I was given an ARC of this, and life finally calmed down enough for me to finish reading it and write this. I wish I hadn't promised the review, because I hate writing bad ones, and that's what's coming. I enjoyed Inda quite a lot, and from all I've heard Sherwood is a wonderful person, but I just don't have much good to say about this.
Let's start with the title. I have unfortunate associations with fantasy books involving "sword" and "truth" in the name. Smith and her writing are nothing at all like Goodkind and Sword of Truth, but I have a visceral Pavlovian response all the same. Given that Goodkind remains high on the all time best selling fantasy authors list (definitive proof of an unjust world) I do wish Smith had titled the book something different. And the sword in question was a very minor part of the story anyway.
This book is a chonker, coming in at XXX pages according to Goodreads. It felt like it should have been about half that. It took a long time for things to get interesting, and much of it felt pointless.
Thematically, this book couldn't make up its mind if it wanted to be YA or not. I like YA fiction, but it just doesn't fit to have a massive tome with some very dark goings-on with a bunch of kids complaining that all the grown-ups don't take them seriously.
Next complaint: too many charcters to easily keep track of. Given my long, looooong history as a WoT superfan, me saying there are too many characters is saying something. And lots of them have long and complicated histories that are frequently referenced but seldom adaquately explained. To be fair, I never read the Banner of the Damned series, so i want to cut Sherwood some slack on this. But nowhere does it say you need, or even strongly recommend, that you have the have read any of Smith's other stuff.
A related, but minor, yet super annoying point: when Smith switches between characters here, there's often nothing to indicate this. When you're writing in 3rd person limited omniscient, that's a problem.
In the end, I am sorry to say that this book didn't know what it wanted to be, and took way too many pages to figure that out. I do not recommend.
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