High King Aquilus, who oversees the various realms in which the Banished Lands are divided, has been warned about the prophecy that heralds a new war between the opposing forces of light and darkness and the final battle between their champions, the Bright Star and the Black Sun: when he calls the other rulers to council, asking for an alliance against the coming darkness, his proposal is mostly met with uncertainty and disbelief, since the forces of evil have already begun to sow their seeds, so that what should have been a united front is fractured by mistrust and competing shows of strength. As a longtime admirer of JRR Tolkien and his Lord of the Rings, I found here the same kind of epic tale I love to lose myself in.Īs far as the background is concerned, the novel takes place in the Banished Lands, a region where people retreated after the devastating war between the gods of good and evil, Elyon and Asroth, and where humans dwell in uneasy balance together with giants, wyrms and other outworldly creatures.
I have come to envision the author as a bard of old, of the kind who once gathered people around a fire as he recounted tales that everyone was familiar with, but that gained new depth and meaning with clever storytelling, one where the journey matters more than the end. evil tale, and in truth it employs several traditional elements of the genre, like the prophecy of an impending conflict between the champions of light and darkness, or the coming of age of a young man destined to greatness, but it does so with such narrative skill that it’s impossible not to be absorbed by the story and enjoy its rhythm and subtle buildup. On the surface, Malice looks like a classic good vs. Which brings me to Malice, the start of The Faithful and the Fallen epic.
When earlier this year I read John Gwynne’s A Time of Dread, the first volume in his new saga titled Of Blood and Bone, I was immediately captivated by the author’s storytelling and the complex background of the novel, so that once I learned of the existence of a previous loosely connected series, I knew I would not wait long before reading it.
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