Reviews

book had me (crying) right at the start, immediately fell in love with clay cooper. sometimes a 40-50 year old man can be so babygirl coded. also i'm officially setting arcandius moog on my shelf labeled "goofy yet earnest old wizards whom i love with my whole heart". was neat to see "famed" mercenaries being treated as rock stars (hence the series title), as well as them coming to terms with growing old in a changing world.

the story isn't grimdark, but it's not straight-up cozy fantasy either. there's an air of goofiness, softness, and coziness (i think lending to the familiar tropes of the fantasy genre), but that doesn't take away from the hard hitting plot elements. i quite liked the balance. it was like a nice cup of tea and a soft blanket after an emotional cry.

overall i loved: the world & following saga's travels on the map (FANTASTIC map btw), the druin lore was interesting (

& how it tied into human mythology/theology

), the tender moments between the group (

their huddle before the battle for castia had me SOBBING - fuck toxic masculinity - as well as moog's whole rot/dead husband situation broke my heart

), some parts literally made me laugh out loud (even when i was crying). just, overall a great journey story with memorable characters that go through a whole heck of a lot, filled with deep emotions.

and!

none of saga died! i was so anxious at the end desperately hoping for the boys to make it back home safely (except for ganelon, bc.... ganelon :().

rip to

gregor & dane

though, never cried so hard over a side character i only knew for a few chapters.

i will say, though the first half of the book was by no means boring and was ultimately important for the plot and character progression, i was just so eager to get straight into the heartwyld i felt the pacing was a bit slow. just a bit. but everything i mentioned i loved more than made up for it.

can't wait to read the second book, bc..... lastleaf/

vail

definitely

sacrificed himself to bring his scary mother back.

right? ::eyes::

anyway, thank goodness for stumbling upon daniel greene's videos bc otherwise this book would have been unknown to me, as a first glance it doesn't look like something i'd be into, but alas... i very much was.

favorite quotes/scenes:

-But life, Clay knew, didn’t work that way. It wasn’t a circle; you didn’t go round and round again. It was an arc, its course as inexorable as the sun’s trek across the sky, destined at its highest, brightest moment to begin its fall.

-To sit idly by - no matter the reason - whilst his oldest, most cherished friend lost the only thing he'd ever truly loved wasn't what a good man did. Whatever else he knew, Clay knew that.
And his daughter knew it, too.
"Daddy," she asked, her brow furrowed, "why are you crying?"
He imagined the smile he put on looked something like the one Gabe had been wearing earlier on the outside step, brittle and broken and sad. "Because," he said, "I'm going to miss you very much."

-Didn't' people know that stories, and the legends that inevitably sprang from them, were the best part?

-"Judge them for what they wished to be," he begged the Father of Gods, "not what the world made of them."

-Clay Cooper had seen a dragon roused in anger. He'd faced down a legion of shrieking grimlocks and matched gazes with the cold fury of undead kings. Despite all this, asking Ginny to marry him had been the most harrowing moment of his life.

-But Ginny wanted the man. The man, Clay knew, that his mother had been trying to raise - not the monster her killer had made of him.

-That Gregor put such effort into describing for his brother a world that was so much more appealing than the one in which they actually lived... It was a gift, Clay decided. A profound and extraordinary blessing bestowed upon one whom the world had effectively cursed.
It was damned noble was what it was.

-Hit it like you hate it, Leif had told him, and that, Clay found, was the easiest thing about killing his father.

-Home was where Ginny was, its boundaries defined by the circle of her arms.

-Gregor had been born a monster in a monstrous world, and had managed to find beauty in it nonetheless. He'd squeezed sweet juice from a rotten orange. He'd painted an old house pink. And what was more: He had given all this to his brother, as a gift.

-He alone was trapped in limbo, stranded between life and death, standing at heaven's door without a hand to knock. ~~(mere pages after clay has his hand cut off and a new friend has died, but i laughed thru the sobs)~~

-"And look, the scroll house! It had a roof once, and a lovely patio from which you could see the entire city. They served the most incredible brunch: poached basilisk eggs and toasted bread with brown butter preserve. No one does a good basilisk egg anymore," he remarked sadly, and Clay heard Ganelon mutter under his breath: What the fuck is brunch?

-But now... all Clay felt was a sense of profound certainty, as if things - dire though they seemed - were exactly as they should be. He was among friends, shoulder to shoulder with his bandmates, who just so happened to be the four best men he'd ever had the privilege of knowing. ~~(how bout i just fucking cry over old men why not)~~

-So no - he wasn't afraid. He was, in fact, grinning from ear to ear, basking in the music of the men around him, listening with bittersweet sorrow as the end drew near.

sara_elisabet's review

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adventurous funny medium-paced

3.75

threetrees's review

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4.0

4.4 stars
Ha! This book is the combination of a MMORPG and Game of Thrones and it turned out way better than I thought it would. So stop reading all these reviews and get the book already.

hobbit1410's review

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adventurous hopeful lighthearted relaxing fast-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Plot
Strong character development? No
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.0

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