Book 2 of the series, continues the romance and bring new interesting plots. It is fast paced and I enjoyed it very much. These books covers are awful. ( )

This is the second book in the trilogy and it isn't bad; it just isn't as good as the other two books. While I did enjoy reading the book (partly due to anticipation at reading the third in the series), this book didn't have the same emotional feel as the first. I guess it is because fighting a plague and reading about deliberate lies to get your own way isn't as interesting to read as person to person battles and miscommunication.

Three things about this story bothered me.
One was that even though Lara knows quite alot about herbs and their uses, she didn't realize that the only difference between the baby and the rest of the village was that it had lavender in its diaper while the other villagers didn't have lavender on their person. She should have immediately recognized that the lavender was the reason the child didn't get sick as plague is generally spread via fleas, ticks and other small creepy crawlies and lavender is a natural repellant. Even someone as ignorant about plants as I am knows this, so it should have been glaringly obvious to her.

Secondly, she should have known Gil was poisoned. The symptoms were not plague symptions, but the indications that he had been poisoned by monkshood somehow. Again, for someone who knows her plants, this should have been extremely obvious.

Third is Lara's attitude. She knows that getting to the plains as fast as possible is extremely important, but considers her calling much more important. She should have been honest about the time it would take to stay nearby and help out the plague victims and talked the situation over with Keir. She started acting like a spoiled teenager who would do anything to get her way rather than the strong intelligent woman we had known from the previous book.

I think that it was good to read this story in order to have the background necessary to understand the third book. However, while I will be reading the first and third books again, re-reading the second just isn't worth the effort. ( )

Huh - borrowed this without realizing I already owned it. That's OK. This book is, despite the action and important physical and emotional events in it, sort of hanging between Warprize and Warlord. It's not, mostly, to do with the culture of Xy; it's not, precisely, to do with the culture of the Plains. The plague and Lara's reaction to it are of Xy, but all of her actions are filtered through the army and its reaction. The army's reaction, and especially Iften and the warrior-priest's actions, are very much of the Plains - but we see them through Lara's eyes, and she often doesn't understand what she's seeing. The reasons for the reaction to her 'lie', for instance, is never really clear - she knows it's a terrible thing to have done but not really _why_. The plague, Iften, the arrival of the warrior-priest, Torven's reaction to the whole thing are all necessary to set up Warlord but there is little actual advance of the story in Sworn. Still a good book, but less in and of itself and more as a necessary part of the series. ( )

Yeah, yeah, I did get the sequel to Warprize. It was a welcome change after fighting my way through Ursula K. Guin's "Left Hand of Darkness" which took about a month, to have a bit light pr0n to flick through in a couple of days.

I was originally going to say that either the writing or the editig was better in Warsworn than in Warprize, but I think the editor got bored about half-way through.

Overall, good and entirely undemanding fun. And yes, I've got a copy of Warlord already lined up. What doesn't help is that I walked out of Waterstone's last night with that and three volumes of yaoi. (The yaoi was on 3 for 2, alright?) ( )

Plot wise, this book suffers from the well-known middle-book syndrome. Lara and Keir, with his army, are still on their way back to the Plains when they encounter an unknown enemy, the plague. The whole book centers on the outbreak and treatment of the plague and the effects it has on the community of the Firelander's warriors. This can sometimes be quite boring.

Nevertheless some things are better than in the first book. Although still written in first person narrative, I no longer had the feeling that things are happening which the reader is not aware of.

While it had some length, I still enjoyed the book and will now move on to the third and final book to see how the story ends. ( )