stormlightreader 's review for:

War of the Wolf by Bernard Cornwell

4.0

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Yes, the series is formulaic at this point and Uhtred is lucky as ever, but I'm not going to complain about this when this is a comfort series. Unfortunately, other than physically aging (

he's over 60 at this point

), Uhtred has developed very little over eleven books. This is where I feel the show depicts him a little bit better, he still has some of the traits he has in the book but I think the show smooths some of his edges and makes him a little easier to like (particularly towards women).

Some of the past few books have been a bit on the slow side, and while I’ve still enjoyed them, a couple have just scraped a 4* for me. War of the Wolf is one of these purely because of the pacing at the start of the book (

despite opening with Æthelflaed's death

). It starts slow (at the 100 page mark, I was thinking this would be a 3*) but around the halfway point it really picked up for me

unfortunately because it is around this point we hear of Stiorra's death

. I still adore Finan! He is without a doubt my favourite character in this series and I am so sad that he is a loyal supporting character but gets substantially less page time than he deserves. The continued confusion about what a lion is has me laughing every time I read it now 😂 ("a lion, whatever that is"). 

At this point (2 books left) Cornwell is clearly setting up for what I hope is a great ending to the series. I’m sad this series is coming to an end but I don't see how much more story there would be, so it feels like a nicely sized series.