the sorrow of the wise man
About
By: Bella Dunn
Published: Apr 16, 2025
Genre: Epic Fantasy/Dragons and Mythical Creatures
Synopsis: WHAT WOULD YOU SACRIFICE FOR GLORY?
Taerlys Eileerean, the powerful Queen of Gaelyr, nurtures a dangerous dream and will sacrifice anything to turn it into reality, even those she loves.
Driven by greed and arrogance, her actions will seed the war between her two daughters, Daelyn and Haewyn.
Daelyn will inherit two Queendoms united by a lie and divided by mistrust. To keep her crown, she will fight enemies in the battlefield, but the most treacherous are those dwelling in the shadows of her own court.
Ambition, madness and greed, grief and love will give birth to an unfathomable darkness.
It is a dangerous thing to meddle with fate.
[Author’s blurb]
review:
Initially I was sent this book as part of an ARC review. Because of my schedule I was unable to meet the deadline to submit so I decided to buy the book outright.
I was left wanting more from this book and not in a good way. Dunn made extensive use of expository narrative to tell a story that spanned thirty plus years, which felt like a great deal more of telling rather than showing. The pitfalls came because of the sheer amount of time needing to be covered; it felt rushed but at the same time slow because with each time skip, Dunn had to provide more exposition for things that happened in the past and new characters being introduced, on top of the world-building that still needed to be done.
There was also the issue of all the characters being thinly developed, their goals were their goals simply because the plot called for it. They chief antagonist was evil or “of darkness” for the sake of it, with no explanation why, only that she is. Male characters, in a world run by queens [which is fine btw] were emasculated to act the way women would in those roles which didn’t feel authentic to how men would act. A good example of it done well are the Game of Thrones and House of the Dragon tv series. The women there are strong and powerful and the men serve them loyally but remain…men.
There were high moments like Dunn’s use of free indirect discourse in select places and other things I mentioned in my analysis post on my site but it was far too little of them present for me to continue reading the series.
The book is listed under dragons and magical creatures but dragons are mentioned and appeared once in the book.
There also seemed to be some inconsistency with the magic system as it pertains to mistwalking. It is only shown to be an ability used by priestesses, with three of them being tired after doing so [one was old and the other was in a weakened state for a reason not explained] and the other needing to take a tonic after. But at the end, another character does it who had her priestess powers stripped, magic in a severely weakened state, and the source of the magic she now used blocked by another powerful magic and still manages to mistwalk out of battle.
All of that aside, my biggest gripe came from the author stating in the books back matter, that a character who was only present from about 10-15% of the book was the true main character of the series. From there it confirmed that the book was nothing more than exposition and it read that way. Why not start the story with that character and drip feed exposition through dialogue and narrative prose?
For these reasons, I give it two stars.
Read the analysis for more insight: TSoTWM
