The Banished of Muirwood, The Ciphers of Muirwood, The Void of Muirwood (The Covenant of Muirwood Trilogy)
By Jeff Wheeler
This is a great little fantasy series. Having read the Acknowledgements, the author did something kind of fun- he took a broad outline of actual historical events and turned them into a fantasy novel. It works, I loved the plot, it felt real and plausible and most of the people were very three dimensional. Finding out it was based on reality kind of helped show that feeling was correct. It moves at a good clip, I read all three books in about a week.
I will say, some of the dialogue is kinda clunky. It’s like it’s trying to be old time-y, but just comes across as overly awkward and weirdly psudo-formal. There was also a weird tic that the author has- he insisted on having almost every single dude the main character comes in contact with comment multiple times on how beautiful she is. How they would never miss her beauty, how they recognized her simply from a description of her beauty, she would never pass for a servant given her beauty, etc. etc. VOMIT. She is smart, powerful, fluent in multiple languages, buy yeah, guys, lets just keep talking about her face. If the plot in general weren’t as strong as it is I would have given up based on these two things. Fortunately, the plot is exceptionally strong, so I was able to roll my eyes and keep going on that.
So, yeah, It’s kind of a short and sweet review for this one. It isn’t going to change your life, and i wouldn’t pay full price for this or anything, but it’s a fun little read. I’m not sure if I’ll read the other books the author set in the same world, I haven’t counted it out, but I do have so many other things I want to get to it’ll probably be a while.
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