I love this story. I really do. The narration is out of this world, the action is fast paced, and the story is enthralling. It’s everything you can ask for from a fantasy adventure story.
I really only have one minor issue with it honestly, and that’s the somewhat unrealistic portrayal of some of the actions of the main character. Specifically, I’m talking about the main character’s unwillingness to cut loose and just kill his enemies even when the whole damn lot of them are doing their best to gut him like a bloody fish. The story plays it off as this whole morality issue, and that plays true to a certain extent, but the reality is anyone in their right mind would stop holding back after a certain point, especially when failure to do so means not only your own death but also the death of everyone and everything you hold dear.
That’s not to say I expect the guy to become a merciless killer and just start gutting everyone in sight, but when your fighting an actual battle and lives hang in the balance, it’s completely unrealistic to assume someone wouldn’t retaliate. I mean all I need to do to know that’s the case is put myself in the same position and ask myself what i’d do. I’ve never so much as gotten into a serious fight before, but even I know that if I had been in the same situation the main character was, i’d have been a lot less concerned with the safety of the bad guys, and way more concerned about the innocent people getting killed because I wasn’t putting them down.