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Overview:

Overall, this book is an excellent read for plot focused readers, especially those who love quest fantasy.

This book was an exciting story set in an enthralling world. The settings and descriptions in this book are where it shines. Each new setting comes to life and sucks the reader in. There is also a great diversity in settings as the characters travel to vastly different locations. The world is well built. Despite one group clearly being the 'bad guys' no culture was portrayed as universally good or evil. There were two magic systems and both had particularly brutal characteristics to them.

Reader be warned, this book is third person omniscient, and it is very omniscient! Head hopping happens with abandon. This isn't a device I see used very often in fantasy, and it took me a little while to get used to it. Once I did get used to it, I didn't mind it, but I know a lot of readers have strong feelings about head hopping! If you can't stand that style of writing, do not read this book!

Deep Dive:

The biggest weakness for this book was the prose and technical writing. There were a lot of places where verb tense confusion pulled me out of the story as I had to read a paragraph over a few times to figure out what was going on. There were also places where stilted writing made it difficult to enjoy the story.

I also felt the characters were under developed. There are a lot of big time jumps in the story, and I think these made it difficult to follow the characters' growth. It's hard to be invested in or care about character relationships, because they developed off screen. The reader is told the characters bonded, but didn't get to see any moments when the characters became close. Near the end, we spend a big chunk of time with the characters, and relationships that develop there feel interesting and organic.

The plot was the focus of the book. Time jumps and head hopping are employed to focus the story on the plot. Character focused readers and readers who want strong prose aren't as likely to enjoy the books, but readers who want strong plot and adventure through a rich and diverse world will love this story.