I’ve been looking forwards to this book for quite some time, and I wasn’t disappointed. I’ve just finished reading it, and have a few initial reactions. Review to follow over the next couple of days once my brain has calmed down from being blown. (Pre-empted. Oops. My bad.)

No spoilers here (and I also keep my reviews spoiler-free).

• Epic high fantasy, oh my goodness yes. Unlike other high fantasy epics, however, I would actually recommend this one to fans of low fantasy epics like Acacia or Song of Ice and Fire.

• Scenery is teh awesome, I’d say better than Martin’s or Durham’s, and they’re pretty damn good.

• Triple hoorays for racial variety in main characters! And by that, I don’t mean elves and dwarves.

• First person POV epics are hard to pull off. Done very well here due to the structure used.

• I like the new trend of not letting god stuff overwhelm everything and yet having the god stuff there in huge plot amounts.

• Kindle edition is very well done, as is usually the case for books from the Orbit imprint.

• Oh the romance. *tear*

• About 65% of the way through I thought “Yeah, it was TOTALLY that guy, I knew it all along, because it’s never the obvious guy, I am disappoint” and then, “wait, it is the obvious guy?” and then “whoah! It was not that guy? But wait, it was? Wait” and then “WHOAH” and then “WOW” and then “wow”.

• Why are the blond highborn women always so crazy in modern ((e.g., two decades after The Lord of the Rings.)) epic fantasy, high or low?

• There were only two typos that I could catch.

• The next volume is out in Fall of this year. And there is a sample. YAY.

• YAY APPENDICES THAT ARE MORE THAN FAMILY TREES AND TERM GUIDES!

More to come in the review. Seriously awesome book. Would love to review. Ah well.