The Fell Sword by Miles Cameron
My rating: 4 of 5 stars
The second instalment in the Fallen Son series was one I was looking forward to. Since The Red Knight was such a tour de force - extremely well paced, very inventive, doing an excellent job of balancing world building, action and character development - I wanted to see where Miles Cameron would be taking his setting to.
I can't say I enjoyed this book quite as much as I did its predecessor. It could be because the bar was set so high but the truth is, I didn't find it as focused. Although the presence of many (many!) point-of-view chapters was present in both novels here it was more distracting and occasionally confusing than serving to promote the plot.
Even the Red Knight himself seemed to suffer from the same problem, taking a step back to countless threads that never quite seemed to come together in time for a true climax to the novel before the end - there was one, and it was satisfying enough, but I can't help but feel it was missing something. The stakes were different, we were exposed to a world view where they are very high indeed, and yet the protagonist was still tangled fighting a small-time villain whose chances of winning at that point had been greatly diminished.
Now, this could be mid-series struggles that will pay off in later books. It's happened before with other series and I've every confidence in the author's ability to pull it off. But as a single instalment goes it could have ultimately had more meat in it and been polished to deliver the same kind of potent, focused punch the first one did.
Even with its faults this was still quite enjoyable. The cast is deep, they have their own voices, and their dialogue is often a pleasure to read; it's not often I even remember secondary (let alone tertiary) mercenary support characters' names let alone feel disappointed when they die. Which happens, if not quite as much as George R.R. Martin allows such fates to occur - the Traitor Son is a grim series but it's not ... as grim as others.
I give this book 4/5 stars. Let's see what the next one brings to the table.
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