The Sword Unbound

• Author: Gareth Hanrahan
• Genre: Fantasy
• Publication Date: May 7, 2024
• Publisher: Orbit
• Series: Lands of the Firstborn #2

Thank you to Orbit and Angela Man for sending me an ARC of this book in exchange for an honest review.

GARETH HANRAHAN’S ACCLAIMED EPIC FANTASY SERIES OF DARK MYTH AND BLOODTHIRSTY VENGEANCE CONTINUES WITH THE SWORD UNBOUND.

HE THOUGHT HE WAS SAVING THE WORLD. THAT WAS HIS FIRST MISTAKE.

Twenty years ago, Alf and his companions defeated the Dark Lord and claimed his city. Now those few of the Nine who remain find themselves unwilling rebels, defying the authority of both the mortal Lords they once served and the immortal king of the elves—the secret architect of everything they’ve ever known.

Once lauded as a mighty hero, Alf is now labeled as a traitor and hunted by the very gods he seeks to bring down. As desperate rebellion blazes across the land, Alf seeks the right path through a maze of conspiracy, wielding a weapon of evil. The black sword Spellbreaker has found its purpose in these dark days. But can Aelfric remain a hero, or is his legend tarnished forever?

It’s been a while since I read the first book in this series, or at least it felt that way, since I struggled to remember more than the basics of the story. I did a quick audio reread of book one to refresh myself on the characters and the story, and I’m glad I did, because this is a story that got really involved really quickly, and has so many moving parts that really expanded in this story.

While we get a good introduction to the characters, the world they live in, and the situation they are each involved in with book one, there is so much more character development in this story. I really loved seeing how much some characters grew in this book, and watching the changes that occurred in each of the characters was fascinating.

Since there’s a pretty big cast of characters, I think it’s only natural to connect more strongly with some characters than others. Obviously, my favorite character would have to be Spellbreaker, the evil sword that Alf took custody of after the Nine defeated Lord Bone. I loved the voice of this sword, and yes, I’m aware that my favorite character is an inanimate object, but it’s cursed and evil and full of snark and sarcasm. It also has a way of finding out Alf’s biggest insecurity and playing on that, so it always adds either humor or tension to a scene, and often both. 

It’s hard to talk about Spellbreaker without talking about Alf, since they’re joined at the hip. Pun intended! In the last book, Alf hadn’t changed much from his younger days other than aging by 20 years, and visited all of the remaining members of the Nine who were still alive. He expected everyone to kind of be in the same place as he was, and was unpleasantly surprised to discover how much everyone had changed. In this book, he spends some time coming to terms with that realization, and I appreciated the author allowing Alf the space to process a shattering understanding. He is disillusioned about the people he thought he knew best and called his friends. Instead of continuing to see them as shining ideals of heroism to idolize, he is seeing them in a more realistic light, but it also allows him to start thinking for himself over listening to them.

Some of the other characters I loved seeing in this story were Olva, Derwyn, and Lath. Olva plays a bigger role in this story, and I really enjoyed seeing her character arc unfold. After just kind of getting roped into making a journey when she didn’t even want to ever leave her hometown in the first book, she has much more agency in this book. Seeing her make decisions and own her own power was an about-face from her in the last book, and I was all about this change. Derwyn is sort of tagging along for the ride, although he’s in a really strong position. I would have liked to see him step into his own a little bit more, but I’m hoping that is in the works for book three. Finally, my heart always gets mushy for Lath. I feel like he’s someone who should have been protected and no one ever did, and these are the results of that. I didn’t see him nearly as much as I would have liked to, but it was so emotional for me whenever he appeared in the story.

The setting itself is an atmospheric one, and it speaks volumes (no pun intended this time, I promise) to Hanrahan’s immense skills with world-building. We get to see Necrad more in detail, and it is still such an ominous space that it feels like yet another character in the story. Yet the character list never felt overwhelming. This is helped by the way the author introduces the characters slowly throughout the series, allowing readers to get to know them in prolonged interactions, as well as a character list in the beginning of the book with a brief description of each character. 

The pacing wasn’t always consistent, and parts of the story were much slower than others. I was surprised that there weren’t any major battles, since the land is torn about by rebellion. This book is a chonk at nearly 600 pages, and there were large parts where Alf is doing basically the same things he was doing in the first book—traveling around to all the remaining members of the Nine to band together to fight an evil threat—and having to really come to terms with the fact that none of them are perfect; each of them have flaws and are positioned in various spots on the morality continuum from morally gray to outright villainy. The only battles that we do hear about are told through the poems of Sir Rhuel, showing us that the old adage, “history is written by the winners,” has never been more true, and how this occurs in practice.

There were a few things that didn’t work for me, but more things that did. I would have loved to see more of Derwyn and him having more agency, and some more action in the book. More consistent pacing would be appreciated, but the world-building, characters, and the author’s wonderful talent with words made the pacing not as bothersome as it could have been. This felt like more of a setup for the next book, but since I’ve connected so strongly with characters that feature so heavily in this story, I didn’t mind too much. There’s a lot of leeway that I can give a book when there are positives in the right places. Having strong characters that I’m able to connect with and who change over the course of a book and series, fantastic writing that can evoke emotion and allow me to visualize what I’m seeing, amazing world-building (especially atmospheric settings), and incorporating humor are all factors that make a book irresistible to me, so I’ll be looking forward to the next book in the series!

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