Book Review | Wrath by John Gwynne
I finished it. I finished reading John Gwynne’s The Faithful and the Fallen and… well, I have some thoughts. This is going to be a spoiler-free review, but I may do a spoiler talk in the future if I’m up for it regarding my feelings on this series as a whole. For now, though, we’re going to stick to a straightforward review of the final book in the high fantasy quartet. Wrath, the final book in the series, was exciting and brought the story to a well-earned conclusion. I had a good time reading it, though I personally found that I enjoyed Ruin a bit more. We’ll get into that and more in this spoiler-free review of the book!
Payoff
Maquin’s story is one of vengeance, but it isn’t the only revenge story taking place in this fantasy series. There are many threads of revenge in this tale, and they are tied up by Wrath’s end. John Gwynne’s Wrath is the culmination of everything that has been foretold in the prior books, and he does a great job creating an epic, tense conclusion. He gives readers the satisfactory payoffs that they definitely crave if they’ve been here since the first book. These threads that we have become attached to are not left dangling unnecessarily, which is something I dislike in book endings; every story in The Faithful and the Fallen gets a conclusion. It’s neat…
in fact, maybe it’s a little too neat, but I’ll talk about that in a moment.
It’s tough to tell you that you’re going to get what you want from this book without getting into spoilers, so I’m trying to keep it as vague as I can, here. Ultimately, what readers need to know for this one is that if you have a character you love, John Gwynne hasn’t forgotten about that character. If you want to know what happens to someone, you’re going to find out. He ties every plot thread into one neat little bow at the end of this book. That’s what matters, here—you aren’t going to walk away from this book disappointed or wondering, is what I’m trying to say here.
A Knot That’s Too Neat
Now I’m going to give a complaint that is probably quite subjective. The Faithful and the Fallen doesn’t really have any costs associated with it that I had not already predicted. Don’t get me wrong, this story does come with a cost, and there are certainly some tragic costs, but not one of the moments was truly shocking to me, nor did they come out of left field. In fact, I’ll even say that the costs were significantly less than I expected. There were characters I expected to lose in previous books who continued to survive all the way to Wrath, and then they just… kept going. Even characters I loved, I really thought I was going to lose them at some point… and then I didn’t.
So while there are certainly prices to be paid in Wrath, the neat bow that the story is wrapped up with just doesn’t have the hard-earned, emotional, painful nature to it that I like to see in stories with such epic stakes. We’re talking about the end of the world here and the cost of victory is largely left to the red shirts and people that I had already expected were going to be nixed.
Continued Growth in Writing
I have got to take a moment to praise John Gwynne’s continued excellence in the art of writing. Every single book in this series has been monumentally better than the previous book in terms of writing. The way he writes characters, dialogue, and battles is just outstanding. He continues to improve in this regard and it has been excited to start reading Shadow of the Gods in the next couple of days. I’m looking forward to seeing how much he’s grown as a writer over the years, as the difference between his writing in Malice and Wrath is exponential.
While I don’t think that the ending of Wrath was perfect, there is one character ending I found to be meaningful, masterful, and deeply emotional. He absolutely nailed it in a way that I couldn’t have imagined. It was completely and totally perfect.
Capture ALL the Characters
While John Gwynne’s writing has definitely been improving, I think that there are elements that have become a bit frustrating in the writing of The Faithful and the Fallen. Most of my complaints are so minor that they don’t need to be mentioned, but there’s one thing that I really think needs to just be brought up, here…
These books really love capturing people. It’s a running theme. It’s constant. People are really getting captured over and over, two people in particular. This is already annoying, but then it just feels like the captors of these individuals are… really dumb. Most of the time, there isn’t a reason to keep the prisoner alive apart from plot convenience. Other times, when the prisoner is kept alive for one reason or another, the reason is either disingenuous or just… a little dumb. It was fine in the first book and a half, but then it just kept going. This seriously keeps happening. It happens so much that it would be comical if it weren’t just annoying.
If someone gets kidnapped in Shadow of the Gods and there are ultimately no consequences, I will cry in frustration.
Overall Rating
John Gwynne’s writing continues to develop, and he did a pretty good job with ending this series, but I definitely felt a bit let down by some of the things in this book. I’m satisfied with the ending I got, and I’m glad that it didn’t leave a bunch of loose threads dangling for all eternity, but there are certainly ways this ending could have been improved and left me more greatly impacted.
To be quite frank, I was feel a strong three stars or so for Wrath for much of my reading experience. It was fine, there were some cool moments, but it just wasn’t hitting me with the force that Ruin did. Then, as the story began drawing to a close, things began to improve. One story in particular just blew me away with how artfully done it was. So while Wrath fell short of perfect, I did really enjoy much of it and I’m going to give it four stars.
My experience with The Faithful and the Fallen has been a bit of a mixed bag but has certainly been improving over time, peaking with Ruin, in my opinion. I’m really excited to get to Shadow of the Gods and see how it fares; my expectations are quite high!
Conclusion
For fans of the series, I know it may be disappointing to hear that Wrath didn’t quite meet someone’s expectations. I thought it was good, there was a lot to love, but it didn’t quite hit the right notes for me to call it a perfect ending. Ruin is definitely my favorite book in this quartet, but not by a terribly wide margin! Wrath is still excellent and is one of my favorite reads of the year, it just fell short in some key areas.