Wayne Thomas Batson

This was a five star book until King Aravel found out about Alastair--this was a big moment but the author treated it with only a couple of paragraphs, which upset me. Where is some rumination from the king for this man who saved his army with exemplary military strategy & swordsmanship? The king dismissed his information about his brother (that he should have gleaned from years of intelligence work). Explaining the king's ignorance was necessary--delve into his style of kingship more, his vanity, etc. Then the birth of the Queen's son was ridiculously clean & easy. It already bugged me that Telwyn was such an inhumanly easy child, but I allowed for it after the plot revealed his role. Even authors who don't have children could do a little research on the birth process & child behavior.
There was some more hurrying through towards the end that I noticed, that didn't fit with the careful details of all the previous chapters. This was too bad.
I missed learning more about the young adult characters whom we met at the beginning--that they show up in the battle in the end was not enough. Since the library put this book into the Young Adult area, I thought wrongly their story would predominate, similar to the Ranger's Apprentice series.
I loved the dark immortal character of the gross Cythraul.
I haven't convinced myself to invest time to read the 2nd book of the series yet, especially when I haven't yet read Game of Thrones.… (more)

SPOILER ALERT







What is it with ALWAYS killing off the black characters! For goodness sake, there was only one! I feel the same about most fantasy with diversity. Either the brown people are the bad ones or if a main character--get killed off (or are the 1 character who never gets a HEA). Same disappointment I felt with X-Men 1st Gen.

I kid you not, as soon as it became obvious that that Jett and Kiri were in 'like', I knew he was going to die. Sigh.....

So far, the only series left that I have any hope for is Lightbringer by Brent Weeks.… (more)