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Title: A Time of Courage

Author: John Gwynne

Series: Of Blood and Bone

Publisher: MacMillan 2020

Pages: 648

Rating: 5/5

Gwynne delivers a mind-blowing finale seven books in the making.

I have a confession. I was hesitant to start A Time of Courage. Why? Two reasons. Firstly, for the simple fact of knowing that this is the end to one of the best fantasy sagas to grace the genre in the last decade, and secondly, if Wrath is anything to go by, I needed to prepare myself mentally and emotionally for what was about to happen. Two days after finishing it, I am still left reeling from what I just read. A Time of Courage, the final book in the Of Blood and Bone trilogy is brilliant. Absolutely brilliant. 

Author: John Gwynne

Series: Of Blood and Bone 

Genre: Epic fantasy

Publisher: MacMillan, 2019

Pages: 476

Rating: 5 stars 

There will be blood…and lots of it. 

In A Time of Dread (AToD) we returned to an altogether different Banished Lands than the one we left at the end of The Faithful and the Fallen. A creeping sense of dread permeated every page, and we witnessed horrors enacted by both the demonic host of Kadoshim and the angelic order of the Ben Elim in their eternal war against each other. Caught right in the middle were our protagonists Drem, Sig, Riv and Bleda. By book’s end, things could not have been worse for these characters. Then John Gwynne gives us A Time of Blood (AToB). 

Title: A Time of Dread

Author: John Gwynne

Series: Of Blood and Bone 

Genre: Epic fantasy

Publisher: MacMillan, 2018

Pages: 458 

Rating: 5 stars 

The Banished Lands are darker and more dangerous than ever before. 

(Warning: contains some spoilers for The Faithful and the Fallen)

John Gwynne’s The Faithful and the Fallen (TFatF) is one of my all-time favourite fantasy series to date. Upon finishing Wrath, I chose to take a break before jumping into A Time of Dread, the first book in the sequel trilogy, Of Blood and Bone, (OBaB), because I wanted to savour it as much as possible. That did not last long. 

Over a century has passed since the Day of Wrath, when Corban and the forces of the faithful defeated Asroth and the forces of the fallen. Leaderless, the remaining Kadoshim scattered to the furthest corners of the land and the Ben Elim and Order of the Bright Star have been hunting them ever since. From the very first page it is obvious that this is a darker story than TFatF. A foreboding prologue sets the tone and a creeping sense of dread imbues every page. This is an altogether different world than the one we left behind at the end of Wrath. I love the approach Gwynne went for here.