Queen Erida’s army marches across Allward with her consort, Taristan, right beside them, opening more portals into nightmarish worlds, razing kingdoms to the ground. Characters have no issue literally announcing “into the jaws of death we go” or that their companions “remained silent, bent but not broken, resolute before their doom. I also sometimes had a hard time getting into the story as the world building is so immense that I simply could not remember some characters from book 1 and while reading I caught myself thinking "and who are you again! Comment by tynergyAccording to a post this weapon is based on High Overlord Saurfang's battleaxe and he is part of the questline where he helps Master Smith Helgar to forge this new appearance. While I was fully invested in immortal himbo and snarky assassin, I was less interested in Corayne and Andry.

Featuring corpse armies, otherworldly beasts, sorcerers and the kind of epic peril you'd find in a Tolkien novel, Blade Breaker is an ambitious sequel with stellar world building. Aveyard shows perfectly how estranged Sorasa feels as she tries to hold on to the comfort of company but also denies it.It is so rare to have both good and evil strong female characters in epic fantasy novels, and it makes me so happy!

Speaking of the characters, I'm pretty sure my favorites from the last book were also my favorites in this book haha, but really all of The Companions are fun. On the contrary I found the first book confusing and long winded, and because of that I didn't start reading blade breaker for nearly two years after I finished realm breaker. Her storytelling technique and subtle metaphors summon colour that flows as a thread between a skilled weaver’s hands; beautiful enough to be worthy of an old epic yet simple enough to not overwhelm. After the harrowing events of the first book, the seven companions are now more entwined than ever and are finally trusting each other.I actually think both characters are at their strongest when they are not having a cute moment with each other, but when Aveyard delves deeper into Andry’s PTSD and fears (you have to applaud her for not being like certain other authors that have horrible things happen to their characters only for the characters to be completely fine one week later with no mental scarring whatsoever).