Book Haul: Wrath by John Gwynne and Malice Review.

Doesn’t it look amazing!!!! Absolutely stunning book post arrived today – when the postman knocks it’s always a good sign and it was ALL GOOD today!!!! Massive thanks to Tor UK for this copy of Wrath (The Faithful and The Fallen) Book 4 by John Gwynne. The book is released on November 17th and is the final book in the series and it is one of my favourite fantasy series ever. I can’t wait to see what epic conclusion the book holds and fingers crossed for the fate of one character who at the end of book 3 was left with a cliffhanger, gggrrrr Gwynne, I have waited over a year and outcome depending I might end up wanting to launch this book out the window after the first few pages!:)

Purchase:

Amazon UK  /  Amazon US  /  The Book Depository

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Start the series:

And below is my Malice (The Faithful and The Fallen Book 1) review taken from Goodreads, way way back before I had a blog or even wrote reviews (April 2014 according to Goodreads) I found that I had to write one for this as I enjoyed the book so damn much! Now, it’s not great and I think I have improved with my writing and reviewing but enjoy:

• Malice (The faithful and The Fallen) Book 1.
• John Gwynne.
• 641 pages.
• Fantasy / Epic / Traditional / Grimdark.
• 5 stars out of 5.

Malice is the first book in the Faithful and the Fallen series, it is an epic fantasy and focuses on a core set of main characters with there story arcs being told through game of thrones style point of view chapters that focus on each individual character, these being Corban a young boy and son to a blacksmith who dreams of sitting his long night and becoming a man, Corban’s fiery older sister Cywen, kastel who after years of bullying at the hands of his cousin Jael decides to leave his home, Veradis first sword and blood brother to the ambitious Prince Nathair, Camlin a former bandit and Evnis, King Brenin’s councillor.

All the main characters are well written and thought out with each story arc being interesting and enjoyable to read, I found Corban’s to be my favourite story arc, there is also a plethora of secondary characters for each main character and story arc and on the whole these are all a great group who are well written and seem to complement the main character that they are associated with, examples of this would be Corban’s friend Dath, the Wolven cub Storm who Corban rescues and Maquin who is found in Kastell’s story and is a good counterpoint to the actual Kastell character.

The banished lands are a well thought out place that gives you an epic scale within the various realms and a rich lore which makes for an enjoyable world you can easily lose yourself in.

Being epic fantasy the overlying story is the traditional one of good vs evil with a prophecy, corrupt kings and queens, betrayal, giants, creatures namely wyrms and draigs and magic all thrown into the mix along with a few stereotypical fantasy style characters but while its traditional and has been done many times before, I found this to be different enough to stand out from the crowd of generic fantasy books and would highly recommend it, the writing is of a really high standard and the book never suffers from any lags or lulls even in the quieter sections you still feel a sense of engrossment in the various story arcs.

The characters, I found to be fantastic with enough growth in them all to emotionally pull you into their lives, all are likeable and even with the evil characters you feel sympathetic to them. There are a few moments of real emotion written into the book and you find yourself really caring and feeling for them, not giving any spoilers away but there’s a part with Corban where I found that I couldn’t put the book down without finding out what happened and had to continue reading far into the night.

This is an amazing book and a great start to the series, any fans of fantasy or even just people who enjoy a well written book should pick this up. My only complaint is that the book finished to soon, you get so caught up in the story that the pages just fly by!

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Purchase:

Amazon UK  /  Amazon US  /  The Book Depository

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