The last book of the First Law trilogy, it is mostly about the climatic battle for, hmm, not sure, the capital city, Agrimont(?). Logen has a big battle as well, then heads south to help out. Glotka battles palace intrigue and tries to stay out of the crosshairs of Bayaz, the crazy(?) mage. Jezal gets promoted and whines about it a lot. And Commander West does the best he can to steer military strategy.

To be honest, this book was a bit of a grind. As you can see, it took me a long time to finish. The first part wasn't too bad but then the giant battles started and to me it just dragged on and on. There were the usual Grimdark touches of bizarre deaths and strange doings, but it wasn't enough to keep me interested.

So I am docking it one star for, once again, the overuse of torture as a kind of deus ex machina. I know Glotka is a torturer but it still sucks how gruesome it is and, even worse, always successful. Even just the threat of torture always brings out exactly what was necessary to find out, which just isn't how torture works, actually, in real life. I just hate it.

And I'm docking it another star because the battle scene(s) from the last third to half of the book just weren't that interesting. Yeah, plenty of action but it just went on and on and on and on. The final battle for the capital city was endless and just was one bloodbath after another. I just couldn't wait for it to finish. And of course it finished in a flash of giant magic. Ugh.

So a bit of a downer in the end. I just loved A Little Hatred, a kind of sequel to this trilogy. I am going to try some of the standalone books in the "series", like Best Served Cold, because I think the world it great, the characters interesting and the descriptions realistic. Just hope the battles get smaller.