Reviews for The order war

The average rating for The order war based on 2 reviews is 3.5 stars.

Review # 1 was written on 2021-02-11 00:00:00 Nancy Schimmel This is, by any definition, a wonderful series that is set up in a way to define and redefine the conflicts of magic between Order and Chaos. It probably would not be remotely as interesting a read had it been written in a strictly chronological order, however. If these had been released in chronological order, then I'm certain that the grand reveals would have come across as rather cheap rather than shocking and rather amazingly thoughtful. I like it very much this way. We get vast happenings out of order, seeing the results of huge cataclysms after the fact only to later get their inceptions. It's like getting to time-travel back to many mythical pasts to see what they were really like. Or to discover that a humble beginning can always hide a rather nasty surprise. These plots have all be individually wonderful and sometimes shocking. Even so, they're always in service to the greater theme even if they're not explicitly vocalized. We already got that in the first novel. The trick here is to find the true balance, and that's never something that can be set in amber. The more chaos in the world, the more powerful the order, and vice-versa, and the solution is never easy. In this book's case, it's settled explosively. I chortled in glee during several tank scenes. Well worth the read. Quite satisfying.

Review # 2 was written on 2019-11-10 00:00:00 Matt Ammerman I am hopeful that with this installment done and dusted that the next one will be more to my taste. So far, I have enjoyed book two the most, with my engagement falling during books three and four. These two books have included far too many blacksmithing details and far too many details about gears, clutches, fuel tanks, and wheels. Boring! The other problem I'm having with this series is that the emotions experienced by the characters feel very wooden to me. I feel like I'm being held away at arms' length from their emotional lives. For me, that makes it pretty difficult to care about them. The ending of this volume gives me hope that we may be moving away from all of the engineering details that have dominated the last two books and that we are moving toward more magic and regular fantasy-novel type adventures. If that's not true, please don't tell me. I've got the next book queued up in my TBR pile and hope to read it before year's end! Book number 333 in my Science Fiction and Fantasy Reading Project.