It took me a while to read Malice (book one of The Faithful and the Fallen), though not through any fault of the book – someone absconded with my copy when I was only halfway through, and didn’t return it for three months.

Malice’s blurb is technically accurate, but doesn’t play to the book’s strengths – it makes it out to be standard “farm-boy on an epic quest” fiction, when it is much more complex and interesting than that. Malice is set in an already unstable world cartwheeling towards an apocalyptic god-war that only half of the characters believe in, and the massive societal and personal shifts that this brings.The characters are complex, you engage with them fully, and it is surprisingly subtle for a book with hammer-wielding giants in. Continue reading “Malice – John Gwynne” →