I think I get the point the author was trying to make (it's not subtle), but I just didn't find it very compelling. It's the obvious subtext found in more interesting works written in all caps for five hundred pages. ( )

For some reason, in contrast to the other First Law books, I found the beginning of this excruciatingly slow, and many times I wondered if I should just abandon it. I'm glad I didn't---it picked up in an incredibly satisfying manner. ( )

Fantastic book. Grimmer and grimmer and darker and darker. I love it. ( )

Unfortunately I didn't like this book as much as the ones that came before in the series. I suspected that would be the case since I don't tend to like stories about war, but I was hoping the characters would get me through this.
There were some really good and complex characters in this book, but there were also characters I didn't care about and that didn't have a strong enough personality for me to remember them (I kept checking the list of names in the begining of the book). The characters I was more interested in were Calder and Black Dow. Finree had some good moments in the second half of the book. Gorst's obsession with Finree was creepy and he annoyed me most of the time with his repetitive thoughts. Tunny's more comedic chapters made me laugh sometimes and it was a nice break from all of the seriousness of the other chapters.
There were some really good moments, but I felt bored for the most part while reading this book. The last 100 pages were fantastic though.
This was a dificult book to rate because I really liked some parts of it and a few characters, but it was boring and repetitive for the most part. I will probably skip this book when I reread the series, but I don't regret reading it. ( )

Tres hombres. Una batalla. Ningún héroe Cuentan que Dow el Negro ha llegado al trono del Norte sobre una montaña de calaveras. Mientras, el rey de la Unión ha decidido que hay que pararle los pies y sus ejércitos ya han invadido el Norte. Miles de hombres están convergiendo en un antiguo círculo de rocas —los Héroes—, en un valle anónimo que se convertirá en escenario de una de las batallas más sangrientas que el Norte ha presenciado. Al mismo tiempo, los dos bandos están infestados de intrigas, rencillas y envidias, que hacen el final imprevisible…