John Gwynne‘s Bloodsworn Trilogy contains The Shadow of the Gods (2021), The Hunger of the Gods (2022), and The Fury of the Gods (2024).
My guess is most of you who will absolutely adore this trilogy already know about it, and have been waiting anxiously for Gwynne to publish the somewhat-delayed final volume. The delay is a product of a tragedy: the death of a young child, and honestly I’m quite impressed that Gwynne finished the story, given that.
These are long, blood-soaked sagas of novels, heavily inspired by, if not the Vikings themselves, certainly the modern-day reinvention of the Vikings. While perhaps a bit repetitive by the end of the 3rd book–there are only but so many ways to describe a hand ax being buried in a foe’s cranium–overall, they deliver.
The series follows perhaps a dozen characters, all pulled into a massive conflict between long-dead Gods come to life. There are protagonists on all sides of the conflict, but one certainly both stands out and is highlighted, and her journey, as a warrior, as a mother, as a friend, make the text quite compelling.
Gwynne also does something magical, something that in my experience is virtually unique in the genre. He just … ignores … biological differences when it comes to physical capacities. It’s actually brilliant and remarkable: he doesn’t have women being overpowered by men, nor does he have a quicker, more subtle, fighting style that suits women better. Instead, if he wants a character to be the biggest swinging ax on the battlefield, they just are, regardless of their gender. It’s liberating, in a very fun way.
There are some gestures to situating the characters in a thoroughly pre-modern state, where the notion of consciousness is just beginning to emerge … but that is both inconsistent and deeply secondary to the page-turning, heart-thumping spectacle, risk, and carnage. If that sounds good–and you don’t mind devoting well over 1,500 pages in total to a single massive narrative arc–you’ll enjoy these books.