The Warrior

I want to thanks the author and his publicist for providing me with an ARC in exchange for an honest review.

The Warrior concludes the story of Kell the reluctant hero. Two years after the first book, Kell has become, although reluctantly, a king. To make matters worse his arranged marriage to his queen Sigrid is anything but happy.
However, his morose new life is interrupted by the arrival of his old quest partner Willow, a member of the mysterious Alfar race. She has come to ask him his help as her homeland is ravaged by a terrible plague.
In parallel, queen Sigrid has to go through a quest of her own, starting with her confrontation with the evil church that has gained more power and threatens her very existence. Through a series of terrible ordeals, she has to find the strength to become the very embodiment of this book title.

As with The Coward, the author touches on various subjects in his story like the misuse of faith to manipulate people, the importance and influence of stories, the strength of hope against overwhelming danger, the importance of communication and mutual support to surmount difficult times.
As always the author did a great job with the worldbuilding especially Willow's land, it was reminiscent of Stranger Thing's Upside Down world. Filled with creepy forests and mountains, unimaginable monsters, devastated and hopeless people, the characters traverse a portal to this post-apocalyptic world where time moves differently and where their very mind is poisoned by mad thoughts and feelings. The author perfectly recreated the sense of dread, despair and horror that the characters go through and his descriptions of a dark and desolated land were incredible.


Like the previous book, we follow several characters within the two plots. Kell, Willow, Sigrid, Yarra and Darya were my favourite characters and they're all compelling. I also loved how friendships between characters were developed or deepened by the ordeals they went through, and the relationship between Sigrid and Kell comes to a satisfying conclusion.

Some things did not work for me. I felt Sigrid's storyline was too rushed, I would have preferred more of a slow burn. I didn't really care about one of the POV characters and his chapters took me a bit out of the story. Also some things got repeated too much, interesting details about characters were given too late and some plot points moved too quickly.

In conclusion, this is fitting ending to this very good quest fantasy duology and I look forward to reading Stephen Aryan.