A Time of Dread

How it reads

A Time of Dread is fantasy (epic fantasy, specifically), and its dominant mood is dark. It goes to difficult places and doesn't look away. It moves fast: plot-driven and hard to put down, the kind of book that carries you along even when you're tired.

It's set in an invented world, in no single period, told in the third person across several viewpoints. Its central concerns are war, power and politics and redemption. In weight it sits in the middle: substantial without being heavy going.

It opens a series. It ends on a cliffhanger, so have the next book ready. At 463 pages it's an ordinary novel's length. It's well known, the kind of book most keen readers have heard of.