"The Faithful and the Fallen" series review

Overview

Title: The Faithful and the Fallen

Author: John Gwynne

Subgenre: Epic fantasy, Military

2021 Bingo squares:

• Malice - Backlist, Cat squasher, Forest setting, Debut
• Valor - Backlist, Revenge, Cat squasher, Forest setting
• Ruin - Backlist, Revenge, Cat squasher, Forest setting
• Wrath - Backlist, Revenge, Cat squasher, Forest setting

Recommend: It’s great at what it does - epic low fantasy battle action. Want that? Then yes yes yes yes. But it’s pretty narrowly only good at this, so you have to really want that.

Stars: 4.5/5

Review

After a dreadfully boring first 250 pages of Malice, The Faithful and the Fallen turns into an amazingly action-packed, emotional, and tense epic fantasy saga that I couldn’t put down. It’s an incredible turnaround, and most definitely worth the wait; however, if you don’t want to suffer through that 250-page beginning, at the end of my review I’m including a summary of events that I wrote as things were starting to pick up so that you can skip straight to the part where it gets amazing.

What it’s about

The Faithful and the Fallen takes place in the Banished Lands, a continent divided into several kingdoms populated primarily by humans, with clans of giants living at the fringes. There’s a prophecy lurking at the corners saying that an avatar of Elyon - the god of creation, the good guy - will fight an avatar of Asroth - the god of destruction, the bad guy. Elyon’s avatar will be called The Bright Star, and Asroth’s avatar will the called The Black Sun.

Our primary protagonists are Corban, a blacksmith’s son, who lives in the kingdom of Ardan, and Veradis, first sword to High Prince Nathair. There’s a bunch of other point-of-view characters, among them friends, family, and allies of Corban and Nathair, as well as a few of their enemies. A lot of the point-of-view characters seem unrelated at first, but as the story continues, their paths come together in various ways, some predictable, some surprising.

There’s not much magic; this is mostly a large-scale military conflict saga. In addition to giants, the prophecy, and the plot devices Treasures, there are some talking ravens (among many other loyal and lovable animal companions) and various forms of “elemental magic.” The magic isn’t ever built up in a hard magic system, but it’s never super influential to the plot either, so that’s not really a problem at any point.

What there also is, is a lot of character death. This is a pretty dark series, so be prepared for that. If you are looking for light reading, you will want to find something else instead. If you want an intense, plot-driven saga in which no one is safe from the God-War, read The Faithful and the Fallen. Truth and courage!

What I loved

First, the battle scenes. I’m normally not one to enjoy long, drawn-out descriptions of combat, but somehow John Gwynne managed to make me love an almost 3000-page-long series that was mostly a long, drawn-out description of combat. His descriptions are so vivid, emotional, sometimes joyful, sometimes tragic, that it becomes something just wonderful to experience as a reader.

He heard a battle-cry behind him, two voices shouting, ‘Gadrai,’ and he grinned, knowing his sword-brothers were with him. The battle-joy took him then, which he’d heard others call a madness but to him it was a fierce, pure ecstasy, new strength flooding his limbs, his lips drawn back in a half-grin, half-snarl.

Second, without going into detail, I just want to say that the way he picks which tropes to follow and which to subvert is just masterful. Stunning. Perfect.

There are also a couple characters that added some much-needed comic relief to the plot: The talking ravens Craf and Fech were my favorites, and Legion’s deranged villainous dialogue was also absolutely hilarious. As I mentioned before the story is quite dark (this is an understatement), and I’m very glad Gwynne made the decision to include this bit of comedy.

What I didn’t like

For everything good I’ve said about this quartet, there were some major issues with it, even beyond the dreadful beginning (which, again, you can and maybe should just skip & read the summary I’m providing you with instead).

First, the prose is mediocre at best, at times pretty bad. For example, words are often distractingly repeated in close proximity to each other such as in this passage from Ruin (emphasis mine):

As the sun sank into the west it bathed the flat land of glistening marsh spread before them in its orange glow, myriad waterways and stagnant pools glistening like liquid amber.

There’s also little time given to meaningful character interaction: especially in Valor (book 2), characters will meet for an important conversation, then the chapter will end, we’ll switch to other points of view for a while, and then when we get back, a time-skip has happened, and the character has to summarize what’s happened in the intervening days. If you’re here just for the epic fantasy travel and battle scenes that’s okay, but if you want intense character dialogue, you’ll be left frustrated.

The series lacks LGBT representation entirely. It has a few romance plots, none of which I thought was particularly interesting, but as far as fantasy romances go, they were…okay. Maybe 3-4% of the total length of the series concerns a romance plot. The biggest issue with the most prominent romance plot is that neither of the characters concerned really affects the story in any meaningful way after they become involved with each other, making their chapters - and relationship - relatively uninteresting. If they had been more directly involved in major events, this could have been salvaged significantly.

And one final nitpick that literally no one will care about but I did: There’s this library with 2000-year-old scrolls in it that somehow haven’t degraded. No mention is made of any special effort to preserve said scrolls in the intervening 2000 years (for example, scribes copying them every 50 years so you’re not actually reading the originals anymore, or a magic spell that stops the scrolls from degrading). These scrolls did not survive 2000 years intact.

Below the next break I’ll summarize the first almost-half of Malice, in case you want to skip it. Which honestly I recommend doing.

Summary of the boring parts

Here’s what you need to know in the first 34 chapters. At the time of writing this, I’ve finished chapter 39, which puts me at exactly 50% of the way through the book (according to my Kindle). So events are pretty fresh in my memory, but I may be leaving a couple details out. Also, what I’m including isn’t colored by my knowledge of the second half of the book.

I decided to stop at chapter 34, because finally things are starting to happen, and I don’t think you’ll be bored if you start with chapter 35. If you do decide to take me up on this summary, I’m quite certain you’ll be somewhat extra confused at the “start,” but that’s maybe better than being bored for something like 250 pages (I don’t know how many pages it actually is since I read ebooks).

The lore

There’s two gods, Elyon and Asroth. Elyon is good and Asroth is bad. They’ve been banished to the Otherworld and currently can’t return. Presumably there’s about to be a God-War, which is what we’re all waiting to start so that the books can stop being incredibly boring. One sign that the God-War is coming is that the giant-stones are weeping blood (as in literally there is blood coming out of them).

Everyone lives in what’s called the Banished Lands, because their ancestors were banished from somewhere and chose to settle there. There’s two races: humans and giants. They don’t really like each other. The humans seem mostly peaceful, there are many kingdoms and a high king; the high king doesn’t really have much authority but is able to summon ever king to a council, though this hasn’t been done in forever. There are tensions between kingdoms, but no active wars currently.

The giants seem like the biggest threat towards humans currently. One clan in particular, the Hunen, is viewed as a threat. “Lawless men” are also mentioned as becoming more common.

There are seven plot devices Treasures: cauldron, torc, necklace, spear, dagger, axe, and cup, which were forged from starstone “before the Exiles had set foot in the Banished Lands.” The cauldron in particular has come up a bunch.

What each character did

After writing this up I almost think that enough things happened that the first half of this book wasn’t boring. But…it really was. I was very bored.

Evnis

Kingdom: Ardan

• He’s the bad guy. He made some pact a long time ago to sell “himself” in exchange for power.
• His goal is “To make Rhin high queen, to bring about the God-War, and Asroth made flesh.”
• Because Evnis is the bad guy, his chapters are relatively informative, and you may want to actually read them.
• He’s now advisor to King Brenin.
• His wife got sick and died.
• When trying to save her from being sick, he found a mystical book that gave him earth magic powers, and she was doing better for a bit, but she died anyway.
• In the process of finding the book (I’m unclear if it’s the book that gave him earth magic powers, he killed a white wyrm and then lied to Brenin about the circumstances in which the wyrm was found and killed. Brenin then brought the wyrm to the High King’s council (see below) as evidence about the God-War being imminent.
• Prior to the events of this book, he caused the death of Queen Alona’s brother Rhagor, and she blames him for it, but he maintains his innocence.
• He has a son named Vonn, who was wounded in the hunting trip in which Corban gets his wolven pup (see below)
• He’s allied with Braith, leader of the brigands that are in the Baglun forest (see below)

Veradis

Kingdom: Ripa, travels to Tenebral

• He’s craving approval of his father King Lamar. He has two brothers, Krelis and Ektor.
• He began the book by leaving home (Ripa) to go to Tenebral and join Prince Nathair’s warband to gain experience as a warrior. Now he’s Prince Nathair’s friend and first sword.
• Part of the reason he became this is because he leapt through magical flames to rescue the prince during a negotiation with the brigands Vin Thalun.
• Nathair has been having dreams that he thinks mean he’s the Bright Star, chosen of Elyon, the All-Father.
• Nathair’s father, High King Aquilus, had called a council of all of the other kings to discuss omens like the Giant Stones weeping blood, a sign that the God War is coming. Nathair thinks an alliance is cool and all, but an empire would be better.
• Acquilus has forbidden Nathair to treat with the Vin Thalun, but Nathair is doing it anyway.
• Nathair and Acquilus disagree a lot.
• He and Nathair saw a bunch of ants one time and Nathair was like “wow they all work together let’s revolutionize our battle tactics wow.”

Corban

Kingdom: Ardan

• He’s 13 years old
• He gets bullied by an older boy named Rafe. You’re supposed to care a lot about this plot line, but I came here for high/epic fantasy, not teenage drama.
• Early on, he gets lost in the woods called the Baglun and rescues a Wolven. Later on, he adopts a wolven pup during a hunt. A bunch of people had (stupidly) attacked the wolven pack that was protecting the pups and some people were killed, others injured, and now tons of people are pissed at him for rescuing this pup. Fortunately for him, he invoked the “king’s justice” and the queen ruled that he should be able to keep the pup as long as the pup didn’t hurt anyone. It all seemed quite overblown. The pup’s name is Storm.
• He’s been training at swords with the stablemaster Gar. When he turned fourteen, he entered the Rowan Field, which is where boys get to train to become warriors. Yay for him.
• He has a friend named Dath and a sister named Cywin. Cywin is also POV, so far for seemingly no reason.
• His parents are named Thannon and Gwenith.
• Thannon is a blacksmith.
• After attempting to steal an item from the healer Brina’s house on a dare, he gets apprenticed to her. Brina has a talking crow. Being apprenticed to her seems to consist of her telling him to go away and stop asking questions.
• His friend Dylan got killed by brigands early on.
• One day he, Cywin, and Dath were on a beach with Storm and Storm ran into a cave so they chased her, and then they found a hidden tunnel back into the city. Upon exiting said hidden tunnel they witnessed Camlin’s escape during his POV chapter (see below).

Cywin

Kingdom: Ardan

• She naturally is way more badass than Corban and stands up to bullies for him.
• This pisses him off because then he looks like a coward.
• She’s randomly friends with the princess Edana. It’s unclear what the point of Edana is. Not in the story, but, like, in the world. Well, and also in the story.

Kastell

Kingdom: Isiltir

• He’s from Isiltir. His shieldman is named Maquin.
• He has a feud with his cousin Jael.
• He and Maquin almost died to giants, then they killed some giants, then they ran away from some giants, then they got rescued from some giants, then they showed up at Acquilus’s council.
• He really has a feud with his cousin Jael.
• The axe plot device got stolen from his caravan.

Camlin

Kingdom: Ardan (brigand)

• He’s one of the brigands from the party that killed Corban’s friend Dylan early on.
• He got captured and everyone else in his party got killed.
• In chapter 32, his second POV chapter, he escaped captivity, witnessed by Corban. He took a hostage and said he’d release the hostage only if Corban didn’t tell anyone about the escape. Now he’s gone (the hostage was returned).