Malice

This book is to A Game of Thrones what Eye of the World is to Lord of the Rings

Book is visibly inspired by AGOT. It's also allegedly inspired by Cornwell's books but I haven't read those so I'm not going to call Gwynne out on that part. Otherwise it's a promising introduction into a fantasy world. Heavy on fantasy tropes just like WoT. I suppose that comes with the territory, though.

Since I mostly read grimdark and schlock action fantasy, Eye of the World is the best point of reference here. The book is certainly better. Characters feel more alive, especially Corban, his friends and family. It's what kept me going, really, because the rest of POVs I couldn't care less about.

The predictability was astounding. I wasn't correct in all my assumptions as to how the story will go on but I was mostly right. Guessed who's the villain, who's the chosen one immediately. Guessed the one in the dreams is not who he pretends to be. I knew how would Rafe's story go on. Who killed the king. When Ban got the wolven I knew what would happen with the animal. I think I know how will Veradis's character arc continue in later books.

Half way through I started struggling as it was all characterization and exposition, very little plot movement or action, no unseen twists. That changes after 400 pages and especially the last 100 were great. Some setups finally started paying off. But it's not enough to salvage the book for me. Goodreads says I read it for 3 weeks. Feels more like 2 months. I don't understand how so many people overhype and give it 5 stars, calling it amazing. It's not. It's a solid start to a series, though.

Just like in AGOT there's a ton of characters (a list would really help, I was lost for quite a while trying to remember who's who), though the world seems smaller. I don't know what the king's are ruling over because it seemed like it's one town and a few villages here and there. The scale is not there. What is the total human population of Banished Lands? 80 000? Book is trying to set up this epic world but it really feels like everyone is living on a larger island. Maybe sequels will explain this better.

As I mentioned, last 100 pages are different. We finally see some action, there's some loss, twists that I didn't expect. This book would've been 3/5* just like Eye of the World. Last parts, Corban's arc and the solid, even though predictable, writing elevates it just so barely to 4/5*. I have zero desire to re-read this book ever again but I do want to continue with the series as literally everyone is saying it only gets better from here. I think Gwynne absolutely nailed Corban's story here, his family relationships, deep courage, his humbleness, like that he trains with the best fighters in the kingdom but doesn't realize how good he got because of that compared to others. His story is full of little touches like that. He's what kept me going when I got to the middle. He's probably my favorite "chosen one" already.

4.1

A solid entry book. Truthfully I started this book with the audiobook and could not get into it at all; I find that it did not do the series justice. I had to wait to get my hands on the physical version instead. Malice wasn't incredible but it was a good read, Gwynne writes action scenes incredibly enrapturing your attention at ease.

I look forward to reading Valour and seeing where the series heads.

Yes, I really wish goodreads update their rating category, not a lot books are straight 5, 4, and so forth, well I was surprised I actually gave a 4.5, let me think why.........

Character-wise, I love most of them, cept for Rafe, Crain, and Helfach, nobody ever likes a bully!!! Even Nathair, being used and still sees himself as the Bright Star, Calidus and Alcyon the most enigmatic pair in this book, I can not wait to see who those two turn out to be, ok now for the heroes, Gar, always an overpowered fighter/mage/paladin etc, living in the shadows to help our main protagonist, what is wrong with all this great people are???? Corban, ummmm still developing, Dath and Farrell my favorites, your requisite small but fast and slow but big and strong companions, hey we still have cywen, kastell and veradis, a lot of names and different personalities!!!

Mr. Gwynne, something is missing to add more ummphhh to your story, as it is, I am still very very interested with this realm/universe/world, and now Book 2!!!!

I really struggled with all of the changing POVs. The fact that all of them cross paths as one point made me question everyone like ‘has this person already been introduced or not?' and it made it so challenging to keep track of their current locations as well.

Corban was probably the only character I cared deeply about. Some other POVs grew on me, but others like Veradis felt like it was just telling me the story of Nathair through Vradis' POV since he literally had no agency in any of his actions past the first few chapters.

I liked the direction of where the story is heading enough to pick up the next book.

So here I am, years later, rereading this because when I originally read it... I just kind of didn't go ahead with the rest of the series. So I needed to just go from point 0, because years passed and I didn't remember shit.
On my second read, I would almost give it 5 stars. 4,5, it is. Still a great read. Still a lot of fun. The child characters are still a pleasure and not just the typical smug little bastards so popular nowadays. Good job.

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Based on the cover and the title this sounded like grimdark to me. Something incredibly depressing, so dark it was going to make me just feel this weight of everything being completely hopeless and generally horrible.
It actually wasn't like that, so if you worry about it, don't. It has its sad moments, but it really isn't that horrible. Now that my public service announcement is out of the way, lets just discuss the rest. There is quite a lot.

Here we have a continent with a lot of smaller countries, all under the rule of a king, the whole thing under the rule of a... super king? Lets say that. Super king. As it is customary, all the smaller kings tend to be a little bit petty, having their own conflicts and alliances, which comes in handy when things are changing.
What I mean by that is the god war, the battle between the forces of evil and good, lead by two battling gods and their respective heroes that will decide the fate of the world. So far pretty standard. As the war approaches, things are going bad for everyone. Lawless bandits, long dead monsters, wild clans of giants are tormenting the different countries of the place.
Meanwhile we have multiple storylines, all holding different characters, all nearing each other, with young boys, giant slayers, ambitious princes. It's complicated, okay?

That was actually the reason why I can't give this book 5 stars; it's just really complicated. Certain storylines (especially of the character Veradis, first sword of prince Nathair and at the very end even Corban's) just have way too many names. This probably sounds kinda petty, but there are pages that have 10-15 people and places mentioned. It's not easy to keep all of it straight, especially when so many of them sound similar. I understand that it connect them and shows their common origins stemming from the culture, but it was not easy to read.
It's a world with rich history, so we were going to get a lot, but sometimes things were difficult. I think a lot of it will be much more smooth in the later books in the series, partly because of Mr. Gwynne getting more comfortable in the world, partly because we learn a lot and actually get to know more than just a name about the mentioned characters.

Even with that, the book was just very pleasurable to read. The action and the prose felt fluid to me, the different POV parts had a nice variety. A lot of characters were a joy to read (like the awkward, bullied young man Kastell finally finding his place and becoming a much better version of himself). It had serious moments, but it wasn't weighed down by needless darkness just to push the plot. Don't get me wrong, I like me some ASOIAF, the grim things were done pretty well there, all divided up to be easier to handle by bright moments of fun and exploration and all. But this one was a bit more of the heroic and idealised kind.

One thing I personally find many authors do wrong is young/teenage characters. Here, though... god, I loved what Mr. Gwynne did! It really shows he has kids in my opinion, as the young characters were imaginable young people. None of that uppity, “I am so much smarter than actual adults because of reasons” crap, room left for development, flaws, imperfections that are real and actual parts of the characters. The kids have to better themselves, not just sit around being perfect little revolutionary heroes after a life of carefree village kids, no training anywhere.
Aaaaand no unnecessary suffering is thrown at them for no reason other than trying to make you care about them. I am so happy there wasn't any of the “everyone hates you, 12-year-old kiddo, but we don't say why, just torture you as it is the favoured activity in our picturesque village”. Here being a good kid means some people will actually stand up for you, because human relationships are like that. Appreciated.

The story itself is very much part of a series. While it ends with a very action-packed sequence of scenes winding down and everyone sitting down to catch their breath, it could have been just the end of a chapter. Yes, things are blatantly left unsaid (“hey, I need to tell you something” “later, I'm hella tired”), they are not impossible to guess, I think they are pretty obvious. Talking about that.... Nathair is go getting Stannis'd, it's almost funny, but as a Stannis fangirl, it really freaking isn't at the same time. Daaaaamn, boy.
So yeah, a lot of what happened here will actually bloom and come to full effect in the next book. Hopefully it having a solid base will mean a bit less cramming of names and things, maybe... edited down and streamlined a bit more.

Overall, I found it a fun read, really enjoyable, but I would say it needs you to train yourself for fantasy, as you really need to be able to handle fantasy names. The tropes and other elements are perfectly digestible, it's just the bloody names, oh goood.

Have a good night and make love, not god war!

I had high hopes for this book. It was also the viewers choice book review from bac in march on my youtube channel that I finally got around to getting done

I had heard alot of good about this series and was excited to read it but it honestly fell flat for me in some ways. I did not connect with the characters for the most part but did enjoye the overall story itself

The world is a interesting world with Giants and reference to gods which has always been a interest to me when gods are invovled in our fantsy so it gets points for world building and mythology but loses points for flat characters

overall I give this 3.5 stars so not terrible but not great

3.00/5.00

Malice by John Gwynne is a good book. “Good” is the best way to describe this book, for many conflicting feelings clashed within me to arrive at this compromise. Malice shines in establishing good characters, with clear motivations and traits. Malice tells a very good story, finishing with an ambitious and shockingly awesome ending. Malice employs its characters to great effect to produce a very enjoyable story. We see clear inspirations from ASOIAF and traditional epic fantasy roots and a fresh take on the time tested tropes of prophecy, hero's journey, chosen ones, and good vs. evil themes.

However, John Gwynne's “Banished Lands” fails to land within the upper echelon of fantasy worlds. Founded on uninspired retro-Christian lore, with limited thematic complexity and disappointing cultural world building, Malice fails to intrigue. The focus of the story quickly moves away from the world and zeroes in on the plot and characters, spasming to ride the coattails of ASOIAF. John Gwynne's dialogue is clearly the weakest link of this book. Most characters say exactly what one would expect them to say, in the most basic and plain way possible. While significant events take place in this book in terms of plot and characters, it feels like a recital of a screenplay where no prosaic beauty exists. During slower parts of the book, this lackluster prose almost caused me a DNF.

In summary, its a good book. A dollar-store version of “A Game of Thrones”.

This book has promise, but it was given a bit of an unfair disadvantage due to having read and loved the Bloodsworn Saga first. It makes the flaws of Malice stand out more, but regardless, I noticed them, and they affected my read.

The first con I have is that this book simply introduces too many characters. I'm a little shocked an editor didn't force him to cut a couple. And this is coming from someone whose favorite series is ASOIAF, a series with a metric ton of characters. I cannot say every ASOIAF character is important; but Martin makes most side and minor characters memorable, or matter in some way. And Martin also has a way of distinguishing which characters the reader should focus on, and which are there more to flesh out the world. I don't think Malice achieved this, you are just bombarded with names and then bombarded with who those names are related to and then bombarded with their deaths. There's a point in this book where a character dies and I didn't realize they were the son of another character until that character mentioned it.

Speaking of, for the amount of constant death in this book, nobody really ever cares that these people are dying, so why should the reader? A POV character loses his best friend and barely thinks about it ever again. Another loses a family member and it is mentioned for one sentence. I get that we need plot momentum but it takes me out of the story when death doesn't really matter to the people I'm reading about.

Also the dialogue here was pretty wooden and average. I can't think of any dialogue that felt really good. Gwynne is great at dialogue in Bloodsworn, though, so I'll attribute this to growing pains. I also wasn't impressed with the giants in this book, who should be much scarier/more menacing than they are.

The thing that really exhausted me about this book was the murderous bully trope, though. These bullies are just relentless, all the time, no nuance, they just wake up in the morning, eat some Bully-Os for breakfast, put on their Bullying jacket, and go out for some bullying. It was absurd. I finally docked this book down to 3 stars when both of the bully plotlines are resolved in the exact same way, with the exact same dumb character motivation, exactly one chapter apart. It was terrible. The book deserved better.

Finally, for negatives (and I have positives! But negatives come first), the female characters in this book are not great. Now, Orca and Elvar in Bloodsworn are two extremely well written characters, not to mention all the other supporting female characters in that series. I know Gwynne gets better. I'm willing to let this develop organically. But in Malice, we have one female POV, Cywen, who is basically used as a camera to listen to the men talk or listen to the men fight or, occasionally, be infatuated with someone. She does look to be going somewhere, though, so TBD. But beyond Cywen, all the female characters are just there to serve the plot. There is one particularly egregious thing, and that is what made me really consider this as a negative overall, but it's a spoiler. I don't think this largely affected my enjoyment of the book, until that one thing, but it's something to be aware of.


But, I still liked Malice! I know after all that, it may not seem like it, but that's because I expected more from Gwynne. When not reading this book, I was thinking about reading it. I think Gwynne did a fantastic job setting up the political conflicts and the various rivalries developing. I got a real sense of this world; the worldbuilding was not a key focus but I think he did a great job seeding it in throughout the book in a way that was immersive. I also thought most of the POV characters, besides Kastell, got good development and I ended up being invested in all of them, especially Corbin. Some of the side characters I really liked, like Gar, Halion, Brina, and Maquin, among others.

As always, Gwynne is great at battle scenes. I thought some of them were a little too easy for our characters, but the important ones were riveting.

I also thought the creatures were used to a good degree, with an expectation that we will get more of them later on. Wyrms, giants, giant lizards, and giant wolves were all introduced to various levels and I'm intrigued about them. I also think the central conflict, which revolves around a prophecy, is pretty interesting, because our characters spend time trying to figure out who each prophecy is referring to and how that affects them.

Overall, this was a good read. By the end, some of my negatives had grated on me a bit too long for Malice to get a higher rating, but I enjoyed my time with it. I'm excited to continue my journey in the Banished Lands, however! Truth and courage!

4.5/5. This has been on my TBR for too long, especially considering how good it is and how it aligns with my tastes so well. I won't lie, the first half of the book was only 3.5/5 for me, but by the middle, I was hooked. Then the last 1/4 of the book was an easy 5/5 and really set everything else up. In total giving this a 4.5/5 and I know I'm going to absolutely love the rest of the series

As an aside: Huge thanks to Matt's Fantasy Book Reviews for sending this to me for being a Librarian tier Patreon subscriber. You knew I'd love this one and you nailed it

This is the most 5⭐️worthy book I have read in a long long time!

The book left me full of deep satisfaction, devastating heartbreak, desire to know more, thirst for revenge and justice... And most of all, the worst book hangover I can remember since I read Words of Radiance.
Amazing character work! I loved or hated all the characters deeply. I was never indifferent. To even the most insignificant ones.
Tremendous world building! I felt like I was there, I knew all the places, I studied the map with passion.
Gripping plot! The way the author wove the story, from beginning to end, through the different points of view, was absolutely masterful!
This book made me feel so many things. From its meaningful quiet moments, to the anxiety-inducing, nail-biting battles. All of it was just lovely!
Read it!!!!!11one

I knew Nathair was the worst as soon as he started yapping about empires.Veradis is an absolute fool. Or so I thought until I re-examined the information he operates under, and understood that I probably would be just as stupid in his place.I need Cywen to not be dead, because she had so much potential, and I can't believe the author would end her like this. Same goes for Kastell.Where is Corban's damn horse?? Who the hell did king Brenan save from Rhin??If Meical is not a Ben-Elim I shall eat this book, and the others in this series.

Excellent classical-type (tolkienesque) fantasy, but with very good modern writing (for example the good are obviously good and the evil clearly evil, no grimdark here, but they all have very good and reasonable reasons for their choice). I enjoyed it very much and will start right away at the sequels. It starts slow and rather confusing (too many similar kingdoms with similar intrigues and too many similar characters, some almost identical), but in the second half it goes into a full and fascinating rumble. I absolutely loved in the second half how plots start to connect (often unexpectedly and with good guys on the bad side and bad guys on the good one). What I did not love were the too classical feeling, the too similar kingdoms and characters and, especially, the ending, which felt rushed (to provide a loud bang) and not that believable. Highly recommended, still.recenzie pe larg https://bbloguldesefe.wordpress.ro/2021/02/25/ai-nevoie-de-o-noua-doza-de-asoiaf-dar-pe-martin-il-doare-n-c-citeste-tftf-de-john-gwynne/

I postponed reading this one because I was pretty sure that I would like it and wanted to save it for a time where I'd need a damn good book. Unfortunately I was just bored most of the time.

I can't even explain what it was, because some of the ideas and characters were cool, but none of it ever really grabbed me. I also never got super into the writing style, but I can't really put into words exactly what I was missing.

A bit of a useless review, but it was just alright for me. Nothing bad, but nothing overly great either.

i really wanted to like this after all the amazing stuff i've heard about gwynne, but i think that the hype was too much. i kept expecting amazing writing from this author, and this was my second from him (the first was shadow of the gods, which was described as a masterpiece, and i thought was ok).

i'm not really a fan of pushing in so many characters - i would rather the existing characters were fleshed out well. there were some characters who i really hated seeing the perspective of - kastell was my least favorite. i thought he was so boring and forgot who he was a lot of the time. and then he joins a band of warriors for a while and this is supposed to be a big deal for him but is barely even talked about.

rafe and jael were such annoyingly evil characters as well. they seemed so flat and didn't seem to have a reason for being so bad. i just wish that there was more to the characters who were given so much “screen time”. gwynne also loves to write battle scenes and i just find them really boring.

i preferred malice to shadow of the gods, but i'm really not sure if i'm going to continue on with this series or author. i am really curious about what happens next, even though it feels kind of obvious
Spoiler
(Corban is totally the actual hero isn't he, and Nathair is just being tricked). he seems like a really friendly dude but his books are chonkers, so they're quite the commitment.

sigh, think i'll take a break from gwynne. maybe i'll enjoy him after some time away.

On a reread I'm still giving this 4 stars although I appreciate it more than I had before. The action and character development was fun but I hope that the next books are much more entertaining to put into 5 star territory!

Also I listened to this on audio and I REFUSE to accept that Cywen is pronounced Cuh-win.

Let me first say I loved this book and I ate it up. The book was somewhat of a slow start for me, but for some reason I was curious about one character's arc from the start and that's what held me through. There were points in the middle where I was hitting chapters on other characters and I was so bored, I was counting how many pages to the next chapter featuring the character I became invested in. If you like war and battles and political plays there's a good chance you'll like this. I did get ASOIAF vibes, but really only because of the kingdoms related political intrigue and essentially big wolves. The writing and politics are definitely different - they are [gasp!] different books. This isn't the type of series book that can stand alone, the plot continues to the next. My heart wants to rate this 5/5-stars, but following my rating scale it's not completely there.

– Dnf around the 35% mark. –

For now, I think I will just put this on the back burner and circle back around to it later on. I thoroughly enjoyed the Bloodsworn series thus far, but I just have a lack of investment in this. I enjoy the writing and setting, but chapter after chapter, I feel my attention wavering. I want to like it, but I do not want to force it either. Perhaps I am just not in the mood at the moment.