I really loved this - the mix of historical accuracy (the author is a keen medieval re-enactor), gritty military action scenes, the ruthless power politics, the academic and practically-applied sorcery, the contrast between the human kingdoms and the Wild (red in tooth and claw). A fantastic read, and I can't wait for the next in the series. ( )

Things I liked

I liked the queens story, it had a good sense of menace and generally felt more under threat. I liked the use of the dance at the end as a mechanism of bringing many of the characters together.

Things I didn't like

I thought gods and general theme of magic got a bit out of control. It was like you couldn't have a battle or really have any chance of winning without a bunch of wizards all of a sudden. I think this took away a lot of the fun of the band of mercenaries and made it much more about the captain all of a sudden.

Highlight:

The dance at the end with all the characters fading in out of their shared reality. Very nice. Scary and sweet at the same time.
( )

Got to page 206 of a little over 600 and I don't care. I may revisit it at some stage but I'm finding it a huge messy slog and keep abandoning it to read other things. When you keep promising yourself you can change books when you reach the end of another chapter there's something wrong.

In my opinion not as good as the first book - I felt the pacing was to quick - many threads under-developed and too much of the structure felt rushed. Still I felt it was pretty good - overall 85% ( )

The Fell Sword is the second book in Miles Cameron’s Traitor Son series. Just like in the Red Knight, the first volume in this series, reading this one gives the impression that the author essentially has fun writing a piece that takes place in a fantasy world that borrows from European 14th century.

The Fell Sword opens with the Red Knight’s mercenary company, fresh off its costly victory in the first book, traveling to “the Empire” for a contract for the Emperor. Things go sideways before they start, however, when the Emperor is kidnapped shortly before the company arrives. Meanwhile Thorn weaves new plots, the Wild roils, the Galles scheme, and the north of Albin recovers.

Cameron’s descriptive powers come to the fore and he creates some action-packed vignettes. The spectacle of many knights mustering on a battlefield is pretty awe-inspiring. You get that huge sense of scope here. Chaos doesn’t seem an appropriate enough word to do these moments justice.

The fantastical elements in the novel are sometimes quite subtle; but in other cases wildly overt. The mythical beings that inhabit the Wild are starting to play a larger role in the plot, and more and more are being introduced.

I’m very much looking forward to volume 3 – hope the wait is not too long. ( )