Reviews

lovely

I liked this book in this trilogy more than the first - it was an entries story, not a series of adventures. Not that the first one wasn’t good, it was, but it was a collection, this was a book. And it lays the groundwork for events in later novels.

wild_dog's review against another edition

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3.0

Wow this is so much better than Oathbound it's almost not funny. The thing that definitely gives this one a leg up is that it's not a collection of disconnected stories, so you don't have to read increasingly clumsy/punny introductions of the characters every 50 pages. Ultimately this book feels less developed than most of the Valdemar books that followed it. The worldbuilding is more sparce, the narrative isn't as...believable (things work out embarrassingly easily when it's time for them to), there is no feeling of interiority to any but the most central characters (this is to me a HUGE reason I don't find this trilogy compelling so far: no one but Tarma, Kethry, and their closest confidants are actually people with lives/motivations/histories).

Sexual violence still a partial plot driver, but way less so here (what a gauge), instead we get a romance plot I couldn't stop rolling my eyes through. I just was not impressed by this hamfisted ode to older men and their internal lives in a book that's supposedly about women, but what that means is two women with a lot of internalized disdain for other women, who surround themselves with a lot of men they're very impressed by. I'm tired. I came here for cool Shin'a'in backstory/worldbuilding and this isn't that.

Finally one note on worldbuilding: This seems to have been written before Lackey had settled on mages not being able to

Spoiler

work magic within the boundaries of Valdemar? Fascinating to read Kethry casting spells in Valdemar with no repercussions.

I mean this honestly, it is really interesting to see the sausage being made here, that ideas that become so central to the overarching plot of the entire series haven't really developed yet.

nakiki's review against another edition

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4.0

Loved it. Needed a better editor. Loved it anyway.

gbaty's review

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adventurous emotional funny fast-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character

4.25

Content Warnings

justiceofkalr's review against another edition

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4.0

This was much better than the previous novel, The Oathbound. Probably a lot of that was due to the fact that this was one complete story, whereas the previous book was several short stories kind of mushed together. Also, Need, the magic sword that compels Kethry and Tarma to help women, has apparently become more restrained in this book so there was less running about and less cheese with the whole righteous women power bit. It felt much more like a novel with strong female leads than the estrogen-fest of the previous book that was a little bit too heavy-handed at times. The story itself was not bad. At the beginning of the book, the heroines have joined up with a mercenary group known as Idra's Sunhawks, partly due to a bard who just won't stop singing about how wonderful they are. The problem with the bard being that they gained a reputation as do-gooders and couldn't make any decent money anymore because they were so busy helping the helpless (which Need compelled them to do). Their Captain goes missing and the rest of the book follows the two of them as they're sent out to find what happened to her. No particularly big surprises or plot-twists, but a decent enough story.

alicjaz's review against another edition

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adventurous fast-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Plot
Strong character development? It's complicated
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? N/A

3.75

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