I don't even know where to start with this review...

Firstly, god bless John Gwynne for including a recap of the previous books at the start of this book 😌

I really enjoy the humour in this series and my favourite source of this

is Svik and his love of cheese

. It makes me chuckle so much. There are so many great characters and side characters (Spert, Vesli and Hrung). Getting some backstory on Hrung was great. This may have been mentioned in one of the previous books but I read those two years ago and could have forgotten. There are great character pairings e.g. Varg and Røkia, (

which...developed in this book

) and I loved the scenes with Glornir and Orka, they have such sweet dialogue and with Breca, too 🥹. I also loved Svik and Orka's heart to heart. I went on a bit of journey with my feelings about Elvar. At a point, I was thinking that she held a little too much power, just thralling gods and tainted, but then she redeemed herself around the

68%

mark (

freeing Ulfrir

) and then

Gwynne does the thing and kills her off 🥹

 
 
There are lots of scores settled in this book and that was so satisfying. The rune magic is amazing, I loved this so much, it just enhanced the battle scenes, which already felt like a scene from the Vikings (TV show)! The characters and the atmosphere are just incredible. The fact that this book got me so invested that I felt sad at the loss of characters was a shock to me! In summary, I would love to see this adapted! 

Thank you to NetGalley for the free eARC in exchange for an honest review.