My previous book review was for John Gwynne’s Malice, the first book in the Faithful and the Fallen series. I thought that it was good, but not great, and didn’t really stand out to me as a unique and impressive work. However, I found the ending to be a really compelling and well-written contrast to the first chunk of it, so I was excited to get into Valour, the sequel. In this spoiler-free review, I’ll talk about whether Valour met or even exceeded my expectations for the book!

It’s been a while since I released a book review! I’ve been focused on reviewing The Legend of Vox Machina and the latest FromSoft game, Elden Ring, but I recently finished reading Malice and want to get my thoughts on the book out there before I dive into the second book in the series. I found the book to be a bit of a mixed bag, which I was led to expect anyway—some people really don’t seem to enjoy this book, but still like John Gwynne’s Shadow of the Gods, so I came into this feeling like I was either going to love or hate this book. So, let’s get into the spoiler-free review of Malice, the first book in John Gwynne’s The Faithful and the Fallen.