Reviews and Comments

This had me intrigued about where it would go up through the exile, a classic setup for the opening of an adventure, but after that nothing really gelled. The writing increasingly called attention to itself because of its clumsiness. The pacing dragged with filler that didn't really contribute to character or story development. It was like watching a B-movie where the editor lets scenes drag out with awkward pauses or needless shots of characters walking from Point A to Point B.

I never really got a grasp of the world-building, either. The writer would shove in tedious descriptions of clothing after they arrive in the Fae land, as if she felt obligated to do so. At the same time, she wouldn't paint a clear picture of important parts of the world, like what kind of land they were even in. I don't like fantasy novels that describe everything in excruciating detail, but the way this was written made it difficult to form a coherent mental picture as the story went on and occasionally disrupted it with a random detail that should have been worked in earlier.

All in all, it felt like the writer was checking off a list of tropes or themes to include rather than developing them organically as part of a more fleshed-out story.

This started out alright up through the exile, but the pacing kind of lost steam after that, 100-ish pages before the midway point I'm at. So far, debating on whether to finish the book or not, but overall leaning towards ending it with this book instead of checking out the sequel.

This was one of those books where I could guess several of the plot twists early on, but I enjoyed the ride and preordered the sequel. Liked the Vikings-with-magic setting and that it avoided taking a few of the easier routes to get Freya out of her predicament. By the end, she has a better understanding of what she is but is still navigating her anger and the type of person she wants to be. There's an underlying steel to her, and part of her ongoing struggle is learning to take more active control of her own life while dealing with the fallout of bad or complicated choices she made.

Definitely check out the three shorter "Twilight of the Empire" books (Mistworld/Ghostworld/Hellworld) before starting Deathstalker proper. I didn't know about or buy them until sometime after my first (partial) binge of this main series years ago, and I didn't circle back to reading them until this year. I don't remember feeling lost the first time I read this book, but having those three novels fresh in my mind gives it a little something extra. They give you morsels of world-building for the universe of this series—and introduce you to some characters that now show up in this novel—while being their own lean, self-contained stories.