Malice by John Gwynne | Book Review (Spoiler Free)

Malice! The first book by John Gwynne in the Faithful and the Fallen series. In today's spoiler-free review of this book, I will be talking about what I liked, what I didn't like, and how I'm feeling about the series overall now that I've read the first of the four books. I'm currently reading Valour and am enjoying it considerably, but how did John Gwynne's Malice hold up?

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BLOG VERSION
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CONTENTS
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00:00 Introduction
00:41 My Favorite Part
02:00 Slow and Bloated
04:11 Tropey
05:46 Puppy ❤️
06:17 Writing
07:56 Overall Rating
10:00 Conclusion

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[MikeHutnan]

I totally agree that you can tell Gwynne is just getting things started and finding his authorial voice. I enjoyed the characters journey though, and do find the starting point / what they go through for most of the book as foundational for all the development that happens throughout the rest of the series.

Obviously, as you say, personal preference will dictate how you feel about it but I never felt like it was a chore to read through any chapters.

I do find your LotR / Hobbit analogy a little confusing though because your hypothetical for the Hobbit is essentially what part one / book 1 for Fellowship of the Ring is lol. The vast majority is just decades spent in the Shire before leaving. Which has definitely long been a massive criticism of the series. Until they meet up with Strider, you could've cut 80% of what came before. But it undoubtedly would've been a lesser story because of it. So I feel that is the case here, just to play devil's advocate to your point.

I am surprised (although maybe I missed it as I had this on when I was washing dishes) that you didn't say anything about the copywriting in here. The amount of typos and mixed up names was pretty wild the first time I read the series. Malice is the worst for it but it does improve with each book. I'm just curious how SO MANY were missed. I can only think of one other series that had more copywriting problems honestly.

I gotta hand it to Gwynne on the battles in this too, they only get better with the rest of his writing, but he starts off very strong on that front here.

I'm going to go through the rest of your reviews for the series, but I fully expect you to get your wish and see how things improve and why others adore this series going forward.

Edit: re-reading all that it sounds like I'm a bit defensive of the book from your review, I don't mean it to come across that way. I just think that you are being dismissive of a lot of the foundational stuff that this book does, and you may look back on differently in the future (or maybe you already have since I haven't watched the other reviews yet).