A time of Dread

A Time of Dread by John Gwynne is an epic fantasy revolving around the war between angels and demons descended to the mortal world.

A Time of Dread is a solid epic fantasy with a bit of a darker aesthetic, dealing with blood sacrifices and betrayals and the like. It’s a bit slow to start as there is significant effort dedicated to exploring the characters, their place in the world, and the state of the world itself. While seeds of the eventual plot are planted early and cultivated throughout, much of the story trades on the author’s promise that something will happen. The general prose and character/narrative depth were strong enough to keep me buying into that promise, but it won’t work for every reader.

The world building is solid with various cool concepts like bear-riding warrior giants, clashing religious orders, and just the overall moral complexity of the Ben Elim, whom are simultaneously tyrannical and brutal and also the supposedly ‘good’ half of the immortal war. The demons are reasonably compelling villains, but due to the narrative reasons play something of a second fiddle to the Ben Elim themselves as antagonists.

The characters are good, but fall victim to the plots slow developmental and spend much of the narrative in states of idle or sluggish progression. Sig, our warrior giantess, is the contradiction to this, with a clear plot and progression from the start while almost just being generally likable. Drem is also solid, but just spends most his story dancing around the underlying plot without being able to dig into it. I struggled to like Riv the most, who falls a victim to her berserk rages fairly often and is also wholly mired in the mess that is the Ben Elim while being fully indoctrinated by them. I spent much of the book wishing she would get out of her own way, or be capable of interacting with the ticking bomb of the Ben Elim in more interesting ways.

The prose is A Time of Dread’s strongest suit, it is gritty and heavy, and often sells that epic fantasy feel and power moments that help the genre pop. There’s a constant sense of these things you’re reading mattering, and of an epic conflict or battle brewing. The battles, when they do break out, are good, and the crescendo of the narrative is much the equivalent of shattering an expensive vase: a lot was lost, everything is a mess and has gotten markedly worse.

All in all, I enjoyed A Time of Dread despite the slowness of it plot because the general writing was just that strong, and I think readers who enjoy their epic fantasy being a mess as opposed to clearly defined good and evil will enjoy this as well.