This review is going to be a list of what I didn't like:

The book's name: not original!

That I could not relate to a single character:
I wanted to kick Cole. If he was supposed to come off as a character who behaves like an ass and yet readers would end up loving him, he didn't!

Kayne was an old veteran who kept thinking he was too old to fight and yet managed to do away with a group of soldiers. Truthfully, all his talk about having trouble when pissing turned me off right from the start. I did not warm up to him.

Jerek was an idiot who was there to... I have no idea what he was doing in the book and neither do I care.

Yllandris was a sorceress who thought all women were jealous of her because she was that beautiful. Reminded me of Melisandre from GoT. I didn't enjoy watching GoT and stopped after the first few episodes. Characters like hers are one of the many reasons I did that.Anything that I know from the later seasons is when my husband talks about the show or from the latest buzz on the internet.

The rest of them didn't even make this much of an impression.

It isn't even that I wanted to like the characters. After all, I love Jorg from Mark Lawrence's books and he isn't likeable at all. He is also full of himself but manages to make that work. Cole couldn't!   

Almost 20% and I could find nothing original or something to look forward to as I read ahead. I have suffered through such books in the past (yeah, I mean Eragon) but no more.

Let us take a look at some of the things that bugged the heck outta me:

The gods were literally pulled down and thrown off their pedestals. If you want to read how amazingly this ploy can be used, read the Malazan Books of the Fallen.

There are Horse Lords and they are called Yahan. Need I explain this one?

Lackluster dialogues

P.S. I won't be rating this book because I never finished it. Needless to say that I won't be continuing with the series either.

My Thoughts

The world in this novel was divided between two kinds of magic users: Privileged & Powder Mages. While the limitations of what Powder Mages could do and could not do were clearly described, the author left the Privileged's extent of power in murky waters. That is why, whenever they pulled some new kind of crap, the reader would think it was within the magic-user's reach. Of course, we find out later that there were other sorcerers who were much more powerful. They are supposed to be extinct but at least three of them make an appearance.

The gods have abandoned the world or so the people think. So far, I have met two of them! While the most powerful of them all appears just as the book is about to end, his brother, a minor god, does get some face time in the book. Mihali can create food from nothing and heals through his cooking. Here is what I imagine he would look like:

There is no dearth of epic fantasies that focus on the military and they manage to snare me at times, (the Bridgeburners in Malazan Books of the Fallen) while failing to do so at other times (Glen Cook's Black Company). This one fell into the former category and I started to care about Olem, the Field Marshal's personal bodyguard, and Adamat, a retired police inspector. However much I wanted Olem not to die, when he survived the last fight at the end of the book, I felt as if he was one of Dumas' musketeers -- unkillable!

There are plots within plots and everyone has their own game but this complexity comes nowhere near to what Erikson can embroil his readers in. For me, reading about the adventure that the soldiers were on was a hoot. The humor that was interwoven within that adventure was a big plus! Here are some of my favorite dialogues:

DNF @ 45%

I have heard a lot of great things about this series, but it just didn't work for me. I didn't feel any kind of connection to the characters at all. And the story moved quite slowly for my taste.