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1.5/5 - One of my college professors said that any repeated bit in a story needs to have intention and serve a different purpose than the time before it. I wish this author had taken that advice. Clearly, there is a stream-of-consciousness happening in the narration, but it's so literal that we spent multiple paragraphs describing the length, style, and amount of tangles in the protagonist's hair. (Even so, I never knew what color it was until the last few chapters of the book. Yes, we do keep talking about his hair across the entire thing.) Agony. Then, there's the element of telling instead of showing. Nothing is left to the reader's perception; instead, every thought is spelled out on the page, sometimes in ways that even distract from the story. One example is when a character gets up to hug someone - it was not worth stealing focus from an emotional moment to share that they had a bowl in their lap and tried not to spill it. Toddlers are the only ones asking these questions. A real line from the book: "It felt as if it had been thousands of years since she had last felt such a thing. It had been thousands of years since she had last felt such a thing." (Chapter 17)

Similarly, the choice (if I can call it that) to switch POV characters added nothing to the story. A few pages are spent on the companion of our main character as well as on a few of his brothers - yet, all of these perspectives add up to the same content. Tamsin sad, journey hard. Worse still is the entire section dedicated to his lover, Klara, reminiscing about how they created the world together. The tone is narratively passive and feels more like a dreamy retelling than anything actionable. Tell me, how does it make sense to interrupt the hero's return for that? I must also mention the grating repetition in Klara's section. Filler sentences are constant, adding to the passive feeling, like there's not enough known information and we have to make up the missing pieces. In particular, if I had to read one more version of "people still sang now, but nobody Sang [magically]", I was about to lose my mind. It was included at least 25 times. This is terrible writing and completely lost any focus and plot it had managed to build.

The only things giving this book 1.5 stars are the concept - I do like the general idea of a bloodied warrior having to learn to be soft, and this did lead to some charming, tender moments - and some of the prose. When isolated, it was pretty. I did also enjoy the mentions of gender fluidity, as two characters were so close that they often imitated each other with no concern.

All in all, it's not the worst book I've ever read, but it is near the bottom. Genre preferences aside, I cannot recommend this in good faith.

Content warnings for death, war, injury, and grief.

Used for 2024 r/Fantasy Bingo (bards, hard mode); also fits multi-POV (hard mode), published in 2024, self-published, and character with a disability (arguably).