Book Review : Malice – John Gwynne

Oh, John Gwynne, it’s so nice to meet you…

Sadly, I didn’t know about John Gwynne or The Faithful and the Fallen until I joined Bookstagram (follow me! : https://www.instagram.com/valiereads/) or started watching Booktube videos. It’s such a waste…

After reading only Malice, the first installment of The Faithful and the Fallen series, I can absolutely say that this series will be one of my all-time favorites. When I finished the book, I didn’t even think about how many stars I’ll give to Malice. It is a five-star read, no-brainer. This book feels like John Gwynne asked me what I love in my fantasy stories and I gave him a list and he wrote the book around my likes.

“The tide of strange names and places soon flowing over Veradis’ head, with only a few standing out in his mind.”

I couldn’t help agreeing with Veradis on this issue. Malice is quite demanding at first. The book has a lot of PoV’s, even more people to meet, lots of world-building to follow makes going through the first 20% quite difficult. Although I had a hard time getting into the story, I didn’t think about DNF’ing it even once. John Gwynne is that good at keeping his reader interested. He demands your time and effort, but the payoff is always worth it. I always had the feeling that something amazing is about to come and after 20% things just clicked. Everything that I had difficulty recognizing, distinguishing, perceiving flowed as if I had never had trouble. It is amazing how things change and start to make sense suddenly. At one moment I did not know what was going on and another I was yelling at the page “wake up you idiot” And then things flew…

Power of Short Chapters

Malice has considerably short chapters, which makes reading relatively faster. Especially after 60% chapters get shorter, the action becomes unstoppable, political intrigue becomes juicier, and hearing yourself say “just one more chapter” becomes more frequent. Chapters aren’t excesively short like for example Vicious by V.E. Schwab which I liked quite a lot, they were calculated accurately enough to hold my attention span which is not much. The chapters of Malice are 10 – 15, maybe a maximum of 20 minute reads, and the PoVs are very well placed. I believe that such short chapters are very useful in connecting the reader to the book. It makes me feel like I’m reading the book faster, and I am usually more willing to put more time into reading this way. First world problems of those with short attention spans.

‘You are not the same lad that lost his practice sword at the Spring Fair.’

Malice has great character development. In every PoV, the main character grows into someone else. But what’s even more wonderful besides the main characters, the same level of care has been paid to many major and minor characters as well. They learn they get hurt, they lose, they win and they learn from everything. None of the people we follow are the same once we leave them off to Valor at the end of the book, for better or for worse. They are three-dimensional and that’s what makes us connect and love them, hate them, or be disappointed by their actions and choices. They are living, breathing characters. Kudos to Gwynne for such an impeccable character work.

“Come, boy, it is time for a lesson. Let me teach you the power of words,”

To say the world-building is great is an understatement. And this is a debut novel! The Banished Lands is vast and feels real. Lived in. It is beautifully described, nothing overwhelming, not every detail has been described to the finest detail.

Action scenes are imaginative, well placed, fast-paced, and easy to follow.

There are some emotional moments that made me feel joy and some others genuine sadness and anger, there are action scenes that made me feel shocked. Gwynne’s writing is rather great, and people say Malice is his weakest one.

“The God-War is coming.”

Overall, Malice has everything that I look for in a fantasy novel and more. The plot is nothing new or different but it’s great to see Gwynne’s way of handling all these tropes like good vs. evil, the chosen one, the mentor, the animal companion and all. The way Malice is written is why I love reading fantasy. It was a gripping read, and I can’t wait to dive into Valor and see where the characters go next!