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The Shipwright and the Shroudweaver
MEET YOUR NEXT EPIC FANTASY OBSESSION
No one remembers the calamity that killed the gods and stole the names of their people. Now Shipwright and Shroudweaver are known only by their professions.
She's a master of magical shipbuilding. He's a maker of the gilded gods that fuel their sails, stitched from the souls of dead sailors.
When a chance to save their world calls the veterans back to shore, they decide they'll stop at nothing to vanquish the ultimate evil, embarking on a deadly race against time to beat the grief-wracked sorceress known as Crowkisser to the notorious mountain kingdom in the legend-infested north before she unleashes the ancient power entombed at its heart - the one waiting to finish what it started.
The Shipwright and the Shroudweaver introduces a trail-blazing new voice in Scottish fantasy with an epic adventure of ancient gods, apocalyptic magic, and love that can survive the end of the world - unmissable for fans of The Will of the Many by James Islington, The Priory of the Orange Tree by Samantha Shannon, and Mistborn by Brandon Sanderson.
No one remembers the calamity that killed the gods and stole the names of their people. Now Shipwright and Shroudweaver are known only by their professions.
She's a master of magical shipbuilding. He's a maker of the gilded gods that fuel their sails, stitched from the souls of dead sailors.
When a chance to save their world calls the veterans back to shore, they decide they'll stop at nothing to vanquish the ultimate evil, embarking on a deadly race against time to beat the grief-wracked sorceress known as Crowkisser to the notorious mountain kingdom in the legend-infested north before she unleashes the ancient power entombed at its heart - the one waiting to finish what it started.
The Shipwright and the Shroudweaver introduces a trail-blazing new voice in Scottish fantasy with an epic adventure of ancient gods, apocalyptic magic, and love that can survive the end of the world - unmissable for fans of The Will of the Many by James Islington, The Priory of the Orange Tree by Samantha Shannon, and Mistborn by Brandon Sanderson.
770 pages, Kindle Edition
First published November 27, 2025
77 people are currently reading
2327 people want to read
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 34 reviews
February 8, 2026
I started this thinking it could be a five stars, only for everything to fall apart.
I dnf’ed at 44% at 325 pages. I think the author has potential, but needed tighter editing.
The ship kisses the ocean, the tops of the waves a brief press against her surging bow.
I don’t know how to give you a synopsis because it’s plotting and pacing was its weakest aspect.
We had head hopping, time jumps between past and present and wildly different chapter lengths which added to my confusion and displacement.
Where was the world building? It stated off soooo promising, but it never delivered. It kept being vague and almost felt pretentious in holding back information, teasing at something great that I could never appreciate. Dead gods, necromancy, name-stealing, magic.
I started off really enjoying the character insight and slower pace, but by 300 pages in, I’d expect something more insightful and inciting.
The prose was another reason I began with stars in my eyes. It was luscious and beautiful and evocative. However, it became too much all of the time. Fragmented sentences, a flurry of adverbs and adjectives. The prose became the book, rather than complimenting it or furthering the story.
Overall, a very interesting premise for the magic system that was being rolled out like rations, but there wasn’t enough development or purpose to the plot or characters.
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I dnf’ed at 44% at 325 pages. I think the author has potential, but needed tighter editing.
The ship kisses the ocean, the tops of the waves a brief press against her surging bow.
I don’t know how to give you a synopsis because it’s plotting and pacing was its weakest aspect.
We had head hopping, time jumps between past and present and wildly different chapter lengths which added to my confusion and displacement.
Where was the world building? It stated off soooo promising, but it never delivered. It kept being vague and almost felt pretentious in holding back information, teasing at something great that I could never appreciate. Dead gods, necromancy, name-stealing, magic.
I started off really enjoying the character insight and slower pace, but by 300 pages in, I’d expect something more insightful and inciting.
The prose was another reason I began with stars in my eyes. It was luscious and beautiful and evocative. However, it became too much all of the time. Fragmented sentences, a flurry of adverbs and adjectives. The prose became the book, rather than complimenting it or furthering the story.
Overall, a very interesting premise for the magic system that was being rolled out like rations, but there wasn’t enough development or purpose to the plot or characters.
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February 10, 2026
I enjoyed every sentence of this beautiful, beautiful book.
If, like me, you’re interested in what comes after the war, what sins and saints it begets, this is the book you want this year.
If, like me, you’re interested in what comes after the war, what sins and saints it begets, this is the book you want this year.
December 6, 2025
Review originally on JamReads
The Shipwright and the Shroudweaver is an epic fantasy novel written by Rafael Torrubia and published by Gollancz. A story of epic scope, similar to Tolkien's Lord of the Rings, portraying a vast, magical world full of lore and a deliciously layered cast of characters that will engulf you into its pages, all with a prose that remembers epic poems, creating a debut that will be talked about years from.
No one remembers the calamity that stole the names of their people; now most are known by their professions, among them Shipwright, a master of magical shipbuilding, and Shroudweaver, a maker of the gilded gods that fuel their sails. They've been fighting for three years to keep Crowkisser confined in the South, assuming losses; but when a chance to save the world appears, they embark on a race against time to beat Crowkisser to reach the mountain near the Republic, a place of legends, infested of power, before she unleashes the evil they entombed twenty years ago, a threat that could destroy this world, revealing many secrets about their past in the process.
Torrubia gifts the reader with a marvelously complex cast of characters that become pivotal to this story, steering away from the classical black/white archetypes that are so common in classical fantasy. All of them are captured as people with their own story, a past, which is influencing their current actions.
As you might have imagined from the title, Shipwright and Shroudweaver are two of the most prominent characters; a pair with a strong bond, who are trying to restore the world after a calamity, trying to stop Crowkisser. A task that is especially important for Shroudweaver, especially as we get to know more about his past; a weight he's been holding for twenty years. Despite being really powerful, we also get to see their human side, their struggles and how they care about others.
At the other extreme, we have a Crowkisser who acts as the antagonist; a powerful sorceress whose actions are responsible for the calamity that changed this world. Grief moves her, and as readers, we will slowly learn more about her motivations; at the end, we have a well-fleshed character that lands on the greyer side of the spectrum.
The rest of the cast doesn't have as much narrative weight as our leading characters, but Torrubia still puts the effort in rounding them; their acts play a crucial role in the plot's development, and all of them have a backstory that we eventually learn about.
Outside of the cast, the worldbuilding is another of the aspects where this novel excels; not only there's a vast history behind most of the places, introduced to the reader in a really organic way, but also the post-cataclysm aspects that are shaping this world. Each location is alive; there are some details that are left undefined, especially regarding the scope of magic and gods, but it suits quite well with this book.
The scope of the plot resembles big epic stories, with a prose that is a bit on the lyrical side, with a certain rhythm that carries you through the pages. Being this novel a long one, it actually felt short, as you are drawn into the story from the start, with a good pacing, devoid of dull moments.
The Shipwright and the Shroudweaver is a candidate to be my favourite novel of the year: an excellent Epic fantasy novel that stays with you even after finishing, a delightful read that traps you in a magical, vast world and a compelling cast as part of the plot. What a debut!
The Shipwright and the Shroudweaver is an epic fantasy novel written by Rafael Torrubia and published by Gollancz. A story of epic scope, similar to Tolkien's Lord of the Rings, portraying a vast, magical world full of lore and a deliciously layered cast of characters that will engulf you into its pages, all with a prose that remembers epic poems, creating a debut that will be talked about years from.
No one remembers the calamity that stole the names of their people; now most are known by their professions, among them Shipwright, a master of magical shipbuilding, and Shroudweaver, a maker of the gilded gods that fuel their sails. They've been fighting for three years to keep Crowkisser confined in the South, assuming losses; but when a chance to save the world appears, they embark on a race against time to beat Crowkisser to reach the mountain near the Republic, a place of legends, infested of power, before she unleashes the evil they entombed twenty years ago, a threat that could destroy this world, revealing many secrets about their past in the process.
Torrubia gifts the reader with a marvelously complex cast of characters that become pivotal to this story, steering away from the classical black/white archetypes that are so common in classical fantasy. All of them are captured as people with their own story, a past, which is influencing their current actions.
As you might have imagined from the title, Shipwright and Shroudweaver are two of the most prominent characters; a pair with a strong bond, who are trying to restore the world after a calamity, trying to stop Crowkisser. A task that is especially important for Shroudweaver, especially as we get to know more about his past; a weight he's been holding for twenty years. Despite being really powerful, we also get to see their human side, their struggles and how they care about others.
At the other extreme, we have a Crowkisser who acts as the antagonist; a powerful sorceress whose actions are responsible for the calamity that changed this world. Grief moves her, and as readers, we will slowly learn more about her motivations; at the end, we have a well-fleshed character that lands on the greyer side of the spectrum.
The rest of the cast doesn't have as much narrative weight as our leading characters, but Torrubia still puts the effort in rounding them; their acts play a crucial role in the plot's development, and all of them have a backstory that we eventually learn about.
Outside of the cast, the worldbuilding is another of the aspects where this novel excels; not only there's a vast history behind most of the places, introduced to the reader in a really organic way, but also the post-cataclysm aspects that are shaping this world. Each location is alive; there are some details that are left undefined, especially regarding the scope of magic and gods, but it suits quite well with this book.
The scope of the plot resembles big epic stories, with a prose that is a bit on the lyrical side, with a certain rhythm that carries you through the pages. Being this novel a long one, it actually felt short, as you are drawn into the story from the start, with a good pacing, devoid of dull moments.
The Shipwright and the Shroudweaver is a candidate to be my favourite novel of the year: an excellent Epic fantasy novel that stays with you even after finishing, a delightful read that traps you in a magical, vast world and a compelling cast as part of the plot. What a debut!
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December 31, 2025DNF @ 19%
This is a great-looking book (I have the gorgeous hardcover) with some interesting concepts and some nice imagery in the writing. However, I also found that imagery to be one of the main downfalls. I thought it was a bit (actually, a lot) overdone and it went from being something that helped me picture the scene to something that really started to grate on me, and distract me from the actual story. It really felt like every description had to be qualified with some flowery metaphor, and it was just too much for me.
As far as the story goes, I did think there was an interesting idea here, but it took too long to get into the details. We are dropped in at the deep end and there are a lot of things happening without the reader knowing the reasons, the circumstances, the background details. It takes a while before some of the character backgrounds start to be drip-fed into the story and some of the history of this world along with it. I'm fine with being kept in the dark if I can figure things out for myself, but there was just a bit too much of it here, with worldbuilding that was just "there" without explanation, so I had to read on in blind faith that later on I would find out what a "spinner" was, for instance.
Just on a personal point, this book is written in the third-person present tense, which is probably my least favourite of the more common styles I see in fiction. While this didn't help my enjoyment, I note it here just for reference, rather than criticism.
This is a great-looking book (I have the gorgeous hardcover) with some interesting concepts and some nice imagery in the writing. However, I also found that imagery to be one of the main downfalls. I thought it was a bit (actually, a lot) overdone and it went from being something that helped me picture the scene to something that really started to grate on me, and distract me from the actual story. It really felt like every description had to be qualified with some flowery metaphor, and it was just too much for me.
As far as the story goes, I did think there was an interesting idea here, but it took too long to get into the details. We are dropped in at the deep end and there are a lot of things happening without the reader knowing the reasons, the circumstances, the background details. It takes a while before some of the character backgrounds start to be drip-fed into the story and some of the history of this world along with it. I'm fine with being kept in the dark if I can figure things out for myself, but there was just a bit too much of it here, with worldbuilding that was just "there" without explanation, so I had to read on in blind faith that later on I would find out what a "spinner" was, for instance.
Just on a personal point, this book is written in the third-person present tense, which is probably my least favourite of the more common styles I see in fiction. While this didn't help my enjoyment, I note it here just for reference, rather than criticism.
December 28, 2025
DNF’d at 35%.
This author is a beautiful writer. The choices he makes and the style and atmosphere he invokes in those choices are like poetry. This book is best read aloud, slowly, and with all your attention. It is bold in prose and character work in ways that fantasy has steered away from recently, and I’m glad to see this novel as an example of literary style beginning to return to the genre.
However, it suffers significantly in several areas, including in the aforementioned literary style.
The first is pacing. I read 270 pages and what I viewed as the primary plot—Shipwright and Shroudweaver travelling to Thell to try to stop Crowkisser—had not yet really begun. A great deal of time is spent on scenes that, at best, build character but lack a meaningful impact on the primary plot. While I understand such scenes might have served a purpose later, in that the reader will eventually appreciate this character depth when questioning who is truly the villain of this story, it brings the story to a grinding halt. Epic fantasy can be slow, that is acknowledged. However, to my mind, slow does not have to mean shapeless. Authors can employ sub structures and subplots on the chapter level as narrative engines that keep the reader engaged and the pacing up. Some examples might be training sequences that imply growth, contained chapters of intrigue whose relevance only becomes apparent later, social or political side conflicts that carry their own stakes. Too often in the pages I read did scenes end exactly where they began: beautifully written, atmospherically rich, and maybe revealing something of a character, yet structurally unimportant.
The second is the style. The prose relies heavily on long, flowing sentences packed with compound adjectives, metaphors, and imagery. Many of these passages are genuinely beautiful on their own and show a strong command of rhythm and tone. This style both elevates and (for me) condemns the book. The difficulty comes from how consistently this style is used. With little variation, the language begins to feel overwhelming, and I felt like I had to work at a high level of attention on nearly every page. The key here, for me, would be to reduce the frequency of this usage. If bundled amongst plainer, clearer language, these turns of phrases would not only stand out but feel special, elevating the plainness around it but allowing the reader to actually follow the story simply.
This style is made harder to follow by frequent syntactic looseness—the author frequently employed sentence fragments, being participle phrases without clear subjects (or an assumed reliance on the prior sentence’s subject), and unusual constructions. While this appears to be an intentional stylistic choice, and is mostly used in a technically correct sense, it often muddies meaning rather than deepening it. I found myself re-reading passages to confirm whether a sentence belonged to the subject character or a different subject.
An example, from when the main character’s ship approaches a port:
The first phrase: fragments that individually work but lose hierarchy. Some have verbs (‘tossed’), some are pure noun phrases (‘clods of shit’), some imply action without the grammar to support it (‘arcs of piss’). The effect is implying chaos, but it’s heavy work to correlate down into its outcome (‘a mixed welcome’). It does the job in a vivid manner, but a simpler construction would be more effective.
The second phrase: uses a dangling participle. Who is nudging? The context assumes the main character’s ship, but doesn’t clarify. The author then personifies either the ship or the city (‘her toes’), but also doesn’t clarify—the bottom of the cliffs implies it is the city’s toes touching the sea, but the rest of the sentence is presumably about the ship, so is ‘her’ referring to the ship?
The third phrase: This is another sentence fragment functioning as description, but it has multiple prepositional phrases, no verb, and no clear subject beyond ‘the switchbacks and twists’ which never do anything grammatically. It would take minimal change to give the sentence a clear subject, verb, and object: ‘Above, the switchbacks and twists brought the smaller ships into the belly of the port, through the canals and straight to where the money was.’ This makes the switchbacks the clear subject, and assigns the verb (‘brought’) to that subject, imposing it clearly upon the object (‘the smaller ships’). The original is understandable but heavy by comparison.
This sort of approach is frequently employed and the book would have benefited from a cleaner approach with moments of poetry or unusual construction.
Finally, a similar issue arises from the novel’s panoramic approach to point of view and dialogue attribution. The story moves among a wide cast of characters and sometimes slides, without scene break or indication, between perspectives within a single scene or paragraph. This creates a sense of continuity and shared experience, but it also weakens the reader’s footing, especially when paired with the above style choices and sentence structures. It can be difficult to tell whose thoughts or perceptions are being presented when these switches occur. The same lack of grounding also affects the dialogue. Dialogue is often broken up into paragraphs without the speaker having changed. It is demonstrably a part of the book’s flowing style, but because those breaks are so frequent and don’t align with regular convention, it is not always clear when the speaker has changed.
Ultimately, while it’s fun or literary to break with convention for style, these things are there to support your reader. I found the above choices not worth the challenge to my comprehension and enjoyment of the book. While I am comfortable with complex narratives and stylistic prose, the combination of these factors became overwhelming. Reading felt more like study than enjoyment, requiring constant attention to parse meaning. Perhaps readers with more robust reading stamina would fare better, but for me, the book became a chore rather than a pleasure.
This author is a beautiful writer. The choices he makes and the style and atmosphere he invokes in those choices are like poetry. This book is best read aloud, slowly, and with all your attention. It is bold in prose and character work in ways that fantasy has steered away from recently, and I’m glad to see this novel as an example of literary style beginning to return to the genre.
However, it suffers significantly in several areas, including in the aforementioned literary style.
The first is pacing. I read 270 pages and what I viewed as the primary plot—Shipwright and Shroudweaver travelling to Thell to try to stop Crowkisser—had not yet really begun. A great deal of time is spent on scenes that, at best, build character but lack a meaningful impact on the primary plot. While I understand such scenes might have served a purpose later, in that the reader will eventually appreciate this character depth when questioning who is truly the villain of this story, it brings the story to a grinding halt. Epic fantasy can be slow, that is acknowledged. However, to my mind, slow does not have to mean shapeless. Authors can employ sub structures and subplots on the chapter level as narrative engines that keep the reader engaged and the pacing up. Some examples might be training sequences that imply growth, contained chapters of intrigue whose relevance only becomes apparent later, social or political side conflicts that carry their own stakes. Too often in the pages I read did scenes end exactly where they began: beautifully written, atmospherically rich, and maybe revealing something of a character, yet structurally unimportant.
The second is the style. The prose relies heavily on long, flowing sentences packed with compound adjectives, metaphors, and imagery. Many of these passages are genuinely beautiful on their own and show a strong command of rhythm and tone. This style both elevates and (for me) condemns the book. The difficulty comes from how consistently this style is used. With little variation, the language begins to feel overwhelming, and I felt like I had to work at a high level of attention on nearly every page. The key here, for me, would be to reduce the frequency of this usage. If bundled amongst plainer, clearer language, these turns of phrases would not only stand out but feel special, elevating the plainness around it but allowing the reader to actually follow the story simply.
This style is made harder to follow by frequent syntactic looseness—the author frequently employed sentence fragments, being participle phrases without clear subjects (or an assumed reliance on the prior sentence’s subject), and unusual constructions. While this appears to be an intentional stylistic choice, and is mostly used in a technically correct sense, it often muddies meaning rather than deepening it. I found myself re-reading passages to confirm whether a sentence belonged to the subject character or a different subject.
An example, from when the main character’s ship approaches a port:
Requests for boarding hollered and signalled. Ratlines helpfully tossed. Clods of shit. Bottles of rum. Arcs of piss. A mixed welcome.
Nudging into the lowest loop at the bottom of the cliffs, where the city finally dared to let her toes touch the sea.
Above, the switchbacks and twists that brought up the smaller ships into the belly of the port, through the canals and straight to where the money was.
The first phrase: fragments that individually work but lose hierarchy. Some have verbs (‘tossed’), some are pure noun phrases (‘clods of shit’), some imply action without the grammar to support it (‘arcs of piss’). The effect is implying chaos, but it’s heavy work to correlate down into its outcome (‘a mixed welcome’). It does the job in a vivid manner, but a simpler construction would be more effective.
The second phrase: uses a dangling participle. Who is nudging? The context assumes the main character’s ship, but doesn’t clarify. The author then personifies either the ship or the city (‘her toes’), but also doesn’t clarify—the bottom of the cliffs implies it is the city’s toes touching the sea, but the rest of the sentence is presumably about the ship, so is ‘her’ referring to the ship?
The third phrase: This is another sentence fragment functioning as description, but it has multiple prepositional phrases, no verb, and no clear subject beyond ‘the switchbacks and twists’ which never do anything grammatically. It would take minimal change to give the sentence a clear subject, verb, and object: ‘Above, the switchbacks and twists brought the smaller ships into the belly of the port, through the canals and straight to where the money was.’ This makes the switchbacks the clear subject, and assigns the verb (‘brought’) to that subject, imposing it clearly upon the object (‘the smaller ships’). The original is understandable but heavy by comparison.
This sort of approach is frequently employed and the book would have benefited from a cleaner approach with moments of poetry or unusual construction.
Finally, a similar issue arises from the novel’s panoramic approach to point of view and dialogue attribution. The story moves among a wide cast of characters and sometimes slides, without scene break or indication, between perspectives within a single scene or paragraph. This creates a sense of continuity and shared experience, but it also weakens the reader’s footing, especially when paired with the above style choices and sentence structures. It can be difficult to tell whose thoughts or perceptions are being presented when these switches occur. The same lack of grounding also affects the dialogue. Dialogue is often broken up into paragraphs without the speaker having changed. It is demonstrably a part of the book’s flowing style, but because those breaks are so frequent and don’t align with regular convention, it is not always clear when the speaker has changed.
Ultimately, while it’s fun or literary to break with convention for style, these things are there to support your reader. I found the above choices not worth the challenge to my comprehension and enjoyment of the book. While I am comfortable with complex narratives and stylistic prose, the combination of these factors became overwhelming. Reading felt more like study than enjoyment, requiring constant attention to parse meaning. Perhaps readers with more robust reading stamina would fare better, but for me, the book became a chore rather than a pleasure.
December 8, 2025
The Shipwright and the Shroudweaver is easily one of the most enchanting and gut-twisting books I read in 2025. Rafael Torrubia’s debut absolutely stunned me — not just with its world-building or its atmosphere, but with a villain so complex and compelling that I found myself switching allegiances more than once.
This story drifts between whimsy and darkness with a writing style that feels almost lyrical. Every sentence reads like it’s been carved perfectly. The prose is dreamy, gothic, and haunting in a way that lingers long after you put the book down.
But the heart of this novel — the thing that stole the breath from me — is its villain. Torrubia crafts an antagonist who is deeply human, devastatingly motivated, and impossible to pin down as simply “good” or “evil.” I kept turning pages just to understand them better… and every new layer made me more conflicted. It’s rare for a book to make me question whose side I’m truly on, but this one did — and did it brilliantly.
If you love morally grey characters, emotional depth, slow-burn tension, and fantasy that reads like an old myth told by candlelight, this debut is absolutely worth your time. I can’t wait to see what Torrubia writes next.
This overall wins the category of ‘favourite villain’ for 2025.
This story drifts between whimsy and darkness with a writing style that feels almost lyrical. Every sentence reads like it’s been carved perfectly. The prose is dreamy, gothic, and haunting in a way that lingers long after you put the book down.
But the heart of this novel — the thing that stole the breath from me — is its villain. Torrubia crafts an antagonist who is deeply human, devastatingly motivated, and impossible to pin down as simply “good” or “evil.” I kept turning pages just to understand them better… and every new layer made me more conflicted. It’s rare for a book to make me question whose side I’m truly on, but this one did — and did it brilliantly.
If you love morally grey characters, emotional depth, slow-burn tension, and fantasy that reads like an old myth told by candlelight, this debut is absolutely worth your time. I can’t wait to see what Torrubia writes next.
This overall wins the category of ‘favourite villain’ for 2025.
November 6, 2025
This is a truly beautiful book. Knocked me off my feet from the very first page and kept punching until the very end. Rafael has a rare gift for prose and a delicate touch with character that make this book so visceral and compelling. I still think about this when my mind is idle. A delight on every page.
January 30, 2026
In short: A story with a lot of heart but often times weak bones. A tale of magic, politics, love, and loss in a dark, gritty, and unique world; but a writing style and structure that often pulls you from its grips and can feel like a slog to get through.
Pros:
Interesting story and characters
Unique exploration of relationships
Unique system of magic
Cons:
The main negative of this book all stems from an over-reliance on ‘purple prose’ which, while attempting (and sometimes succeeding) to paint ornate and mystical scenes, often leads to unfinished thoughts, vague or muddled explanations, and lacklustre moments within an otherwise dramatic and exciting story.
It was a strange reading experience where explanations of important pieces of lore were either lost in muddy lyricism or were painfully vague and the deaths of endearing characters and critical moments felt weightless.. while otherwise trivial scenes seemed to have pages upon pages of overly flowery and often repetitive description.
In addition to this, the pacing of the book felt awkward.. which ultimately contributed to the weightlessness of important elements and moments within the story.
With all that said, the book and the world within is oozing with potential and opportunity, and as a first entry into this genre by Torrubia, it feels like a solid first attempt. I will certainly be keeping my eye out for the sequel in the hopes that it quenches my appetite to truly understand the unique, exciting, and dark world that has been lain before us.
Pros:
Interesting story and characters
Unique exploration of relationships
Unique system of magic
Cons:
The main negative of this book all stems from an over-reliance on ‘purple prose’ which, while attempting (and sometimes succeeding) to paint ornate and mystical scenes, often leads to unfinished thoughts, vague or muddled explanations, and lacklustre moments within an otherwise dramatic and exciting story.
It was a strange reading experience where explanations of important pieces of lore were either lost in muddy lyricism or were painfully vague and the deaths of endearing characters and critical moments felt weightless.. while otherwise trivial scenes seemed to have pages upon pages of overly flowery and often repetitive description.
In addition to this, the pacing of the book felt awkward.. which ultimately contributed to the weightlessness of important elements and moments within the story.
With all that said, the book and the world within is oozing with potential and opportunity, and as a first entry into this genre by Torrubia, it feels like a solid first attempt. I will certainly be keeping my eye out for the sequel in the hopes that it quenches my appetite to truly understand the unique, exciting, and dark world that has been lain before us.
Read
February 3, 2026DNF at 30%
The writing in this is absolutely stunning and I think there is definitely something good here. But the dense lyrical prose is too much for me right now, I simply don’t have the focus at this point unfortunately.
My one gripe is how little information I have; at 250 pages in, I only have very loose knowledge of the magic system. There is a lot of stuff that is being alluded to with no real payoff. I’m sure it will all come together, but I needed a bit more this far into the book.
So far it has been ramping up to an adventure; but at 250 pages, they are still only just preparing to leave. The pacing is just not quite working for me.
As I said, gorgeous writing, I think this will be appreciated by readers who enjoy dense fantasy and prose.
I may revisit this as an audiobook in the future. I’m not ready to 100% give up on this one.
I would also not hesitate to pick up this authors books in the future (as long as it’s not quite so big 😅)
The writing in this is absolutely stunning and I think there is definitely something good here. But the dense lyrical prose is too much for me right now, I simply don’t have the focus at this point unfortunately.
My one gripe is how little information I have; at 250 pages in, I only have very loose knowledge of the magic system. There is a lot of stuff that is being alluded to with no real payoff. I’m sure it will all come together, but I needed a bit more this far into the book.
So far it has been ramping up to an adventure; but at 250 pages, they are still only just preparing to leave. The pacing is just not quite working for me.
As I said, gorgeous writing, I think this will be appreciated by readers who enjoy dense fantasy and prose.
I may revisit this as an audiobook in the future. I’m not ready to 100% give up on this one.
I would also not hesitate to pick up this authors books in the future (as long as it’s not quite so big 😅)
January 10, 2026
Rafael Torrubias Debütroman ‚The Shipwright and the Shroudweaver‘ ist genau das, was Cover und Umfang versprechen: Episch, rau und düster. Die Sprache ist sehr anspruchsvoll, bildhaft und voller Metaphern. Ein Grund, warum ich es so gerne nochmal in deutscher Übersetzung lesen würde, denn leider konnte ich durch die Komplexität der Sprache nicht alle Nuancen der Geschichte aufnehmen. Doch was ich mitnehmen konnte, hat mich beeindruckt: Weltenbau, Magie, Figuren, schottische Mythologie und Folklore, Progressivität. Stellenweise war es durch den ausschweifenden Erzählstil auch etwas gedrosselter im Tempo, aber wenn man sich Zeit nehmen will, dann unterstreicht diese Langsamkeit nochmal die Intensität der Geschichte. Die Fortsetzung soll noch in 2026 erscheinen.
April 2, 2026
I give up. I made it to 51% and the effort it took was painful. You know what happened, in 51% of an 800-page book? NOTHING. SOD ALL. 400-odd pages of WAFFLING is what I read; those 400-odd pages should have been more like 100, at most. Torrubia uses 10 words where one will do, padding out every scene with hours of introspection and slightly wonky metaphors and similes. I was constantly having to reread paragraphs because by the time I finished them I had lost track of what the paragraph was supposed to be about.
So many scenes – entire chapters! – where NOTHING happens, or where things happen but they are completely irrelevant to absolutely everything. Let’s stop in at a shop! Let’s get a drink! Let’s check out the docks! OR – hear me out – maybe we could have some actual STORY, please???
Also, let’s check out the book description I originally saw, shall we?
I’d like to draw your attention to ‘effortless queerness’, because LOL NO. There is one very minor nonbinary character, and one very minor gay character; we spend hardly any time with either of them and honestly in the first half of the book neither were important or relevant. The main characters, and all the secondary characters, are cishet, and yes, I was crushingly disappointed.
(And frustrated by how much of an afterthought the nonbinary characters are – we glimpse a few beside the one minor character, so supposedly being nonbinary is normalised, but there are still things like people defaulting to saying ‘ladies and gentlemen’ and whatever. Which…wouldn’t be a default in a society that had normalised enby folx.)
Small point, but if I have to hear/read anyone referring to a femme as a ‘slit’ ever again someone is getting stabbed. Only one character in this book used that kind of language but he used it ALL THE TIME and I hate it. (And again, this breaks the worldbuilding, because if this setting doesn’t value women less, why is ‘slit’ an insult? Hmmmmmmmm?)
Another small point: this book can’t decide if it’s written in past-tense or present-tense and I hate that as well. Mid-paragraph, sometimes mid-sentence switching tenses, in a way that doesn’t read as intentionally trying to create a specific effect. It’s just deeply wonky and I twitched every time it happened.
Being unable to stick to one tense is far from the only issue with the prose. While it’s mostly fine – not pretty, not great, but perfectly fine – every now and then there’s a jarringly weird and/or confusing image. Examples include;
…Last time I checked, sucking your thumb doesn’t sink a ship of any kind, actually?
Finally: because this is published by Gollancz, it’s stuffed full of typos; few spelling errors, things like ‘of’ that should be ‘off’, but lots of things like commas or full stops coming after speech marks when they should come before. Because Gollancz can’t copy-edit to save their lives. S2g, these days I get so upset when I see they’re publishing a book I care about, because I know the copy-editing will be wretched. FOR THE LOVE OF FUCK, GOLLANCZ, HIRE SOMEONE WHO CAN COPY-EDIT ALREADY. And then pay them well and give them time to do their job properly. How are you not humiliated by the messes you keep putting out???
So yeah – I quit. I was looking forward to this for YEARS, but it’s a disaster. Colour me crushed.
So many scenes – entire chapters! – where NOTHING happens, or where things happen but they are completely irrelevant to absolutely everything. Let’s stop in at a shop! Let’s get a drink! Let’s check out the docks! OR – hear me out – maybe we could have some actual STORY, please???
Also, let’s check out the book description I originally saw, shall we?
The Shipwright and the Shroudweaver introduces the most exciting new voice in Scottish fantasy with an epic adventure set in a post-apocalyptic landscape of god-fuelled ships, goth-as-hell villains, shadow-warping assassins, effortless queerness, and well-worn love – unmissable for fans of The Empire of the Vampire by Jay Kristoff, The Priory of the Orange Tree by Samantha Shannon, and Mistborn by Brandon Sanderson.
I’d like to draw your attention to ‘effortless queerness’, because LOL NO. There is one very minor nonbinary character, and one very minor gay character; we spend hardly any time with either of them and honestly in the first half of the book neither were important or relevant. The main characters, and all the secondary characters, are cishet, and yes, I was crushingly disappointed.
(And frustrated by how much of an afterthought the nonbinary characters are – we glimpse a few beside the one minor character, so supposedly being nonbinary is normalised, but there are still things like people defaulting to saying ‘ladies and gentlemen’ and whatever. Which…wouldn’t be a default in a society that had normalised enby folx.)
Small point, but if I have to hear/read anyone referring to a femme as a ‘slit’ ever again someone is getting stabbed. Only one character in this book used that kind of language but he used it ALL THE TIME and I hate it. (And again, this breaks the worldbuilding, because if this setting doesn’t value women less, why is ‘slit’ an insult? Hmmmmmmmm?)
Another small point: this book can’t decide if it’s written in past-tense or present-tense and I hate that as well. Mid-paragraph, sometimes mid-sentence switching tenses, in a way that doesn’t read as intentionally trying to create a specific effect. It’s just deeply wonky and I twitched every time it happened.
Being unable to stick to one tense is far from the only issue with the prose. While it’s mostly fine – not pretty, not great, but perfectly fine – every now and then there’s a jarringly weird and/or confusing image. Examples include;
The Yaw, the Hesper sailors called it- that sickening lurch that could sink a ship like a sucked thumb.
…Last time I checked, sucking your thumb doesn’t sink a ship of any kind, actually?
Finally: because this is published by Gollancz, it’s stuffed full of typos; few spelling errors, things like ‘of’ that should be ‘off’, but lots of things like commas or full stops coming after speech marks when they should come before. Because Gollancz can’t copy-edit to save their lives. S2g, these days I get so upset when I see they’re publishing a book I care about, because I know the copy-editing will be wretched. FOR THE LOVE OF FUCK, GOLLANCZ, HIRE SOMEONE WHO CAN COPY-EDIT ALREADY. And then pay them well and give them time to do their job properly. How are you not humiliated by the messes you keep putting out???
So yeah – I quit. I was looking forward to this for YEARS, but it’s a disaster. Colour me crushed.
February 8, 2026
I'm going to spoiler some of my review as reading it before you read the book wouldn't necessarily be helpful.
I'd been looking forward to this for ages - several years - since the author first started talking about it on social media. I like a big, dense fantasy novel full of incredible world-building, and this is certainly that.
There's so much to enjoy here. A beautifully rendered world full of terror and wonder, some really interesting kinds of magic (Crowkisser's crow magic is stunningly described) and, maybe most interestingly, Ship and Shroud are middle aged - over forty, certainly, with all kinds of minor physical issues related to that, which, as a middle-aged person, I found quite unexpected and relateable. The main characters in fanstasy novels are often mostly young, or youngish, aren't they, and for good reason. *gets awkwardly out of chair, hobbles to kitchen*
It's taken me absolutely ages to read this, almost two months. Admittedly I have read at least 12 other books alongside it. This is unusual for me with fiction. It's a very long book, but that's not the reason. It's also very dense, which again, is not the reason. (Fantasy is often very dense - Marlon James' Black Leopard Red Wolf, for example, is a good example of this, but it only took me two weeks. I read NK Jemison's entire Broken Earth trilogy - yes, all three volumes - in less than a week.)
Torrubia has an eye for poetic description and a skill with simile/metaphor which is often very enjoyable. Some of the writing is really beautiful. But sometimes it's maybe a bit 'chewy'? The complexity of the writing, and in places the structure, made it feel a more effortful read in some places.
The cities and landscapes are very solidly conjured; I can absolutely visualise this world and the places in it. The changes in the landscape are beautifully reflected in the writing.
I found the first third very slow going, (hence my reading loads of other things) despite enjoying the descriptions and world-building. The explanations of 'what happened earlier' i.e. the reasons we're reading about what Ship and Shroud are up to, are slow to come, and having finished the book (with no indication of whether there's a sequel; I assume there will be?) there are lots of things I'm still unsure about. Some of them (like exactly why Shroudweaver left his family) are very much the sort of things you have to wait for, in trilogies.
Trilogies are kind of annoying, aren't they? I think this increasingly as I get older. Partly because fantasy is often quite intense (the battle scenes in this - especially the second battle of Thell, told from like, four different perspectives - are grindingly unpleasant - which, you might argue, is because war is hell, man - but still not exactly fun) and you know that hey, volume one builds to an almost climax, but then we have to get through volume two and volume three as well before we really get to a conclusion. (I really felt this with the final volume of RJ Barker's Wyrdwood, btw, that it had taken me almost as long to get through it as it took the protagonists.)
Would I recommend this? Yes, of course, but with maybe some caveats. If you like this sort of thing you'll probably like it! It really is beautifully written and imagined.
I'd been looking forward to this for ages - several years - since the author first started talking about it on social media. I like a big, dense fantasy novel full of incredible world-building, and this is certainly that.
There's so much to enjoy here. A beautifully rendered world full of terror and wonder, some really interesting kinds of magic (Crowkisser's crow magic is stunningly described) and, maybe most interestingly, Ship and Shroud are middle aged - over forty, certainly, with all kinds of minor physical issues related to that, which, as a middle-aged person, I found quite unexpected and relateable. The main characters in fanstasy novels are often mostly young, or youngish, aren't they, and for good reason. *gets awkwardly out of chair, hobbles to kitchen*
It's taken me absolutely ages to read this, almost two months. Admittedly I have read at least 12 other books alongside it. This is unusual for me with fiction. It's a very long book, but that's not the reason. It's also very dense, which again, is not the reason. (Fantasy is often very dense - Marlon James' Black Leopard Red Wolf, for example, is a good example of this, but it only took me two weeks. I read NK Jemison's entire Broken Earth trilogy - yes, all three volumes - in less than a week.)
Torrubia has an eye for poetic description and a skill with simile/metaphor which is often very enjoyable. Some of the writing is really beautiful. But sometimes it's maybe a bit 'chewy'? The complexity of the writing, and in places the structure, made it feel a more effortful read in some places.
The cities and landscapes are very solidly conjured; I can absolutely visualise this world and the places in it. The changes in the landscape are beautifully reflected in the writing.
I found the first third very slow going, (hence my reading loads of other things) despite enjoying the descriptions and world-building. The explanations of 'what happened earlier' i.e. the reasons we're reading about what Ship and Shroud are up to, are slow to come, and having finished the book (with no indication of whether there's a sequel; I assume there will be?) there are lots of things I'm still unsure about. Some of them (like exactly why Shroudweaver left his family) are very much the sort of things you have to wait for, in trilogies.
Trilogies are kind of annoying, aren't they? I think this increasingly as I get older. Partly because fantasy is often quite intense (the battle scenes in this - especially the second battle of Thell, told from like, four different perspectives - are grindingly unpleasant - which, you might argue, is because war is hell, man - but still not exactly fun) and you know that hey, volume one builds to an almost climax, but then we have to get through volume two and volume three as well before we really get to a conclusion. (I really felt this with the final volume of RJ Barker's Wyrdwood, btw, that it had taken me almost as long to get through it as it took the protagonists.)
Would I recommend this? Yes, of course, but with maybe some caveats. If you like this sort of thing you'll probably like it! It really is beautifully written and imagined.
December 15, 2025
Thank you to Gollancz for an ARC of this book
The Shipwright and The Shroudweaver, an epic fantasy novel by Rafael Torrubia, took me a while to adjust to the writing but once I did it was a beautifully written layered story that engulfs us in magic and takes us on a poetic journey that will leave you wanting for more.
Straight to the characters here. There is such complexity in these characters and I'm a thorough enjoyer of people who aren't your typical good or evil. Torrubia really excels in creating humane characters and providing so much depth to their actions and the way they work. They'll really have you thinking about what is right and wrong and if it really matters. I love that instead of having names we have professions - Shipwright and Shroudweaver, Crowkisser - because this adds to the mystery. What happened that names are lost? The way that Torrubia has added this subtle yet heavy point is outstanding.
I think we all know that I love a story with worldbuilding and this was exceptional here. We have lore that is easy to understand but runs so deep. We have the cataclysm, post-cataclysm, the shaping of the world and we are dropped this information so elegantly that you have to take a breath to read it.
The story itself is an tightly wound web and one that just needs to be experienced. It's a journey to vanquish the ultimate evil but what Torrubia inserts into your mind has you morally questioning everything.
This was a great debut and once it got started it never let up. A beautifully written novel with fantastic output.
Want to read
February 19, 2026Reminding myself I want to read this at some point.
February 13, 2026
This book made me very irrational, so I’m going to try formulate a proper review below. Spoilers will be there throughout, so you’ve been warned, and if you loved it, find another review to read (or get a lobotomy, one or the other).
TLDR: This book has no right to be 770 pages, it tries way too hard, and while the plot and story would be promising, the execution leaves too much to be desired for this to be a strong fantasy novel worth recommending.
Breaking my thoughts down into specific sections . . .
1. Structure
This book desperately needed a structural edit. With the long-winded and detailed history, it would have benefited from a few things. One, section breaks, like big epics such as Stormlight Archive, Priory of the Orange Tree or LOTR. The reader needs to know where the peaks and troughs are in the story, and where which arcs are starting so it provides some grounding in the story.
Second, it should have had very clear delineations between when it was dropping into the past and present. So often I’d be reading and then realise “Wait, they’re in the past, what?” and I’d have to go back to figure out when it shifted. Having chapters specifically focused on the past would have made it make so much more sense, and also would have created this sense of urgency of going “What happened in the past that was so awful and terrible?”
Third, there is no good reason why this book was 770 pages. It should have started at the 217-page mark, with some back to memory chapters to give you an idea of what and why the story was moving the way it could have. Then it would have felt like a tight story, not the meandering mess it actually was. By the time I got to 85%, I had worked out that 8 pages = 1% of the book, so I could properly commit to finishing – that’s never a good sign.
Finally, the plot beats don’t particularly work, where at certain points in the story there’s a poignant “Aha!” moment. The only one that landed was 50% of the way through when Crowkisser engaged with the Emperor and it was a moment of “Ok, now we’re going somewhere. At the 85% mark, we still don’t know why Crowkisser hates her Dad, it comes too late in the piece for it to actually feel like it’s a big deal and it’s just not a structurally sound book.
2. Story Elements/Characters
The actual plot of the book is decent, and intriguing, and this is where most of my disappointment comes from. The concept of the gods dying, and how that impacts society? The fact people used to have gods in them that influenced their lives, but in ways that you can’t really figure out because of how complex that process is? People having their names taken from them? 20 years ago that changing, but the consequences haunt the supposed ‘heroes’? All of that is absolutely golden for storytelling, but the execution just completely fails at delivering this rich story. Any stars that this book gets are to do with the storyline and the POTENTIAL for greatness.
As far as characters go, there’s too many of them to start, though as someone who loves reading epic fantasy, I can get around that. The problem is I found it very hard to keep track of who was who when any of the words sounded similar. Ropecharmer and Roofkeeper? Skinhead and Skipweaver? Shroudweaver and Shipwright? I was so confused so often. I wish there had been delineating factors.
Characters I liked were Icecaller and Kinghammer, and I also liked Roofkeeper and Quickfish’ storyline.
Crowkisser and Shroudweaver I found frustrating, particularly with how their storylines interweaved at the end – what do you mean they reunited with love?? She’s been killing people the whole time?? It took too long to get her explanation, and we never truly got a good answer as to why Shroudweaver deserted his daughter. Terrible parenting. If we’d gotten that interaction at 50% of the way through, and then they reunited at the end, I would have felt that landed better, but it was just such a random and rushed reunification and I hated it.
I was also super frustrated by the fact Shroudweaver didn’t have a plan to engage with Crowkisser. Everyone’s like “We’ll kill her” and he’s like, “Noooo” but with ZERO plan? Grow up man.
The ending for Shroudweaver and Shipwright kinda sucked, but to be honest, I get it. There needed to be some consequences for them playing god with all these different pieces. Shipwright deserved better. Shroudweaver can go sink in the ocean.
I don’t love that so much of the ending is ambiguous – Crowkisser just disappears to go fight another big bad, Fallon and Arissa are just happy chappy not even worried about their son, Quickfish and Roofkeeper are just stuck somewhere. I know it was done that way to lay the groundwork for book 2, but it just felt like lazy writing and a way to hook people into reading the sequel and after 770 pages I felt ripped off.
Also, why are there GUNS in this world????
3. Writing
The writing is absolutely where this book lets the reader down. It is trying SO hard to be an epic book, that it fails miserably at it. I feel like it tries very hard to be like Priory of the Orange Tree, with all these different lands coming together to fight a big bad, but it just doesn’t get the elements right.
I loved the lyrical writing to start, but after 50 pages of it and very little explanation of how the magical system worked, it just got laborious. This was not a fun book to read because it was work. I love a complex story, and a complex political world, but only if you can actually make sense of it. With a gun to my head, there’s no chance I could tell you how the magic worked, or why everyone had different magics.
There were also just sentences that didn’t make sense, e.g. “They feel small salted lives wink out.” What is a ‘salted life’? Eating lots of potato crisps?
There were moments where the book was good, and that’s when it wasn’t trying so hard to be good! It’s like the author got into a mode of writing and then suddenly remembered he’s meant to be writing lyrically and just reverted to the over-flowery writing that was like wading through sludge.
It’s quite repetitive in parts, doesn’t explain core things (why were the tattoos so important?) and it is frustrating because it had such POTENTIAL to be good. I also think the little quotes at the beginning of each chapter had zero relevance. I read them so carefully every time and 50% of the time they definitely didn’t mean a thing. There were definitely times that I had no idea who was speaking either, or who the chapters were following because everyone was written the same and the names weren’t sticking in my mind.
I also really hate that it ended ambiguously. It’s obvious bait to get people to read the sequel and I don’t love that. Deliver on the goods first, answer some questions and then maybe I’ll read the sequel.
Quotes I liked:
“There’s only two things in the world that can fuck shit up that badly. Families.” She fixes them with a hard stare. “Families. And lovers.”
“That’s all it takes, little bird. Stay standing after they lash out. That’s all you need to do.”
“Crowkisser had known since her mother died what she was going to do. She was going to kill the gods. And the people of the darkness, in the painted caves beneath the earth, had given her the gift she needed to do it.”
“They’d given up their names, but they’d received themselves in return. New people, for her new world, stronger and braver and free from the gods. Free from any authority but her guiding hand.”
“Even good men are tiring, dear heart.”
In conclusion:
I dedicated too much of my time to this book to be so let down at the end and I’m disappointed. The bones of a great story are there, and I wish I’d read a version of this that gets down to it, and doesn’t meander for the sake of making it an epic 770 page mess. If you like the concept of the story, I’d encourage you to read Godkiller, which is a similar concept of defeating gods who influence society.
Read this at your own risk or if you like really flowery writing that will make you more confused than content.
2 stars (only for the story)
TLDR: This book has no right to be 770 pages, it tries way too hard, and while the plot and story would be promising, the execution leaves too much to be desired for this to be a strong fantasy novel worth recommending.
Breaking my thoughts down into specific sections . . .
1. Structure
This book desperately needed a structural edit. With the long-winded and detailed history, it would have benefited from a few things. One, section breaks, like big epics such as Stormlight Archive, Priory of the Orange Tree or LOTR. The reader needs to know where the peaks and troughs are in the story, and where which arcs are starting so it provides some grounding in the story.
Second, it should have had very clear delineations between when it was dropping into the past and present. So often I’d be reading and then realise “Wait, they’re in the past, what?” and I’d have to go back to figure out when it shifted. Having chapters specifically focused on the past would have made it make so much more sense, and also would have created this sense of urgency of going “What happened in the past that was so awful and terrible?”
Third, there is no good reason why this book was 770 pages. It should have started at the 217-page mark, with some back to memory chapters to give you an idea of what and why the story was moving the way it could have. Then it would have felt like a tight story, not the meandering mess it actually was. By the time I got to 85%, I had worked out that 8 pages = 1% of the book, so I could properly commit to finishing – that’s never a good sign.
Finally, the plot beats don’t particularly work, where at certain points in the story there’s a poignant “Aha!” moment. The only one that landed was 50% of the way through when Crowkisser engaged with the Emperor and it was a moment of “Ok, now we’re going somewhere. At the 85% mark, we still don’t know why Crowkisser hates her Dad, it comes too late in the piece for it to actually feel like it’s a big deal and it’s just not a structurally sound book.
2. Story Elements/Characters
The actual plot of the book is decent, and intriguing, and this is where most of my disappointment comes from. The concept of the gods dying, and how that impacts society? The fact people used to have gods in them that influenced their lives, but in ways that you can’t really figure out because of how complex that process is? People having their names taken from them? 20 years ago that changing, but the consequences haunt the supposed ‘heroes’? All of that is absolutely golden for storytelling, but the execution just completely fails at delivering this rich story. Any stars that this book gets are to do with the storyline and the POTENTIAL for greatness.
As far as characters go, there’s too many of them to start, though as someone who loves reading epic fantasy, I can get around that. The problem is I found it very hard to keep track of who was who when any of the words sounded similar. Ropecharmer and Roofkeeper? Skinhead and Skipweaver? Shroudweaver and Shipwright? I was so confused so often. I wish there had been delineating factors.
Characters I liked were Icecaller and Kinghammer, and I also liked Roofkeeper and Quickfish’ storyline.
Crowkisser and Shroudweaver I found frustrating, particularly with how their storylines interweaved at the end – what do you mean they reunited with love?? She’s been killing people the whole time?? It took too long to get her explanation, and we never truly got a good answer as to why Shroudweaver deserted his daughter. Terrible parenting. If we’d gotten that interaction at 50% of the way through, and then they reunited at the end, I would have felt that landed better, but it was just such a random and rushed reunification and I hated it.
I was also super frustrated by the fact Shroudweaver didn’t have a plan to engage with Crowkisser. Everyone’s like “We’ll kill her” and he’s like, “Noooo” but with ZERO plan? Grow up man.
The ending for Shroudweaver and Shipwright kinda sucked, but to be honest, I get it. There needed to be some consequences for them playing god with all these different pieces. Shipwright deserved better. Shroudweaver can go sink in the ocean.
I don’t love that so much of the ending is ambiguous – Crowkisser just disappears to go fight another big bad, Fallon and Arissa are just happy chappy not even worried about their son, Quickfish and Roofkeeper are just stuck somewhere. I know it was done that way to lay the groundwork for book 2, but it just felt like lazy writing and a way to hook people into reading the sequel and after 770 pages I felt ripped off.
Also, why are there GUNS in this world????
3. Writing
The writing is absolutely where this book lets the reader down. It is trying SO hard to be an epic book, that it fails miserably at it. I feel like it tries very hard to be like Priory of the Orange Tree, with all these different lands coming together to fight a big bad, but it just doesn’t get the elements right.
I loved the lyrical writing to start, but after 50 pages of it and very little explanation of how the magical system worked, it just got laborious. This was not a fun book to read because it was work. I love a complex story, and a complex political world, but only if you can actually make sense of it. With a gun to my head, there’s no chance I could tell you how the magic worked, or why everyone had different magics.
There were also just sentences that didn’t make sense, e.g. “They feel small salted lives wink out.” What is a ‘salted life’? Eating lots of potato crisps?
There were moments where the book was good, and that’s when it wasn’t trying so hard to be good! It’s like the author got into a mode of writing and then suddenly remembered he’s meant to be writing lyrically and just reverted to the over-flowery writing that was like wading through sludge.
It’s quite repetitive in parts, doesn’t explain core things (why were the tattoos so important?) and it is frustrating because it had such POTENTIAL to be good. I also think the little quotes at the beginning of each chapter had zero relevance. I read them so carefully every time and 50% of the time they definitely didn’t mean a thing. There were definitely times that I had no idea who was speaking either, or who the chapters were following because everyone was written the same and the names weren’t sticking in my mind.
I also really hate that it ended ambiguously. It’s obvious bait to get people to read the sequel and I don’t love that. Deliver on the goods first, answer some questions and then maybe I’ll read the sequel.
Quotes I liked:
“There’s only two things in the world that can fuck shit up that badly. Families.” She fixes them with a hard stare. “Families. And lovers.”
“That’s all it takes, little bird. Stay standing after they lash out. That’s all you need to do.”
“Crowkisser had known since her mother died what she was going to do. She was going to kill the gods. And the people of the darkness, in the painted caves beneath the earth, had given her the gift she needed to do it.”
“They’d given up their names, but they’d received themselves in return. New people, for her new world, stronger and braver and free from the gods. Free from any authority but her guiding hand.”
“Even good men are tiring, dear heart.”
In conclusion:
I dedicated too much of my time to this book to be so let down at the end and I’m disappointed. The bones of a great story are there, and I wish I’d read a version of this that gets down to it, and doesn’t meander for the sake of making it an epic 770 page mess. If you like the concept of the story, I’d encourage you to read Godkiller, which is a similar concept of defeating gods who influence society.
Read this at your own risk or if you like really flowery writing that will make you more confused than content.
2 stars (only for the story)
February 26, 2026
I have a lot of very mixed feelings about this book, and I think a lot of my issues with it don't come from the work of the author, but with how it was edited/marketed, so this is a very complicated review to write.
So first, the minor issues. The first one is that I do feel like the cover/title were slightly misleading. I love a good ocean-based book and obviously with both the cover and the title I assumed that that was what this was, but, in reality, very little of the book actually happened on the ocean, and often that was just background context to characters talking about other things. The other thing was the writing style. This book was written in present tense, which can be effective, but it led to an issue that I do see quite a bit with present tense writing which is that a lot of the sentences weren't actually complete sentences. The book was still coherent and I could always fill in the gaps myself, but it just kept taking me out of the moment when I had to do that work and I can't believe that a book made it all the way to print without this being corrected, given that these were present almost every page.
Anyway, the book itself.
This book almost read like a sequel, which I found quite interesting. It was a little confusing/frustrating at the start, when pretty much all the characters' thoughts/actions seemed inspired by events that I knew nothing about, but it actually became quite an interesting way to structure a novel. I think it works well with having older characters, in that they clearly have that history, but the history isn't the focus of the novel (or it shouldn't be, I think it could have been focussed on less) and added a really interesting layer to the worldbuilding. The plot itself got started very slowly, but I honestly just enjoyed going along with it and slowly learning about the world, the characters, and the conflicts that they faced and were going to face.
The world itself was so wonderfully described, which is another one of the reasons that the cover frustrates me, because there are so many vividly described scenes and landscapes in this books (most notably the mountain kingdom) that would have made stunning covers, but I digress. I also loved the magic system and all of its different aspects and strands. It allowed the reader to learn a lot about the magic and the world but it also retained a level of mystery in that there was always another element or another character who used magic in a completely different way, which I really loved.
The ending battle was mostly very well-done. It definitely wasn't the best battle that I've read, but it was far from the worst and I really enjoyed reading a lot of individual moments. My main problem was with the sheer number of POVs, which made it really difficult to get into. It did give a lot of perspective, but it broke up the fast-paced, immersive nature of the scene, which is something that I really value in a battle. A lot of plot points were covered multiple times as a result of this, which I did find really frustrating. I felt like the second I got immersed in one line I'd be taken back an hour in time to rehash older points. Still, I can't say that I was ever confused as to what was happening where.
I also had some mixed feelings about the ending. I liked the multiple layers of villains and how that all played out but there was a moment where I was about to give up entirely. There was a vague moment that I felt was about to become a redemption arc, and I'm glad it didn't, because there wasn't enough background or actual redemption for the character, but the way it ended instead also felt kind of unsatisfactory. I also felt like a lot of things were just kind of left open in a very frustrating way so a lot of my thoughts on this book depend on whether it's supposed to be the first in a series or not, which I can't find out at the moment.
Anyway, I did really enjoy reading this book and I think the maybe series/world and the author hold a lot of potential, it just needed a lot more editing.
9/10
So first, the minor issues. The first one is that I do feel like the cover/title were slightly misleading. I love a good ocean-based book and obviously with both the cover and the title I assumed that that was what this was, but, in reality, very little of the book actually happened on the ocean, and often that was just background context to characters talking about other things. The other thing was the writing style. This book was written in present tense, which can be effective, but it led to an issue that I do see quite a bit with present tense writing which is that a lot of the sentences weren't actually complete sentences. The book was still coherent and I could always fill in the gaps myself, but it just kept taking me out of the moment when I had to do that work and I can't believe that a book made it all the way to print without this being corrected, given that these were present almost every page.
Anyway, the book itself.
This book almost read like a sequel, which I found quite interesting. It was a little confusing/frustrating at the start, when pretty much all the characters' thoughts/actions seemed inspired by events that I knew nothing about, but it actually became quite an interesting way to structure a novel. I think it works well with having older characters, in that they clearly have that history, but the history isn't the focus of the novel (or it shouldn't be, I think it could have been focussed on less) and added a really interesting layer to the worldbuilding. The plot itself got started very slowly, but I honestly just enjoyed going along with it and slowly learning about the world, the characters, and the conflicts that they faced and were going to face.
The world itself was so wonderfully described, which is another one of the reasons that the cover frustrates me, because there are so many vividly described scenes and landscapes in this books (most notably the mountain kingdom) that would have made stunning covers, but I digress. I also loved the magic system and all of its different aspects and strands. It allowed the reader to learn a lot about the magic and the world but it also retained a level of mystery in that there was always another element or another character who used magic in a completely different way, which I really loved.
The ending battle was mostly very well-done. It definitely wasn't the best battle that I've read, but it was far from the worst and I really enjoyed reading a lot of individual moments. My main problem was with the sheer number of POVs, which made it really difficult to get into. It did give a lot of perspective, but it broke up the fast-paced, immersive nature of the scene, which is something that I really value in a battle. A lot of plot points were covered multiple times as a result of this, which I did find really frustrating. I felt like the second I got immersed in one line I'd be taken back an hour in time to rehash older points. Still, I can't say that I was ever confused as to what was happening where.
I also had some mixed feelings about the ending. I liked the multiple layers of villains and how that all played out but there was a moment where I was about to give up entirely. There was a vague moment that I felt was about to become a redemption arc, and I'm glad it didn't, because there wasn't enough background or actual redemption for the character, but the way it ended instead also felt kind of unsatisfactory. I also felt like a lot of things were just kind of left open in a very frustrating way so a lot of my thoughts on this book depend on whether it's supposed to be the first in a series or not, which I can't find out at the moment.
Anyway, I did really enjoy reading this book and I think the maybe series/world and the author hold a lot of potential, it just needed a lot more editing.
9/10
January 21, 2026
★★★★½
This book begins in fog — lyrical, rhythmic, almost oral in cadence. People and cities blur together at first, verbs applied equally to bodies and places, like a story being told aloud before its shapes fully settle. If you need concrete setting immediately, this may frustrate you. If you’re willing to let rhythm guide you, it’s deeply rewarding. The prose often opens chapters poetically and then tightens into something more conventional, a pattern that becomes part of the book’s pulse.
Early on, the author does something I appreciated: a moment that feels like a quiet contract with the reader. Through Shroudweaver’s dream, the book tells you how this story will be told and what he believes his goal to be. It’s not a spoiler — it’s orientation. From there, the real antagonist emerges, and it isn’t a person or a god. It’s inertia. “Pause” exists as the rare space where people can breathe, but what they do with that time varies wildly: some act, some prepare, some contain, and some defer. None of those choices are neutral.
At its core, this is a systems book. It’s obsessed with ledgers, cost, and payment. Different characters operate under different accounting models. Crowkisser is cost-based: every action is paid for immediately, physically, brutally, without denial or deferral. Shipwright, by contrast, operates on something closer to accrual — she purges, releases, and discharges grief and responsibility in deliberate cycles, trying to prevent interest from compounding. Others avoid payment altogether, building containment systems and hoping time will slow things down enough to figure it out later. It never does.
The characters are deeply human: loving, loyal, and often spectacularly self-deceiving. Shroudweaver, in particular, makes idiotic decisions with a sincere heart — carrying burdens alone, shifting blame, waiting for his daughter to achieve self-awareness while never fully confronting his own. That father-daughter relationship never quite landed for me emotionally. By contrast, Fallon’s devotion to his wife — even at the expense of his son — felt painfully real and true to life. Authority is frequently deferred, responsibility redistributed, and consequences postponed until they arrive all at once.
There are epic battles with enormous cost, and then the world moves on. People outside the immediate system grow fatigued, return to their lives, and absorb the aftermath as background noise. The book refuses to make sacrifice universally meaningful, and that hollowness feels intentional. It mirrors how real conflicts play out: total to those inside them, barely registered by those outside.
This isn’t a hopeful book or a tragic one. It’s a book about systems, cost, and inertia. About how people invest themselves in things that matter deeply — and how those things don’t matter to everyone in the same way. The prose is often beautiful and occasionally jarring (yes, “thunderous fart” sits right alongside genuinely stunning passages). It left me hollow, which feels honest. For me, that earns a strong four and a half stars.
This book begins in fog — lyrical, rhythmic, almost oral in cadence. People and cities blur together at first, verbs applied equally to bodies and places, like a story being told aloud before its shapes fully settle. If you need concrete setting immediately, this may frustrate you. If you’re willing to let rhythm guide you, it’s deeply rewarding. The prose often opens chapters poetically and then tightens into something more conventional, a pattern that becomes part of the book’s pulse.
Early on, the author does something I appreciated: a moment that feels like a quiet contract with the reader. Through Shroudweaver’s dream, the book tells you how this story will be told and what he believes his goal to be. It’s not a spoiler — it’s orientation. From there, the real antagonist emerges, and it isn’t a person or a god. It’s inertia. “Pause” exists as the rare space where people can breathe, but what they do with that time varies wildly: some act, some prepare, some contain, and some defer. None of those choices are neutral.
At its core, this is a systems book. It’s obsessed with ledgers, cost, and payment. Different characters operate under different accounting models. Crowkisser is cost-based: every action is paid for immediately, physically, brutally, without denial or deferral. Shipwright, by contrast, operates on something closer to accrual — she purges, releases, and discharges grief and responsibility in deliberate cycles, trying to prevent interest from compounding. Others avoid payment altogether, building containment systems and hoping time will slow things down enough to figure it out later. It never does.
The characters are deeply human: loving, loyal, and often spectacularly self-deceiving. Shroudweaver, in particular, makes idiotic decisions with a sincere heart — carrying burdens alone, shifting blame, waiting for his daughter to achieve self-awareness while never fully confronting his own. That father-daughter relationship never quite landed for me emotionally. By contrast, Fallon’s devotion to his wife — even at the expense of his son — felt painfully real and true to life. Authority is frequently deferred, responsibility redistributed, and consequences postponed until they arrive all at once.
There are epic battles with enormous cost, and then the world moves on. People outside the immediate system grow fatigued, return to their lives, and absorb the aftermath as background noise. The book refuses to make sacrifice universally meaningful, and that hollowness feels intentional. It mirrors how real conflicts play out: total to those inside them, barely registered by those outside.
This isn’t a hopeful book or a tragic one. It’s a book about systems, cost, and inertia. About how people invest themselves in things that matter deeply — and how those things don’t matter to everyone in the same way. The prose is often beautiful and occasionally jarring (yes, “thunderous fart” sits right alongside genuinely stunning passages). It left me hollow, which feels honest. For me, that earns a strong four and a half stars.
March 6, 2026
3.5 stars - let me start by saying this is a stunning book, from the gorgeously designed cover that beautifully reflects the hidden meanings in lyrical writing. And while I hoped this would be a 5 star, it did feel like a debut that needed more direction on pacing and plotting. The flowery writing, together with unusual character names (Crowkisser, Icebreaker, Quickfish etc.) makes already for an advanced read. But to then also have a narration style that both observes the story as well as in the characters head, and have whole chapters without a dialogue makes it hard to root yourself in the story. I don't need a clear direction in my books but after 500 pages I struggled to keep going. There are chapters of only 5 pages that immediately continue into the next one so dont need to be contained, while there is a 40 page chapter where our main POV Shroudweaver mid chapter stares into the sky and goes down memory lane with a pespective from years back. Its odd, and while that can be its own quality in this book it just took me out of the story too much and made me disconnect with the characters.
For comparison what Shipwright reminded me off is The Spear Cuts Through Water, both in the beautiful writing and the sacrificial heartwrenching story. It also made me think of Black Sun, with the magical gods, especially the crow god and Serapio's upbringing. I just want to acknowledge that the writer did something amazing as a first book: writing an Epic fantasy story in a post apocalyptic world where gods are mourned and names have disappeared. Family bonds are tricky and horrific stuff has happened (eating an emperor being one of them). Not needing to make things, cosy, romantasy or spicy. But actually having adult characters trying to help humanity. It is truly want I want in my stories, and even though this first attempt is not for me I will defenitly keep an eye out for more by the author!
For comparison what Shipwright reminded me off is The Spear Cuts Through Water, both in the beautiful writing and the sacrificial heartwrenching story. It also made me think of Black Sun, with the magical gods, especially the crow god and Serapio's upbringing. I just want to acknowledge that the writer did something amazing as a first book: writing an Epic fantasy story in a post apocalyptic world where gods are mourned and names have disappeared. Family bonds are tricky and horrific stuff has happened (eating an emperor being one of them). Not needing to make things, cosy, romantasy or spicy. But actually having adult characters trying to help humanity. It is truly want I want in my stories, and even though this first attempt is not for me I will defenitly keep an eye out for more by the author!
January 1, 2026
I really wanted to love this book. On paper it was everything I want in a fantasy; beautiful, lyrical writing, expansive world-building, an interesting magic system, complex characters. However all of these things just didn’t come together for me.
The writing really is beautiful, some of perhaps the most lush and beautiful writing I’ve read in ages. However, it does meander a lot and I often found myself halfway through an incredibly descriptive paragraph and wondering what the author was actually trying to convey.
The structure was frustrating as well. I am all for a non-linear narrative but I found the weaving in and out of different time frames to be quite confusing, especially when it mostly dealt with the same characters. Without any real, clear indication that we were in a flashback, it would take sometimes a whole page before I could reorient myself in the story. It was frustrating as this happened so often and when you are dealing with a 700+ page novel it makes it quite hard work to get through it.
I really did like the characters, and I thought the antagonists were excellent. I would have liked more from the magic system, how it worked etc. I am guessing there will be a next book and I may read it as this one ended on quite the cliffhanger so hopefully there’s more information in that one!
The writing really is beautiful, some of perhaps the most lush and beautiful writing I’ve read in ages. However, it does meander a lot and I often found myself halfway through an incredibly descriptive paragraph and wondering what the author was actually trying to convey.
The structure was frustrating as well. I am all for a non-linear narrative but I found the weaving in and out of different time frames to be quite confusing, especially when it mostly dealt with the same characters. Without any real, clear indication that we were in a flashback, it would take sometimes a whole page before I could reorient myself in the story. It was frustrating as this happened so often and when you are dealing with a 700+ page novel it makes it quite hard work to get through it.
I really did like the characters, and I thought the antagonists were excellent. I would have liked more from the magic system, how it worked etc. I am guessing there will be a next book and I may read it as this one ended on quite the cliffhanger so hopefully there’s more information in that one!
February 13, 2026
This book, unfortunately, is bad. As mentioned by others it's stuffed to the brim with metaphors and similes, sometimes two or three in a row. Like a box full of rocks, a bag stuffed with hair or a mouth filled with onions.
All the characters sound the same and all of them talk like we know what they're talking about, but you feel like a stranger throughout the book. A lot of dialogue along lines of "You know what happened last time..." without ever really covering what happened last time.
And I promise you, you've never read the word "scraps" so many times in your life. Everything is scraps or bones. Everything.
The prose is so acrobatic that you lose the thread of what is happening a lot of the time. In a short story you'd think it was cute, but over 800 pages it is grating.
I only finished it so that I could give it a fair review. It gets 1 star for a vaguely interesting story that is stretched thin over characters doing nothing for 95% of the story. Then we get to the end and we get to see the same moment from about 4 long perspectives then they just magic out of their predicament.
I'm sad that it wasn't good, because the premise sounded great.
All the characters sound the same and all of them talk like we know what they're talking about, but you feel like a stranger throughout the book. A lot of dialogue along lines of "You know what happened last time..." without ever really covering what happened last time.
And I promise you, you've never read the word "scraps" so many times in your life. Everything is scraps or bones. Everything.
The prose is so acrobatic that you lose the thread of what is happening a lot of the time. In a short story you'd think it was cute, but over 800 pages it is grating.
I only finished it so that I could give it a fair review. It gets 1 star for a vaguely interesting story that is stretched thin over characters doing nothing for 95% of the story. Then we get to the end and we get to see the same moment from about 4 long perspectives then they just magic out of their predicament.
I'm sad that it wasn't good, because the premise sounded great.
January 27, 2026
I had a wonderful time reading this - the prose is gorgeous and redolent, the characters weighed down by history, and I loved the simultaneously rich but brittle sense of the world. I found the ending immensely frustrating in a way that would not have been the case had this been listed anywhere on anything ever as being the first book in a series.
I may add more after book club.
I may add more after book club.
January 7, 2026
I’m not usually a reviewer for non-arc books but I need to make a note for myself.
This is a good/bad audiobook. Good because the writing is incredible and poetic. The narrator also amazing. The bad is that my brain would go in to hibernation mode while listening. It was so soothing that I’m sure I missed a lot. This is one I’ll need to reread the physical book.
This is a good/bad audiobook. Good because the writing is incredible and poetic. The narrator also amazing. The bad is that my brain would go in to hibernation mode while listening. It was so soothing that I’m sure I missed a lot. This is one I’ll need to reread the physical book.
January 14, 2026
I'm kind of in two minds about this one. This book has a really distinctive and lyrical writing style, which I appreciated, but at the same time it sometimes felt overwrought and difficult to follow what was actually happening. It also doesn't help that important world-building and backstory details are withheld from the reader, so you really don't get a clear picture of what's happening until very late in the book, and even then some things felt underexplained. I think this approach did sometimes work in the book's favour to create a sense of intrigue, but also sometimes just left me feeling confused. I felt like I couldn't immerse myself fully into the world and story, almost as if the writing itself was holding me at arm's length.
I'm glad I persisted with it though, because there was a really good story in here. I really liked the cast of characters and was eager to learn more about the history of the world, how the main conflict had arisen and how it would be resolved (although I did find the ending itself somewhat unsatisfying, it kinda just felt like the conflict fizzled out). Overall I think this book showed a lot of promise which wasn't always entirely realised, but there was a lot to like about it nonetheless.
I'm glad I persisted with it though, because there was a really good story in here. I really liked the cast of characters and was eager to learn more about the history of the world, how the main conflict had arisen and how it would be resolved (although I did find the ending itself somewhat unsatisfying, it kinda just felt like the conflict fizzled out). Overall I think this book showed a lot of promise which wasn't always entirely realised, but there was a lot to like about it nonetheless.
December 25, 2025
Spectacular! Favourite read of the year! The characters are complex and nuanced; the world feels rich and lived-in - there is tradition and history I'd be so curious to learn more about. The prose is quite lyrical and gives the text and story a beautiful cadence and rhythm (took me a bit to get into, but thoroughly enjoyed it then). This combo of prose, worldbuilding, and characters makes the noves feel ancient, golden-age fantasy, and very contemporaty at the same time.
December 11, 2025
This is sold as a dark fairytale of epic proportions. Unfortunately that is where the troubles start for me and this book.
Let us begin with the framing for this story. The plot has, as its starting point, events that took place three years prior, but there is never any real explanation for what happened until near the end of the book, leaving you to guess how the characters have ended up in the predicament they find themselves in.
Then there are the characters themselves. Depending on how you want to count there are 5 groups of main characters, with at least two more groups of minor characters. It ends up being difficult to keep track of everyone.
As I was reading I kept being struck by the thought that this book could do with being broken up, which might have helped its readability for me.
And all of that is a shame because this book started off strongly for me, but ended up getting bogged down in its sheer scale and complexity.
I think if I were to give this book another go I would need a whiteboard to keep track of everyone and what's happening, but before that I would want a prequel to help my understanding.
Happy Reading.
Let us begin with the framing for this story. The plot has, as its starting point, events that took place three years prior, but there is never any real explanation for what happened until near the end of the book, leaving you to guess how the characters have ended up in the predicament they find themselves in.
Then there are the characters themselves. Depending on how you want to count there are 5 groups of main characters, with at least two more groups of minor characters. It ends up being difficult to keep track of everyone.
As I was reading I kept being struck by the thought that this book could do with being broken up, which might have helped its readability for me.
And all of that is a shame because this book started off strongly for me, but ended up getting bogged down in its sheer scale and complexity.
I think if I were to give this book another go I would need a whiteboard to keep track of everyone and what's happening, but before that I would want a prequel to help my understanding.
Happy Reading.
February 15, 2026
I can't stress how beautiful the prose of this book is, but far out this entire book, with the exception of maybe 10 chapters (out of 93), was annoying to read.
Plot: Shipwright is a master Sailor and ship maker, Shroudweaver uses the souls of the dead to make gods that can create small magics. No one has proper names anymore after they were stolen. Ship and Shroud try to save what's left of the world, 20 years after they did it last time in their youth.
In small doses this book blew my mind. The way things were described, the way peoples minds worked, were just stunning. I captured (ebook) so many phrases and paragraphs that I just wanted to remember how good the words were.
But for 500 of the 770 pages NOTHING happened. We got little bits of the characters histories (in disjointed parts, and often in flashbacks that badly joined to what was happening in the present), we got small parts of relationships, but most of it was recounting the past or having conversations that added little to the overall story.
I LOVED that the two main characters were older and had a fascinating past: old wars, old homes, old families. It added so much depth to them that I never realised you dont really get from all these 20 year old characters in most books.
Also the chapters around chapter 70 where there was a massive battle: holy moly they were some of the best chapters I've ever read. So much grit, so many interesting points of view. All the magic of characters that were never explained or shown came out and it was so fricking spectacular.
I hated in the ending. Not sure if theres supposed to be a sequel, or whether it was just supposed to end ambiguously, but nothing really got resolved (or felt it did) and where main characters finished in the journeys was very grey.
But did the amazing battles scenes make the book worth reading? Im still not sure. If i could read the book in small doses and still retain what was happening it probably wouldve been better. But I can't read it in 5 page increments over a year. I like to get immersed and the lack of anything happening constantly made it feel like I was forcing myself to continue, rather than wanting to continue.
So still on the fence. Prose: amazing. Pacing: terrible. World: fascinating. Story: very unique.
Plot: Shipwright is a master Sailor and ship maker, Shroudweaver uses the souls of the dead to make gods that can create small magics. No one has proper names anymore after they were stolen. Ship and Shroud try to save what's left of the world, 20 years after they did it last time in their youth.
In small doses this book blew my mind. The way things were described, the way peoples minds worked, were just stunning. I captured (ebook) so many phrases and paragraphs that I just wanted to remember how good the words were.
But for 500 of the 770 pages NOTHING happened. We got little bits of the characters histories (in disjointed parts, and often in flashbacks that badly joined to what was happening in the present), we got small parts of relationships, but most of it was recounting the past or having conversations that added little to the overall story.
I LOVED that the two main characters were older and had a fascinating past: old wars, old homes, old families. It added so much depth to them that I never realised you dont really get from all these 20 year old characters in most books.
Also the chapters around chapter 70 where there was a massive battle: holy moly they were some of the best chapters I've ever read. So much grit, so many interesting points of view. All the magic of characters that were never explained or shown came out and it was so fricking spectacular.
I hated in the ending. Not sure if theres supposed to be a sequel, or whether it was just supposed to end ambiguously, but nothing really got resolved (or felt it did) and where main characters finished in the journeys was very grey.
But did the amazing battles scenes make the book worth reading? Im still not sure. If i could read the book in small doses and still retain what was happening it probably wouldve been better. But I can't read it in 5 page increments over a year. I like to get immersed and the lack of anything happening constantly made it feel like I was forcing myself to continue, rather than wanting to continue.
So still on the fence. Prose: amazing. Pacing: terrible. World: fascinating. Story: very unique.
January 16, 2026
This was a big one that took time!
I was immediately taken by the blurp, but having finished the book now I am quite disappointed.
The magic and potential the story has is great and I want to know so much more about some people and events and some of the kinds of magic that exist in this world. However, the way the story is told and the way it ENDS are a different story.
It takes about half the book for you to find out what happened 1) 20 years ago in Tell (what the Emperor did and how he was defeated) - which is not a bad thing in itself, it was actually great to see all the hints that were dropped and then to see the events unfold in full in Shroud's memory - and 2) in the south that killed the gods and took away people's names.
After that, you get a pretty good idea of what is going to happen - and it does, it just takes about 200-300 more pages to get there. And then it all goes sideways.
In the end, there is still so much more that needs to be done (urgently - because there are now more problems than we started with, but also threads of plot lines and characters that show so much promise!) and then it just ... ends? I felt left hanging there - especially as I can't find any information as to whether this is meant to be a stand-alone or become a series. The latter would make the most sense based on the things that are left unsolved in the book.
Another thing that was quite hard for me was the shift between the tenses for the now-time and the memories/flashbacks. It would have been a bit easier if there were paragraphs between those sections, but most of the times they flowed into each other without warning which made the sudden shift in tense jarring and made reading this book even slower.
I was immediately taken by the blurp, but having finished the book now I am quite disappointed.
The magic and potential the story has is great and I want to know so much more about some people and events and some of the kinds of magic that exist in this world. However, the way the story is told and the way it ENDS are a different story.
It takes about half the book for you to find out what happened 1) 20 years ago in Tell (what the Emperor did and how he was defeated) - which is not a bad thing in itself, it was actually great to see all the hints that were dropped and then to see the events unfold in full in Shroud's memory - and 2) in the south that killed the gods and took away people's names.
After that, you get a pretty good idea of what is going to happen - and it does, it just takes about 200-300 more pages to get there. And then it all goes sideways.
In the end, there is still so much more that needs to be done (urgently - because there are now more problems than we started with, but also threads of plot lines and characters that show so much promise!) and then it just ... ends? I felt left hanging there - especially as I can't find any information as to whether this is meant to be a stand-alone or become a series. The latter would make the most sense based on the things that are left unsolved in the book.
Another thing that was quite hard for me was the shift between the tenses for the now-time and the memories/flashbacks. It would have been a bit easier if there were paragraphs between those sections, but most of the times they flowed into each other without warning which made the sudden shift in tense jarring and made reading this book even slower.
February 4, 2026
DNF @ 220pages
The main problem is this book seems to meander without getting to the point. Lots of chapters, even this early on, that I felt didn't really add anything to the story or characters. Over 200 pages in and the only exciting thing to happen was a small skirmish between 4 characters that was over in a few pages. In fact, I'm fairly sure the first 200 pages only covers 3 days. I was questioning how the story could possibly be wrapped up in the next 500+ pages, and from reading other reviews it seems it is not.
I'm no stranger to slow burn fantasy either, but this one just couldn't hold my attention. There needs to be more interesting hooks within the first 200 pages (I can't really comment beyond that).
The main problem is this book seems to meander without getting to the point. Lots of chapters, even this early on, that I felt didn't really add anything to the story or characters. Over 200 pages in and the only exciting thing to happen was a small skirmish between 4 characters that was over in a few pages. In fact, I'm fairly sure the first 200 pages only covers 3 days. I was questioning how the story could possibly be wrapped up in the next 500+ pages, and from reading other reviews it seems it is not.
I'm no stranger to slow burn fantasy either, but this one just couldn't hold my attention. There needs to be more interesting hooks within the first 200 pages (I can't really comment beyond that).
Did not finish
March 22, 2026Well, looks like this book gets to be the first for the new built-in DNF shelf 🙈 I just did not enjoy this writing style at all, I think it's too overwritten (trying too hard to be very poetic) and as a result the pacing and worldbuilding really suffers. I read 100 pages of this and I understood barely anything about the world or characters, but worse is the fact that I didn't care to understand it. I really liked the first chapter and some of the turns of phrase, but after that the style became so grating so quickly.
September 22, 2025
A dark fairytale of epic proportions. Torrubia casts a spell with his poetic prose and portrays a strange, magical world full of complex and compelling characters. This is quite unlike most fantasy novels being published today. It reminds me, almost, of an epic prose poem. Half the pleasure of reading it is the rhythm of the words and the timbre of the language. Torrubia has a real gift, and it's on full display.
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