I did it. I finally finished The Faithful and the Fallen with the ending of Wrath by John Gwynne. This series was a rollercoaster for me and I have a lot of things to say - good and bad - that might upset folks. Here's the thing, I won't lie about things I read even if I feel bad for saying some of them.

Let me quickly recap because I read the first two before I started writing out my feelings and thoughts.

• Malice: I struggled with Malice. The first half I almost put it down and I was actually shocked people loved it so much. Still, I see it on people's favorites list and it evokes a visceral reaction in me. The second half, however, proved me wrong. It picked up in huge ways I really needed. So much of Malice was Corban training and losing, repeat. The latter half, though, was all plot and story and action and moved at a much better pace.

• Valour: I liked Valour so much more, but it still had the same pacing issue. There were so many repeated motifs and settings. Run, rest, be discovered, repeat was the entire book. The exception for me was Maquin and his storyline. I lived for Maquin and Fidele's storyline in this book, it was exactly the deviation from the formula I needed.

• Ruin: Ruin was the best of the series to me. A great balance of action, plot, characters, development, and motion that I really enjoyed. It slogged itself down at times, but overall this was the strongest book in the series!

One thing I've felt about this series is every single book could've done with a 30% trim and been so much stronger and better paced for it. Each book had 20-30% in it that was just repetitive or bland or didn't serve the story or anything to me. Some of the POVs reached a point of comical versions of an archetype that if we had trimmed them back or done with one less, it would have sung.

Wrath, for me, suffered from the same problem. I'll start with the things I disliked and get those out of the way. Wrath was, overall, good. A good ending to a very popular series, in my opinion. However, there were a lot of cyclical moments in this book that pulled me out of feeling like I was reading a Book 4 story while characters do Book 1 things. Most prominent for me is Camlin and Rafe. Camlin has multiple chances to kill Rafe and after everything he has been through and how Camlin has grown and developed, he opts to... let him go? Many, many times. Camlin is the one character who has consistently believed in just taking action and putting someone down because they're a threat. Until it came to Rafe. Which, of course, bit him in the ass. Not once - multiple times. That was the infuriating bit. I could have forgiven once, but it was thrice that Camlin was making Book 1 choices in Book 4. That detracted from his character to me and undid what had been careful and smart development.

The other example I have is the repeating Maquin-Fidele-Lykos saga. At a certain point, when they get captured for the fifth time, all I'm hearing is yakkity sax. That repeated capturing over and over actually turned Lykos from Book 2's scariest villain into a comedy trope to me. It deflated the threat of Lykos and made his character feel... silly. It also undermined Fidele's smarts and her coming into her power when, in the end, she didn't overcome Lykos at all and was exactly who she was when he bewitched her. And Maquin - GOAT and true hero of the tale - Three Stooges-tier repetitive failure to kill him. He's deadly and skilled and the best warrior they have, but comically stumbles over a root or gets elbowed in the back right when he's going in for the kill. There's a point at which I just don't care anymore and I reached that point with the Lykos cycle.

My other issue stems sometimes from Gwynne's writing style. The man can write the heck out of a fight scene. Like. The absolute heck. But I can feel it in everything else that he doesn't like writing the journeying parts to get to the fight scenes. Moving around the map had a tendency to feel rushed and everything I needed to create a scene or space was left too open for me to feel grounded in the locations, but the fights were so well coordinated I could visualize them the entire time.

Now onto the good bits.

Camlin "For Love of the Game" whatever his last name is remains one of my favorite characters. I loved him and Edana's friendship and how his loyalty was born from just wanting something different for his life. He turns into the cool adoptive forest dad and ends up with a beautiful ending I really loved for him.

Veradis, my son, finally got it together and has his "wait is this play about us" moment in Ruin that he carried into this one. His desperation to find his friend again in Nathair and the gutting knowledge he can't was a phenomenal trajectory for him. I love this idiot because even with Nathair's betrayal and breaking his oath, he remains a loyal and moralistic man to his core. He understands that his role within his oath to protect Nathair means, in this moment, from Nathair himself.

Maquin's ending though. Loved it. Won't say anything else.

One character who surprised me with how much they grew on me? Corban. I kinda felt like Corban was boring. In Valour I would heavy sigh at his chapters, I can't lie. But in Wrath, I really loved reading his character. He comes into his own and all the things that made him who he was pulled together here. Gwynne wrote him not as a reluctant hero, but as a man choosing to be heroic. There's a huge difference! Corban spoke to his fear and how it was fear that made him brave. He cares about his people beyond just his friends. He doesn't want power, he wants peace, but he recognizes the necessity of violence to obtain that peace.

Wrath, overall, gave me a satisfying ending. I felt the twist was handled really well, the characters were where they should have been, and everything tied up nicely without feeling forced. Every ending felt earned. I did enjoy the series, but it has its flaws. It's good, not great, but I'm locked in now so I guess I have to dive into Era 2.