Valor

It's rare for me that a book lives up to the hype but this one is such case. Gripping from the beginning to the end.

The boring slow paced worldbuilding of Malice is gone, replaced by constant action and emotion. I gave Malice benefit of the doubt because its finish was great and the story was promising. Here Gwynne builds upon what he set up in the first book to deliver one of the best paced books I've ever read. Seriously, this is masterfully paced and exactly what I was hoping this series would be before I started it based on raving reviews.

Characters go through hell. I thought it was actually a bit much because until the last 100-150 pages everything goes wrong for the good guys and everything works out for the villains. It was too obvious but it did work as I couldn't stop reading. Another thing that annoyed me but works for the book's benefit are short chapters with cliffhangers. It's annoying to read three pages only to leave me hanging for another 20 until the author decides to return to that POV or location. Not a fan of short chapters. But... they work.

Next two books are allegedly even better so I can't wait to dive back into Banished Lands but first I think I'll take a break for a bit with something shorter.

This one took me so long, it's not even funny. Not because it was bad, it wasn't, but there were certain elements that made it a bit... more difficult to read.

By now we know for sure Corban is the good guy and Nathair is the bad. It's obviously.
So his group needs to escape, to find a safe place while war is going on.

Here is the thing, this book did really feel like a kind of middle one in a series. Why do I say that? So much of it is about setup. Forming the big factions, the characters travelling around, trying to get in position.
Also, a lot of new characters are introduced, which is one of the things bogging it down; book 1 already had a LOT of story lines and characters and things going on. Individually, they are all great. I don't think there are any characters I dislike (other than them being bad people, but even then, they are well-written). But because there is so much going on, I don't think every single one can shine.
The format also doesn't help. The chapters are short. So short that often I felt like I wasn't as invested as I should have been, because I only got a few pages of a character and then we skipped to someone freaking walking on some mountains and I KNEW it was going to take a long time to circle around and get back to this person.
The parts with action and stuff going on were fine, great. But it wasn't easy going. I still liked it a lot, I jsut hope the next ones will be a bit more fluid. Even with the deaths, we still have too many people around.