I read most of it too, quite liked it, although the King of Scars and Rule of Wolves was much better than the original trilogy imo. Author did Nikolai dirty though, and “natural” monarchism there was pretty hard to swallow, which is part of why Nikolai was done dirty, since he had some democratic thoughts, but ultimately what prevailed is the military-magical junta.
Lives of Saints was half atrocious though. The text is ok, as full of senseless acts of violence and dubious logic as the real deal lives of saints, but the book is half going on illustrations, and here is the hard stop - all illustrations are in the bog standard western fantasy style, while they would need to be in orthodox icon style on which the book and entire setting openly is based.
I read most of it too, quite liked it, although the King of Scars and Rule of Wolves was much better than the original trilogy imo. Author did Nikolai dirty though, and “natural” monarchism there was pretty hard to swallow, which is part of why Nikolai was done dirty, since he had some democratic thoughts, but ultimately what prevailed is the military-magical junta.
Lives of Saints was half atrocious though. The text is ok, as full of senseless acts of violence and dubious logic as the real deal lives of saints, but the book is half going on illustrations, and here is the hard stop - all illustrations are in the bog standard western fantasy style, while they would need to be in orthodox icon style on which the book and entire setting openly is based.