Horrible circumstances reveal to Drem that his life, and his family, are not what he thought they were and drive him to find Sig and the members of Dun Seren to help with the situation unfolding in Drem’s town. Dear John Gwynne, you will never fail to surprise me, and your stories will never fail to make me cry! The inclusion of Sig, a giantess from the original series, as a POV character in this certainly helps to deliver upon that nostalgia. In conclusion, the world-building is truly a work of excellence because the lore was actually established in full detail from the previous four books. I would however, strongly encourage everyone to read the Faithful and the Fallen at some point because the series is just amazing!

To the contrary, they carry you along with them every step of the way, so that their dilemmas over who to trust become yours. I’d already imagined their futures, and after all the hardships they faced I wanted peaceful mornings, bacon, and juice for them. You will also find familiar elements like the Warrior trials, the Shield Wall, the Sword dance, the giants’ Segul, Wolven… (the mention of these names alone made me tear up inconsolably!By the end of this book, I was already completely intrigued, hooked, compelled, and eager to read the next book in the trilogy.

I like my morally grey characters as much as the next person but it is sometimes nice to have things simpler. I'm also a Viking re-enactor and enjoy nothing more than standing in the shield wall with my three sons, who are as passionate about swords and axes as I am (when I'm not stuck in my coat of mail; it's harder than it looks). We welcome respectful dialogue related to speculative fiction in literature, games, film, and the wider world.As for the world that these characters are presented in - it is much the same and yet much changed from what we came to know in tFatF. The first thing to know is that this is a spin-off series of John Gwynne’s “The Faithful and the Fallen” series and therefore takes place in the same world. Simply amazing and almost impossible to put down, A Time of Dread is truly a masterful start to a trilogy which I envision will be crowned as one of the best series I’ve ever read by its end. Drem is a bit more generic, father and son with a hidden past that gradually comes out over the course of the book but still very well done.