Now that I’ve hit one hundred videos and six months of content, it’s time to niche down and get focused. I’ve decided that the best way to start doing that is to give you something of a “clean slate” when it comes to all of the books I have reviewed since I started this whole project. If you’re new to my content and want a rapid-fire overview of all the books I have read since starting this, this is the stop for you. Hello. Greetings. Welcome.

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!

As I write this, I have just finished reading Ruin not ten minutes ago. I want to at least start drafting my review while the memory is still so fresh in my mind and before the wounds have healed. John Gwynne’s Ruin is masterful and remarkable, definitely the best book thus far in The Faithful and the Fallen, in my humble opinion. It exceeded my expectations unfalteringly and I had a blast reading through this, with much of the final pages in the book being a flurry as I flipped the pages so quickly they were bound to tear.

Boy, did I get some reading done this winter. I read more between late November and March than I had in the entirety of 2021—at least, in terms of word count. So, today, I want to reflect on the books I read over the winter months!

There are several stories I’ve experienced that left their mark on me in a positive way. There are many different ways that a story can do this. Sometimes the story is just remarkable and emotional, sometimes it’s beautiful, but other times a story can teach us a valuable, powerful lesson—something that changes us for the better. That’s what I’m going to be talking about today: stories that have taught me something. In today’s post, I’ll be listing three different lessons that I learned from three different stories.

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.