Name: The Lost War
ISBN: 9781527244542

Justin Lee Anderson

The war is over, but something is rotten in the state of Eidyn. A twisted fantasy road trip from award-winning author Justin Lee Anderson. This character-driven epic mystery, with magic, demons, murder and mayhem ends with a mind-blowing twist that will have readers immediately re-reading the book.

Eidyn Book One

The Lost War

Sade A

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Fact: This book has overwhelming positive reviews.

To be honest, I'm tempted to start this review by stating, I must have read this book wrong and be a lot more, 'It all worked out in the end anyway', because of that ONE SCENE. 
However, I always figure if a book is rated this highly, it should definitely, definitely (and I cannot stress this enough) have something more than 1 particular scene in the plot going for it. 

I know, I know, all fantasy books can't have deep 3 dimensional characters, character growth and all that jazz and to be honest I'm okay with that, but you just have to come clutch with something. Not just one scene.

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So plot.... The king gathers a group of people, names them his council and tasks with going to get some queen to ally with them. Right off the bat, (view spoiler)[the king is acting shifty, everyone can see it except our protagonists'. As the story progresses, nothing seems to be adding up but for some weird reason everyone just keeps giving the good old king the benefit of the doubt and i get that their memories were wonky but fuck's sake did it mean they couldn't i don't know... think??? Nothing about what the king told them was adding up but guess who they never suspected? yup the king.  (hide spoiler)]

The plot was a contrived mess!!! like there is nothing that can convince me it wasn't. So this book basically wants you to believe that (view spoiler)[ someone that can switch your memory needs you alive for some reason? Like dude could have killed them all and saved himself the stress, why did he need to send them on some convoluted, pointless errand TOGETHER and run the risk of them remembering. Are you kidding me?? Talking about he didn't want to get his hands dirty. The man already fucked up your memories and took the throne. How much dirtier can his hands get? The whole blackened thing not being a death sentence coming to light conveniently when the group was affected by it.. oh your memory is suddenly working enough to think that up right? (hide spoiler)]

The characters were painfully one dimensional. I can't say that was a surprise seeing as the book was largely driven by the plot (and quite frankly, when done right, it's not a disappointing angle to steer a book that way.) and not the characters. With that in mind, I just couldn't understand the drive for the continuous God argument. I have to say i was over it. It's like your friend believes in God and you don't. Like respect that and move on. I don't need the both of you trying to do your is there God or isn't there God shtick every time something good or bad happens. And maybe it was supposed to add some sort of definition to the characters but again, this was a largely plot driven book and honestly i don't think there was any room for character growth, which was why the whole thing was just a pointless, page wasting and annoying sub plot.

I thought the use of words like 'medic, miss, teenager' among others were a miss given the setting of the book but maybe the words aren't as modern as i like to think they are.

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The problem with these kind of books is that they have a lot riding on the ending to shut you up. Like,'hey, gotcha!!' and i'm going to be honest, i don't want to get to the end of your book to decide every stupid thing your characters have been doing or every contrived plot is somehow conveniently explained because an author thinks they're clever enough to put in a "gotcha" moment at the end.
It just doesn't work. Sorry. 
The journey is as important as the end.

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All in all,


⭐⭐ for trying to rescue the book with that ending.

The Lost War Eidyn Book One

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