A Time of Dread: 1 (Of Blood & Bone)

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And third, because I kept asking myself if the new characters would rise to the perfection their predecessors achieved. But their dominion is brutally enforced and their ancient enemy may not be as crushed as they thought. I’d already imagined their futures, and after all the hardships they faced I wanted peaceful mornings, bacon, and juice for them.

A Time of Dread marked the fifth time his work has been included in my ‘favorites of all time’ shelves; together with his previous quartet, that’s five out of five books. The world is rich and complex, but you never feel lost or find yourself desperately reaching for a map. In the snowbound north, Drem, a trapper, finds mutilated corpses in the forests – a sign of demonic black magic. Still, as a big fan of the original books, I really did love all the throwbacks included for those fans. Finally, the world is often modeled after medieval times, featuring swords, castles, dragons, horses, etc.Comparisons are inevitable and having the task of writing characters that can hold up to the love you have for those who came before is not one I envy any author.

I encourage anyone who loved The Faithful and the Fallen to pick up a Time of Dread or anyone who enjoys epic fantasy in general.He particularly enjoys fantasy and science fiction and was raised on a steady diet of Gemmell, Feist, Heinlein and Crichton. Each one is a hero in their own right (none of this sticking you in the point of view of someone you end up hating), but each one struggles both with the strange events going on around them and with their own sense of right and wrong. Drem is a bit more generic, father and son with a hidden past that gradually comes out over the course of the book but still very well done. The battles descriptions are epic and for me there is the right amount of them with description and dialogues which sound very real and natural. In the west, the giantess Sig investigates demon sightings and discovers signs of an uprising and black magic.

The quality of writing, the plot, the characters, and the development of the world were all so so good and I am so happy that I was able to read more John Gwynne books. The first chapter, for example, immediately set the darker tone of the entire book which wasn’t found in Malice; even the source of inspiration is different.It’s not an exaggeration to say that it will be extremely hard for Gwynne to create a series that tops my love for his first series. The way Gwynne introduces the characters, world, rivalries, and history is sublime, reminding me of the previous stories, however; I honestly believe this would be a great place to start too as the writing is deep, descriptive, and enchanting. The author has to do a lot of things right such as making sure the story will feel different and at the same time, retaining the elements that made his previous work magnificent in the first place; there’s nothing to worry about here because Gwynne achieved all that. And the mentioned dread… it is at first a mere whisper of foreboding, fleeting, hinted at, creeping but ever present. While the early tone set for AToD feels much darker than the one of tFatF, themes of love, friendship, honour, family, and of course truth and courage are still ever present, and still form the foundation of this writing that has grown from strength to strength, book by book.