved that would have fallen flat had I not read those four books before picking up this one. Also, that series was simply wonderful in my opinion, and I can’t recommend it highly enough!

The reason I gave this book a three star rating is because it didn’t contain as much world-building and general detail that I prefer amongst my 4 and 5 star fantasy books. However, Gwynne has an intriguing and dark writing style and is spectacular at pacing his stories. Although this is only rated 3 stars, I will be continuing on with the series and reading more of his works!