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MY ⭐️ RATING: 3.75/5
Format: Kindle Whispersync
BOOK DESCRIPTION
A black sun is rising … Young Corban watches enviously as boys become warriors under King Brenin’s rule, learning the art of war. He yearns to wield his sword and spear to protect his king’s realm. But that day will come all too soon. Only when he loses those he loves will he learn the true price of courage.
The Banished Lands has a violent past where armies of men and giants clashed shields in battle, the earth running dark with their heartsblood. Although the giant-clans were broken in ages past, their ruined fortresses still scar the land. But now giants stir anew, the very stones weep blood and there are sightings of giant wyrms. Those who can still read the signs see a threat far greater than the ancient wars.
Sorrow will darken the world, as angels and demons make it their battlefield. Then there will be a war to end all wars. High King Aquilus summons his fellow kings to council, seeking an alliance in this time of need. Some are skeptical, fighting their own border skirmishes against pirates and giants. But prophesy indicates darkness and light will demand two champions, the Black Sun and the Bright Star. They would be wise to seek out both, for if the Black Sun gains ascendancy, mankind’s hopes and dreams will fall to dust.
MY REVIEW
Malice is a good start to a very popular series, and I almost DNF’d this early on, but I went ahead and pushed through in hopes that either my mood or whatever it was going on would change, because this is what inspired Ryan Cahill’s Of Blood and Fire, that I absolutely love. Malice is also in my wheelhouse of stories that I enjoy reading, but for whatever reason, I just couldn’t get into it until after the mid-way point. I feel like part of my issue may have been that I just wasn’t in the mood for a story such as this or maybe my mind was just distracted from the hectic month. While my grade isn’t what I expected it to be, what I do know that can’t be denied, is that this book is beautifully written.
Gwynne has such a fantastic way of telling a story and making the reader feel as if they were in the world themselves by drawing us in one sentence at a time. The slow building is something that Gwynne does very well, getting to watch the characters from where they started at the beginning to see their stories unfold to where they are at the end. The character work was incredible, but again, whatever was going on with being distracted or just not in the mood for this kind of story I just couldn’t get into really any of the characters other than maybe Corban and his wolven, Storm, everyone else just really felt like I was just having to wait until I got back to the part that I liked. This did change later in the book, as I started to like some of the other characters, but it definitely was a lot harder at the beginning.
“Black Sun will drown the earth in bloodshed, Bright Star with the Treasures must unite.”
I knew going into this from reading The Bloodsworn saga, that Gwynne loves to kill his characters, though some deaths really didn’t hit me as much as I felt like they should’ve, and that could be more to go with just how many characters there were so early on. There wasn’t really a lot of time to invest and that made the deaths, while tragic, a little less of a heart stop of sadness for me. That’s a bit too much negativity, so here is a great positive, the last quarter of Malice is absolutely 5 star worthy. Once the characters were in place, the story took over and had me reeling. It’s all I wanted to do, was to see what would happen next to them all. Each storyline from that point on was gratifying in every single way, which makes me feel really good about how Valor will be. I expect that to have a much higher grade than Malice.
The other thing that I can’t quite put my hand on, is the narration by Damian Lynch. Part of me thought the narration was great, the characters all had voices and accents that ranged all over the place leaving there any doubt to who was speaking, the emotion he was able to put out in some scenes was very good, but on the other side, there was a part of me that just felt like the narration was just, meh. I think that part of me, is the part that couldn’t get into the first three quarters of the book, so it affected the narration as well, because once I got into it, I felt the power of the narration. It’s very hard for me to grade this, because I honestly don’t know if it was my mood, maybe not ready to go back into this type of novel after reading a sci-fi series, or just not into it. But whatever the case, it did seem to clear up at the end, and I came away feeling that my original grade I was thinking of, deserved to get a bump up.
Wolfmantula.com 