Thanks to Malice by John Gwynne I'm back baby!!!
Arghhhhh!
Thats how I've felt about reading and reviewing the last two months.
Firstly my wife is in her second trimester with our first kid so I am attempting to be in "amazing husband' mode all the time which means jumping up and down for her and making sure she is comfortable at all times. It is tough to get through a book when you have to constantly give your opinion on things you know nothing about especially when you come off a couple of average books.
Well I just finished this and for the first time in a few months am enjoying writing a review. I felt like I was on a bad run of books and real life was intruding, in a good way, into my reading time but intruding nonetheless. I needed something solid and familiar and well written that would wrap itself around me and in Malice I found exactly that. It is a meaty tome that you could give someone a good whack over the head with and I appreciated the earthy thunk it made when I would drop it on the floor. By the time I’d reached page 250 I’d ordered the next two books.
Firstly, I managed to read this in the space of three days and for that I am very grateful. There is an almost Game of Thrones level of characters and characterization and while it was, at times, easy to get confused or lose track of certain individuals, Gwynne did a great job of setting them up, moving them around and bringing them together in a satisfying conclusion that gave previous events a lot more clarity, not to mention killing some off so we have to follow a few less of them. The cast is complete with every traditional trait covered like the hopeful young farm boy with a destiny, the grumbly old medicine woman, the attractive young princesses and villains who are proper villains. I was involved in them enough that I was swearing out loud quite a bit during various capers and escapades and to me this always a reassuring sign I am in a happy place.
There are a few moments where seemingly insurmountable problems are solved instantly which threw me off balance. We hear of one chap who has been looking for a book for half his life and within a page there is someone at the door saying essentially “We’ve got ya book m’lord’. I liked it because it got me into the story and got things moving along but it was unconventional all the same. Something else that worked for me was that this was not a book about a journey. More than once 10 days or more were simply passed by with protagonists arriving at their intended destination with nary an attack from bandits or wild beast which allowed them to get to the heart of their missions.
Overall it was a top book and brought me out of a bit of a reading funk. I thought I was losing my mojo and that I was going off the genre but that was not the case. In my quest to try and read everything, I stumbled upon a few things that were not up my alley and this reminded me of everything I love about fantasy and grimdark. I cant wait to get to the next two books and devour them the same way I did this one.
