A Review - Fury of the Gods - John Gwynne



Firstly I would like to thank John Gwynne, The Little Brown Book Group and NetGalley for allowing me access to this book so far in advance.

I will start by stating my biases. I am an enormous John Gwynne fan, he’s my favourite author of all time and the reason I read and collect books today. That said I do not feel this affects my review of this book in any way.

For context, it’s currently 01:45am, I have been reading this book for the past 5 hours and haven’t taken a break between finishing it and writing this review to process anything. I’m just going to talk and see what happens.

Big, sweeping declarations out of the way early. This is the best book John Gwynne has ever written, and the best book I have ever read. Malice will always be my favourite book, but this is objectively the best. It is John Gwynne at his finest, there isn’t a single aspect of this book that doesn’t land for me. It’s difficult to talk too much about this book without spoilers but there are a couple of key points I want to hit.

Firstly the pacing is impeccable, Gwynne builds this story gradually through the early stages of the book, building tension, raising the stakes until finally it’s time to let loose and it unleashes at you like Dread Snaka himself.

Secondly is his character work and storytelling. Usually when I read a book there’s at least one POV I care about less than the others but not here. Every single arc lands perfectly, there are no unsatisfying conclusions, very little in the way of predictable outcomes and no loose ends. Everything is weaved together perfectly to reach a crescendo at the perfect time, everything is tied off neatly in such a way that this can stand alone as a trilogy, or Gwynne can expand on the world if he feels like it’s the right thing to do.

Far too often we see trilogies fall at the final hurdle. Trilogies with less pressure and authors writing under significantly better circumstances. John Gwynne has always been one of the greats to me, but I think producing this conclusion to such a highly anticipated series, after everything life has thrown at him will cement his place as one of the giants of fantasy.

Thank you John.

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