Tag: older characters

Book Review

Moon Reads: The Lost War

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The Lost War by Justin Lee Anderson

Rating: MoonKestrel Logo2 20px MoonKestrel Logo2 20px MoonKestrel Logo2 20px MoonKestrel Logo2 20px MoonKestrel Logo2 20px Grey

Nothing is perfect, and as such, the reviews in this blog are chaotic. My main aim is to share my thoughts, joy and opinions on a book, not make a publication perfect review. This blog endorses authenticity, showing up and joy over perfection.

Disclaimer: Receiving a review copy from the publisher does not affect my opinion of the book. If you think I review it highly it is due to me knowing my taste well and therefore not requesting books I won’t enjoy. And I am not obligated to review the book if I do not like it, so you may not see bad reviews due to me preferring not to hype down a particular book. I only do reviews of books I disagreed with if I think it is worth bringing a topic or warning to light.

If you have read my review for The Bitter Crown which is the second book and kept wondering what I thought of the first, well, here we are!

The Lost War starts like a lot of fantasy settings, in a pub. And it takes a full ride form there. Starting with the fact that Aranok isn’t a young 16-25 year old but rather set in his years with war experience and more life under his belt than just that. And he isn’t perfect or the most handsome.

I loved reading about characters that were each their own world, that weren’t just kids or young adults saving the world. These are adults, struggling with life in a different way, trying to recover a life after a long and difficult war, technically some are heroes and yet they don’t fully feel like that.

To me it felt like an epic Dungeons and Dragons story where it starts in a pub and suddenly what you thought was a chest turns out to be a mimic (and no this does not happen in the book, but interesting stuff does happen). And I enjoyed this as it gave an epic but organic feeling to it. If you’ve ever had a D&D session or many of them, you know that sometimes chaos reigns and joining the story is a feat or the constraints become interesting. And this is all good and fine as friends and if you forget a bit here or there or something changes, you’re totally fine.

The Lost War is a polished refined version of that fun. A contained adventure with some critical ones rolled here and there and sometimes some natural 20s and overall more or less barely enough to make it rolls of the dice, and I love that. Not everything works out but also not everything goes to hell, it is well balanced, with twists and turns, and a very fine twist which I enjoyed a lot as it it was nice and chaotic and also explained some little things that at first you just can’t put your finger on but know something is up.

It was a mastery of storytelling and I enjoyed it a lot.

If you love D&D adventures, chaos, older adventures and badass ones too, a good mix of chaos and kingdom, come try this series out. I’ve really been enjoying it!

Book Review

Moon Reads: The Bitter Crown

Posted on

The Bitter Crown by Justin Lee Anderson

Rating: MoonKestrel Logo2 20px MoonKestrel Logo2 20px MoonKestrel Logo2 20px MoonKestrel Logo2 20px MoonKestrel Logo2 20px Grey

Nothing is perfect, and as such, the reviews in this blog are chaotic. My main aim is to share my thoughts, joy and opinions on a book, not make a publication perfect review. This blog endorses authenticity, showing up and joy over perfection.

Disclaimer: Receiving a review copy from the publisher does not affect my opinion of the book. If you think I review it highly it is due to me knowing my taste well and therefore not requesting books I won’t enjoy. And I am not obligated to review the book if I do not like it, so you may not see bad reviews due to me preferring not to hype down a particular book. I only do reviews of books I disagreed with if I think it is worth bringing a topic or warning to light.

Disclaimer: Receiving a review copy from the publisher does not affect my opinion of the book. If you think I review it highly it is due to me knowing my taste well and therefore not requesting books I won’t enjoy. And I am not obligated to review the book if I do not like it, so you may not see bad reviews due to me preferring not to hype down a particular book. I only do reviews of books I disagreed with if I think it is worth bringing a topic or warning to light.

Welcome to a chaotic review and blog tour post for The Bitter Crown. I somehow managed to leave my review for The Lost War in draft instead of publishing it ahead of today, so you will get the review for book 2 in the series before the review for book one which will come in the next review.

I read both books back to back, in the span of a week or so. They’re slightly chonky and remind me of old 80’s and 90’s novels in the worldbuilding and the adventures, a good fantasy specimen is what I would say. This means that if you didn’t read them one after the other immediately there’s a lot you might forget about this world and story. This brings me to probably my favourite thing in this book, which was the fact you get a “recap” as a relatively seamless part of the story.

This made for some interesting “this sounds too familiar, wait, it is a summary, a previously on” and I loved that.

Now for the actual review, it is hard to do without spoiling too much. With the end of the Lost War, there is now a lot of stake and more than anything, the truth is at stake, and it is hard when so very few actually know what is true or not. And honestly this whole concept of truth was also some of my favourite themes in the book, alongside what do you do when you have to rebuild yourself, your relationships and everything in your life now that you know the truth. Hard work, let me tell you.

The adventures continue and I still have a soft spot for Aranok, Allandria and Samily more than for the rest, I am biased because they really grew on me as the lost war happened and then even more here, particularly given the interesting new challenges presented to Aranok and Allandria (not to spoil things, but this was also a fascinating thing to read).

Overall, The Bitter Crown is a good sequel, giving a lot of adventure, more views of this world, a pinch or two of chaos and a very real and human set of characters. They aren’t perfect, they mess up, make mistakes, act crazy, and have consequences.

If you enjoy epic fantasy, a feeling like you’re walking through a Dungeons and Dragons campaign played by a bunch of adults (for the most part the ages of the main cast are varied and it goes more to older characters rather than very wet behind the ears ones, which was also refreshing to read), pick up the Eidyn Saga, it is really fun and I can’t wait for what comes next.