Heart of Defiance was a great follow up to the Relentless Souls novel and was quite interesting and entertaining. It takes place in the same universe as the first novel many years later. It mainly follows the characters of Bai and Delun. Bai is a young seamstress who seems to find herself in over her head after a very traumatic experience which leaves her with no memory of the incident itself and all alone. Delun is a quite powerful monk from the Two Bridges monastery that has been sent on a mission to find information on the shadowy organization of the Golden Leaf who has been stirring up trouble recently.
It is interesting to see how things have changed and also the things that haven’t since the end of the first novel. It is also very interesting to see what has become of Lei and what he has been up to since then as well. This book contains a lot of action, training and great battles just like the first book but with different characters, motives and a lot on the line. The politics are complicated and the balance of power in the empire seems fragile.
The narration by Andrew Tell is great as always and he does a great job with the characters and story. If you enjoyed the first novel Relentless Souls I would definitely recommend giving this a listen, even if you haven’t you could still follow along but wouldn’t be as familiar with some of the characters or situations mentioned.
“Please note I was given this free review copy audio book at my request and have voluntarily left this review.”