Firstly, Mikael Naramore is awesome, and he does an exceptional job throughout this saga.
I came to this after listening through JS Morin’s sci fi omnibus, and while I didn’t enjoy this collection quite as much, I’d say it is still excellent. The start is a bit slow and somewhat hard to follow with all the characters and jumping around. Once the twinborn stuff really gets made clear, the story takes off with some fun and exciting arcs that feel genuine and cool. Like in his other work, Morin creates a compelling and logically sound universe with interesting characters who work well within it. Overall, I thought it was a very well written fantasy story that feels different from the trope filled epics the genre regularly spews forth.
Aside from the slow beginning, a couple other issues made me drop this to a four star rating. There are a good number of ancillary characters in this story, and many of them feel worthless. I get the need to create a robust world of characters, but we spend a bit too much time with some who seem almost totally irrelevant to the story. The other is the ending(s). Everything gets wrapped up in a satisfactory way, but it felt sudden compared to the pacing of the rest of the story. I’m don’t think I can say it is unrealistic, but it just felt oddly fast at the end.
Anyway, I’d definitely recommend this if you are hankering for a solid fantasy epic. It is just good, hearty fantasy writing that doesn’t disappoint.