Mark Lawrence's 3 favorite reads in 2024

I took a day off and read the last three quarters of this in one go. That's a very rare occurence, reserved for the tiny number of novels that really get their teeth into me.

I'm sure I overvalue my own talent and read many books that I could not have written - but Buehlman is one of those writers who rubs it in my face. I'm constantly aware of my own failings as a wordsmith when reading his work.

I loved this book. To be fair, I also loved The Blacktongue Thief, to which this is a prequel. The Daughters' War is both similar and different to Blacktongue.

It's similar because it's set in the same world (ten or twenty years earlier), the same alien foe (the goblins) are a big factor (much bigger here), and it carries the same brutal, uncompromising edge ... in fact a large fraction of it is edge. And Galva, the character through whose eyes we see the world, was the #2 (non-point-of-view) character in Blacktongue.

It's different because it focuses on a war, but primarily because Galva is a very different person to our black-tongued friend, and Beuhlman, being a brilliant writer, is all about character, letting it colour everything.

Where Kinch was pragmatic, experienced beyond his years, humorous, and a thief in his bones, Galva is unflinchingly honest, rigidly moral, and touchingly vulnerable despite her martial skills. She's 20 in the book and the horrors she witnesses are somehow more impactful precisely because of her tendency for understatement and her difficulty with expressing emotion.

We see Galva in a troop of women each with two giant ravens, bred specifically to kill goblins. This is an experiment and the birds have been magically enhanced by Fulvir - a magician who plays a significant role in the other book.

Despite their stabby/pecky habits the ravens are "animal companions" and your eyes will mist if/when any of them come to harm.

Galva's story is both broadened and deepened by the fact that three of her brothers are in the army that is launched against the goblin hordes. This allows for all manner of family dynamics, both the fair and the foul (I will resist the fowl pun here).

Anyone who has read the first (second?) book will know that goblins are nasty NASTY nasty fuckers, and that's leaned into here. They are not, however, the "problematic" kind of evil race that modern fantasy tries to avoid - these are an alien race from ... somewhere "beyond". Their bodies don't rot, flies won't touch them. They view us as meat and their actions, however horrid, have a logic to them. They have their own culture and are intelligent. And it's quite easy to imagine that if they were just a little less good at killing us, the human armies would be doing almost as horrific shit in the goblin world.

Whilst Blacktongue had a strong undercurrent of humour to leven the terror, this book is more harrowing. It's an exercise in grief, both on the small scale of individual humans, lost friends, atrocities witnessed, and on the scale of humanity. We grieve with Glava for lost cities, for vanished generations, for the works of our kind lying in ruin, unvalued by the foe. It is very moving.

This is not unremittingly sad though. There are plenty of moments of hope, of victories both small and large (although the underlying trend feels sharply downwards at most points). And there's love too - the love of family, of friends, of her people, and even small but poignant elements of romance (with a tasteful veil drawn across the sex - which I appreciated, not from prudishness, but because it felt appropriate).

The battles and individual combats are exciting and inventive - the goblins are a great foe in terms of imagination and possibilities.

It's a bitter sweet story, with a lot more bitter than sweet, but enough sweet that it was (for me at least) a pleasure rather than an ordeal to read.

Buehlman tells the story in a fresh and engaging way. Galva addresses us as a friend or family member to whom she's retelling this story years later, albeit in a frank and very honest way. We see letters from her younger brother and father that provide different views and context.

As always (again: at least for me) the key to a great book is great writing. Buehlman's prose is always powerful, never purple, he paints clear pictures and reaches into the heart of things making it all real (too real sometimes).

A truly excellent book.

If you loved Blacktongue you will very likely love this one for the same reasons.
If you didn't love Blacktongue you might well find enough differences here to love this one.

This was a LONG book - 774 pages, with a fairly small font.

I thought it was excellent. Really enjoyed it.

I've known about the book for a long time but was put off by knowing that there are a great many (20?) point of view characters. I tend to prefer a small number of (often singular) points of view, and to get to know that/those character/s very well.

Contrary to expectations, the large field of points of view worked very well for me. The eponymous Red Knight's point of view gets a significantly larger number of pages than any of the rest, and helps glue it all together, as does the fact that all of the points of view are involved in the same drama, many of them in the same place, the rest converging on it.

I guess part of the reason I had such a good time with this book is that it's very different fantasy from the sort I've been reading lately. It spends A LOT of time on battles where our knight and men-at-arms and archers fight a wide variety of monsters including wyverns, trolls, bug-like things, things a bit like an elf-goblin cross, demons, and more!

These fights are generally small scale but almost always involving groups. So we might have two dozen on one side and a hundred on the other, or one big monster against twenty men etc. So tactics, formations, defences, war machines, and combined action are all important.

Moreover, it rapidly becomes clear that the author knows a vast amount of practical detail about weapons and armour and the clothes worn around them and the maintenance of such things both indoors and out in the wild. Unsurprisingly, it turns out that Miles Cameron (AKA Christian Cameron) is a long time re-enactor of medieval encounters, an expert in the combat of the time, and has forgotten more than I shall ever know about the real-world mechanics of all these things.

That level of historical authenticity, projected into a fantasy world (that seems based on Europe / England) is a fresh experience for me and enhanced my enjoyment of what was an extremely well written book. I've read fantasy books by authors with experience of the weapons and armour of various periods, notably Viking (John Gwynne) and post-medieval sword experts (Douglas Hulick & Sebastien de Castell), and enjoyed the expertise on display, but Cameron dials it up to 11.

On top of that, it's a compelling story with lots of moving parts, all juggled in a way that kept me engaged.

The characters are interesting, though they do play second fiddle to the action, and I enjoyed their stories.

There are books I read and for which I can't understand how they aren't universally adored. With The Red Knight I can better appreciate how a number of readers will come away with rather different opinions to mine. It's a book that does a bunch of things extremely well and focuses on them. It serves those up to you on a platter. But if you're hungry for different dishes you might leave unsatisfied. Specifically, if you're not a fan of fights and battle (well, skirmish mostly) scenes, and if you've never cared about how knights get into their armour and whether it really makes a difference in a fight etc ... then this is probably not for you.

I had a great time with the book, and I hope I can find space in my scary-big TBR for the next book in the series.

A fine book. Set in alternate reality modern(ish) times with TVs, aircraft etc but with the power in the hands of clans that have personal combat magics that make them the dominant force in the setting.

Constantly engaging with a great portrait of "crime family" dynamics in a non-western setting. Shades of The Godfather and other Mafia tales, but also very much its own thing.

The jade-based magic system is both simple and interesting.

I wasn't particularly moved on an emotional level but the story with exciting, entertaining, and had lots of fascinating detail both on the small scale (street fights, family arguments, training school scenes) and the large (nations vying for power, government vs clan interactions etc). And the story has great potential to expand.

This will have to be a brief review - finished the book while sitting up all night with my daughter in A&E. But definitely worth a read.