The Shadow of the Gods (The Bloodsworn Saga)

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The final character arc featured in The Shadow of the Gods follows the young warrior, Elvar. Elvar is the daughter of a powerful jarl who gave up a life of comfort and forced marriage to join the Battle-Grim, another notorious mercenary warband who specialise in killing monsters and trapping Tainted to sell them for profit. After capturing an unusual family of Tainted, Elvar and the Battle-Grim embark on a quest of epic proportions that will change the world. This was another impressive and captivating storyline which has some very unique differences from the other character arcs. Elvar is an excellent point-of-view character with a complex past, who presents an interesting counterpoint to the other two protagonists. While Orka and Varg and primarily motivated by family and vengeance, Elvar is primarily concerned with proving her worth to her crew, her commander, and her overbearing family, and is determined to win enough battle fame to outshine her father. I also loved the comparisons between the Bloodsworn and the Battle-Grim, and it was interesting to see how the similarities and differences between the warbands, especially as the Battle-Grim are more concerned with wealth and reputation. This storyline is a particularly ambitious and contains some amazing battle sequences, especially one at the start against a troll, and there is much more of a focus on fighting within a shield wall as a unit. This storyline also has one of the best twists in the entire novel, as well as an extremely impressive ending that will have major implications for the rest of the series. In my opinion, the best fantasy novels have very little to do with the actual fight scenes and everything to do with the characters' personal journeys. They go above and beyond what their body is capable of and use their strengths to fight off fears as they embark on their voyage. I love how this series focuses on strong and fierce heroines. From Orka to Rokia, to Elvar and Myrk. You do not want to mess with them, but you would be proud (and honored) to hold up a seax and battle right along side them.

Brother. How have I had such good fortune to find these people, after so many years of loneliness and pain?” Nålbinding – a technique for making clothing, similar to knitting or crocheting, the word itself meaning to bind with a needle There are moments of this book I absolutely loved, and I really enjoy this world and these characters, so even a step down is still fantastic. I cannot wait for book three after that amazing ending.

I was hesitant to go into this just because it is a chunky book and I did not remember everything in book one so it was a challenge. Gwynne made my life much easier by including a recap section at the beginning, a glossary for the characters and even a pronunciation guide. Believe me when I say that without those and specially the recap I would not have enjoyed this series and probably would not have continued it. I am not big into rereads and many readers are like me so I think more authors should be doing this small yet very impactful act of including summaries of the previous books in series.

Ares is the POV Character of this chapter and during this chapter he meets with Posiedan of whom he finds is still very angry over what happened with the Empire of Numeron. During this early part of the chapter the two discuss their mutual invovlement in the Rise of the Atlantian Pantheon and how much they had both invested in that attempt. The arrival of Odin brings them to talking of what went wrong with the Pantheon and they agree that if they tried again they would do things differently, leading to the three leaving eachother and Ares thinking on doing what they did with the Atlantian Pantheon again but this time have a single person in charge and they would act alongside this individual.Please note that while many of these words are directly taken from Norse history, The Shadow of the Gods is a work of fiction. The historical meanings may not exactly translate into the world of this book. The brief definitions provided below however do match up with their use in the book as I see them.