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I think I was doing better for awhile at finishing trilogies/series. Like…maybe? Maybe I was.

But looking at my shelves now, I’m really feeling the urge to finish up some of the great trilogies I’ve started & not finished. There seems to be a TON of book threes that have released in the last year, so yeah…time to refocus and get some of them finished!!

It feels like Anthony Ryan’s trilogy, THE COVENANT OF STEEL, has gone by in the blink of an eye! Each of the three books have released during the summer, for the last three years, culminating with THE TRAITOR. I’ve loved all of these books so much, and I’m sad to be saying goodbye to this world & these characters!

Taken as a whole, the character arc for Alwyn Scribe is just…fucking tremendous. This is one of those trilogies where, when you finish, it’s almost impossible to think of Alwyn as the same person we met back at the beginning of THE PARIAH.

Picking up after the sorta DUN DUN DUNNNN ending of THE MARTYR, we see the relationship between Alwyn and Evadine Courlain begin to show signs of strain. While it’s hard for Alwyn to shake the sense of infatuation & reverence he feels for Evadine, he knows too much now, and her motives are not nearly as pure as she’d have all her followers believe.

While a huge chunk of THE MARTYR was spent in the midst of a frenetic & bloody siege, THE TRAITOR takes on a more “grim final march towards battle” quality…Alwyn is tired of fighting. The people around him, his chosen family…they are all worn down. But an epic battle looms, as Alwyn must make the decision to bring the fight to Evadine’s doorstep.

The secondary characters in this trilogy are all so vivid & uniquely written. It felt like we spent a lot more time with Juhlina this time around, and got to know a lot more about her beyond whatever identity she earned as “The Widow.” I’m biting my tongue on some other character arcs because I want to avoid spoilers, but needless to say I was fucking delighted with the direction that Ryan took some of my favorite secondary characters!

I’ve been working on this review for far too long & life stuff has just had a way of taking up a whole lot of my energy, so I’m not going to agonize over including too much (or too little) of the plot here.

It’s a point that I’ve made in several other reviews, but I just think Anthony Ryan is so tremendously gifted as a storyteller. I still have a whole entire trilogy of his that I haven’t started (THE DRACONIS MEMORIA), and I’m hoping to remedy that in the next year.

In the meantime, Ryan has written some of my favorite fantasy novels (I think BLOOD SONG is one of the best first books in a series ever, and then I somehow loved TOWER LORD even more), and I’d happily read anything he wrote. THE COVENANT OF STEEL is a wonderful fantasy trilogy, written with a ton of heart & humor, and an incredibly keen eye for action & pacing. Yeah, I just loved all of these books a whole lot!

This is also a book where I mixed in some of the audiobook to go along with the physical, and it’s outstanding! Steven Brand is an incredible narrator, and I think his voice couldn’t be more perfectly suited to this story! Hugely recommended if you are an audiobook reader!

Massive thanks to Orbit for sending this or my way!