Titanchild

A very good sequel to conclude Jen Williams's third series, the Talon duology. This series fell a little short of The Winnowing Flame, which is one of my favorite fantasy series ever. But it's still top quality stuff that asserts Jen Williams as a criminally underread author who is one of the best epic fantasy writers at the moment.

Williams's style is professional but with a cartoonish aesthetic - I always imagine her books being adapted in pastel cel-shaded graphics. Her characters are bold, loud, and distinctive, and she doesn't shy away from horror. Despite this, her books carry a very British sophistication and wit that often makes them a fun read. This series was significantly more lighthearted than the Winnowing Flame, which I didn't prefer as much, but to each their own.

I've complained a bit in the past about Williams's books feeling too well rounded off, polished, and predictable, but I think that problem was solved here. I never got that feeling reading this book, even though Williams is an author where the good guys always win.

The only storyline I had complaints with was Ynis's, throughout the series, and I only really mention it because she's supposedly the MC. Kaeto and Leven (and Epona in the second book) had much more convincing storylines throughout. I get that Ynis's perspective is likely the hardest to write from, but those were the chapters that relatively fell flat.

Great series, 8/10, highly recommended, looking forward to The Sleepless in a few months!

This is another exciting and well written fantasy novel from Jen Williams. I particularly enjoy her solution to the perennial problem of the boring middle volume of the trilogy, which is to simply not write it. In my review of the first volume I moaned about how analogous the setting is to Britain, and the reasoning for that becomes clearer here, as we dig deep into the myth and folklore of the country, even glancing at the Matter of Britain. These elements are far more weightily felt this way than they would have been had they been entirely fictional. They are part of our shared consciousness, freighted with import that the most skilled writer in the world couldn't manage from scratch.

But this became something that niggled me about the book, something that took me out of the escapism of reading for pleasure. In a time when fascists are weaponising asylum seekers, small boats full of foreigners are the new folk devil, and children are being demonised for fleeing warzones, then a novel that's about how terrible creatures from over the sea will land on our shores and cruelly destroy our way of life, and how the way to beat them back is go back to the traditions and lore of the old days lands ...awkwardly. I don't suppose for one minute that Jen Williams wrote this book as an anti-immigration screed (it's very good on LGB depiction for instance), but it's one of those things where once you've seen it, you can't unsee it.

So yeah, it's entertaining as always, and I'll certainly be around for another epic fantasy series from Ms Williams, but this one sat a little bit funny for me.