A good 'growing up' fantasy novel about a young man, Alwin the Scribe, taken in by a bandit gang in the forest. The bandit 'king' has pretensions to great things and Alwin is fated to get involved in politics of the nation. Very different in plot from his Raven's Shadow novels, but similar in tone and some basic plot elements. Still good though, Alwin and Toria and Brewer and others are good characters. A bit on the dark side. ( )

Well, this was horrible!

The author is good with words but he lacks any idea of how to write a decent story and has little clue of human behaviour.

The main character sounds witty but.. he's anything but.

Characters in general are downright dumb, doing things for no reason. Some are pictured as being good while bringing murder, rape, pillage and destruction everywhere they go.

Here are two examples:

(The following paragraphs contain SPOILERS)

In the first book, at some point this lady, the commander of the main army group is wounded and she's dying. The main character decides to save her life by employing the pagan rituals of a witch. When she wakes up she thinks she was saved by angels. She then proceeds in rallying all the local peasants against the greedy royals and the church claming divine wisdom. The royals and the church try to assassinate her of course but again she is saved by the main character with help from her army and the peasants. She, him and their army group then proceed to a meeting with the royals and the church where she swears fealty to them. Wait, what!? But they just tried to kill her! The peasants are also very happy about the situation even though just a short while ago they were screaming their guts out against the royals and the church for bleeing them dry. Again, what, why!?

They are then ordered to proceed and fight a war against a neighboring province, this being a way in which the royals and church hope to get rid of them. The province in question is one of the few places in the realm where the nobles, the church and the peasants live in relative harmony. Wow! This sure sounds like a bad place which needs to be wiped off the face of the earth. So they go there and exterminate pretty much everyone. All this time the lady commander keeps saying that this has to be done so as to prevent the demons from coming to this realm. All her subjects, including the main character believe what she says because real-wide slaughter sure sounds like something that would prevent the apocalypse. While facilitating this conquest the main character keeps pretending that he is a good person. He later questions himself about how he could do all this. I questioned myself too and it turned out that everything that he did, he did because he wanted to fuck his commander.

Sadly this is the level of story telling here, in the first book and beyond. ( )

First half had promise, second half didn't live up to it. The initial outlaw cast was interesting, but I felt that the rest of the characters were either boring or just plain unlikable. The pacing and amount of setting changes also played into negative character dynamic, nothing and nobody felt very fleshed out. ( )

This was such a joyful read for me! Alwyn Scribe is the Forest Gump of fantasy protagonists. We get to watch him journey from a simple outlaw through a series of fortunate and unfortunate events that result in a whole lot of action, not to mention depth of character. Good guy? Bad guy? Who knows, but how can we not cheer for him?

POV in this one was also delightful. Who doesn't like a well-embellished story and juicy prose that keeps on delivering? If I have one gripe, it's that the story-telling gets a bit cheeky at times, and we don't see that side of young Alwyn enough to justify his older poetic voice. That doesn't stop me from enjoying it... just one of those things that make me go Hmmmm.

That aside, definitely read it! ( )

Alwyn is raised by outlaws to be a spy and a thief. He learns the scriptures from a madman and is very cynical about the religion governing the land. He finds each area has its own version of it. The outlaw gang tried to take over a castle and most are killed in the fighting. Alwyn is captured and sent to the mine pits where he is taken under the wing of the priestess and taught to read and write. He eventually escapes, later is conscripted into the army and finds another voice to follow. Lots of fascination with religious leaders but no real belief in what they preach. This was quite a long book that never seemed to get anywhere. Three stars because it was well written and edited.
I received this book from Netgalley and voluntarily reviewed it. Thanks to the publisher and author for making it available. ( )