Look, I need to complain about something before we go any further. Twenty-three hours and fifty minutes. That's what this audiobook asks of you. That's longer than most of my students have spent reading anything voluntary in their entire high school careers. And here I am, a grown man who should know better, absolutely powerless to stop listening.
John Gwynne, you magnificent menace.
I started Valor during one of those brutal November weeks where Chicago decides it's actually Antarctica. Grading papers at my kitchen table, Denise already asleep, the wind doing that thing where it sounds like it's personally angry at your windows. And Damian Lynch's voice just... settled in. Like a guest who knows where you keep the good coffee.
The Slow Burn That Rewards Patience
Here's the thing about Gwynne's pacing—and this is where I'm going to sound like the dinosaur my students think I am—he writes like the classics. Not in a pretentious way, but in the sense that he trusts you to sit with the story. Corban's flight from his homeland isn't a sprint. It's a journey, complete with the kind of quiet moments that modern fantasy sometimes forgets exist between the sword fights.
Maquin's pit-fighting arc? That's basically The Count of Monte Cristo filtered through a grimdark lens. Revenge delayed is revenge examined, and Gwynne examines it thoroughly. My students would absolutely hate this. I loved it. That same slow-burn approach to character transformation shows up in Before We Were Yours: A Novel, though in a completely different genre—both books trust you to sit with the emotional weight.
The multiple POV structure could've been a mess—we're jumping between Corban, Veradis, Maquin, Nathair, and others—but Lynch keeps each voice distinct enough that I never got lost. Even during faculty meetings. (Sorry, Principal Martinez. But in my defense, Queen Rhin's political machinations are more interesting than budget allocations. They just are.)
Damian Lynch and the Art of Restraint
Okay, I've seen the complaints. "Too slow." "Droning." "Not enough emotion during the battle scenes."
And I get it. I do. If you're coming from audiobooks where the narrator is basically performing a one-man Broadway show, Lynch might feel restrained. But here's what those critics are missing: this is a twenty-four hour listen. If Lynch went full theatrical for every shouted command and clashing sword, you'd be exhausted by hour five.
His pacing is deliberate in the way Hemingway's prose is deliberate. Lynch trusts the words. He trusts Gwynne's world-building to carry weight without underlining every dramatic moment with vocal fireworks.
That said—and I'm being honest here because what's the point otherwise—there are moments where I wished he'd let himself go a little more. Some of the shouting scenes do land flat. When characters are screaming about betrayal and the fate of kingdoms, you want to feel that heat. Lynch stays cool. It's a stylistic choice, and it works more often than it doesn't, but it's not perfect.
I listened at 1.0x because the author chose those words, and I choose to hear them properly. But if you're someone who speeds up audiobooks (and I'm not judging, I'm just quietly disappointed in you), 1.25x might actually help with the pacing complaints.
The Thankless Job of Being Book Two
The thing about book two in an epic fantasy series is that it has to do the heavy lifting. Book one gets to be exciting and new. Book three gets to be the climax. Book two? Book two has to deepen everything while still moving forward. It's the Middlemarch of the trilogy structure. (And yes, I did just compare a fantasy novel with giants and pit-fighting to George Eliot. I contain multitudes.)
Gwynne pulls this off by making the war feel genuinely consequential. Sides are chosen. Oaths break. The good-versus-evil framework is there, but it's complicated by characters who believe they're doing the right thing while doing terrible things. Veradis's internal conflict about duty and what he's witnessed—that's the stuff that makes epic fantasy worth the investment.
The world-building is dense but not suffocating. Gwynne clearly knows more about his Banished Lands than he's telling us, but he parcels it out in ways that feel organic. Lynch's clear delivery actually helps here—you're never struggling to parse what's happening even when the political conspiracies get tangled.
Who's This For (And Who Should Run)
If you loved Malice and want to see Corban's world get darker and more complicated, you're in good hands. Patient readers who appreciate world-building over constant action will find this rewarding. But if you need your fantasy at a breakneck pace, or if narrators who don't perform every line like it's Shakespeare in the Park frustrate you, this might not be your listen.
Class Dismissed
Probably won't relisten immediately—I've got 47 podcast listeners waiting for my thoughts on Middlemarch, and Denise is starting to give me looks when I put my earbuds in during dinner. But I'm absolutely continuing the series. Gwynne has earned that.
This is the kind of fantasy that reminds me why I still teach The Odyssey to teenagers who'd rather be on TikTok. The bones of great storytelling don't change. Heroes journey. Villains scheme. Loyalty gets tested. And sometimes, if you're lucky, a narrator comes along who understands that the prose deserves to be savored.
Lynch understands that. Even when he's a little too restrained for the material.
Worth pausing the faculty meeting for. Worth the twenty-four hours. Worth the investment.
