A review by the_coycaterpillar_reads
A Time of Courage by John Gwynne
5.0
What a freaking ride! A Time of Courage was everything I had hoped it would be. My emotions are scattered, I’m shaking but above all else I am in awe of the raw and the brutality of John Gwynne’s penmanship. I picked up the first book in the Of Blood and Bone series in the summer and it has easily become my favourite adult fantasy series, ever, and I have read a lot of adult fantasy!
Get ready for a finale that is action packed, swifter than a war-hammer to the face and so heart-breaking that it brings you straight to your knees.
A Time of Courage is a story that make you cry. It’s a dark tale of friendship, leadership, loyalty, strength, and love. These themes are at the eye of the storm and they never leave us. It is our hope in a sea of vines, threatening to quash everything our characters stand for. It resembles that even in the darkest of times that good can overcome evil. I don’t think I can verbalise just how much this series got under my skin and how much I loved this book. It was just damn perfect.
"We are just people, all of us the same. Flawed, fragile, stubborn, angry, happy. And life treats no one differently. We are born, and we live, and then we die. It’s what we do while we are here that counts. And if we can be called friend, then we are lucky indeed"
Every single detail, every step travelled kept me grounded and focussed on the narrative. It prepared me to peel back the dangerously dark layers that John Gwynne set up for his readers.
In this review I won’t delve into individual characters – you can look at my review for A Time of Dread, what I will say however, is that staying to form, the characterisation in A Time of Courage was pinpoint perfect. These characters will long stay with me long after the dust has settled on the final page. They are like you and I, in a way. They’ve all felt pain, rage, grief, anguish, love, and hope. they are relatable. They reach out of the page and call to you, call to you to hear their story, feel their trauma, just to be heard. The characters are constantly on a tipping point and with different points of view, the reader is drop-kicked straight to hell. John is the first fantasy author to make me cry huge, fat ugly tears!
A Time of Courage also excels at superior prose at describing such atrocious events that we can only imagine. I was more than happy to share the burden with characters I’ve came to love, came to care about, but boy was the anxiety strong. I needed them all to come out the other side. Gwynne had the power to implant vivid images in my brain and I was transfixed. The book caused a ripple in my stomach but in a good way, I was invested, heart and soul.
I hope that you can feel the passion that I have felt for this series within this review. Please, please pick it up. Experience the magic that it emits. It’s a fond farewell, these characters will be missed.
Get ready for a finale that is action packed, swifter than a war-hammer to the face and so heart-breaking that it brings you straight to your knees.
A Time of Courage is a story that make you cry. It’s a dark tale of friendship, leadership, loyalty, strength, and love. These themes are at the eye of the storm and they never leave us. It is our hope in a sea of vines, threatening to quash everything our characters stand for. It resembles that even in the darkest of times that good can overcome evil. I don’t think I can verbalise just how much this series got under my skin and how much I loved this book. It was just damn perfect.
"We are just people, all of us the same. Flawed, fragile, stubborn, angry, happy. And life treats no one differently. We are born, and we live, and then we die. It’s what we do while we are here that counts. And if we can be called friend, then we are lucky indeed"
Every single detail, every step travelled kept me grounded and focussed on the narrative. It prepared me to peel back the dangerously dark layers that John Gwynne set up for his readers.
In this review I won’t delve into individual characters – you can look at my review for A Time of Dread, what I will say however, is that staying to form, the characterisation in A Time of Courage was pinpoint perfect. These characters will long stay with me long after the dust has settled on the final page. They are like you and I, in a way. They’ve all felt pain, rage, grief, anguish, love, and hope. they are relatable. They reach out of the page and call to you, call to you to hear their story, feel their trauma, just to be heard. The characters are constantly on a tipping point and with different points of view, the reader is drop-kicked straight to hell. John is the first fantasy author to make me cry huge, fat ugly tears!
A Time of Courage also excels at superior prose at describing such atrocious events that we can only imagine. I was more than happy to share the burden with characters I’ve came to love, came to care about, but boy was the anxiety strong. I needed them all to come out the other side. Gwynne had the power to implant vivid images in my brain and I was transfixed. The book caused a ripple in my stomach but in a good way, I was invested, heart and soul.
I hope that you can feel the passion that I have felt for this series within this review. Please, please pick it up. Experience the magic that it emits. It’s a fond farewell, these characters will be missed.