Fire and Sword by Simon Brown
Fire and Sword is the second book in Brown's Keys of Power trilogy. Like most fantasy trilogies, the middle book is largely maneuvering the characters into place for the main action of of the last books: start the war, forge alliances, establish any relationships that still need establishing, etc. As a result, though still very solid and a good follow-up to Inheritace, though there was no blowing away. There was still some punching in the gut, though.
*spoilers*
Typically, the character to suffer losses before the big fight is the hero, here it's Areava, who may not be the villain, as she's largely being used, but in the antagonist. While Lynan loses his mentor, Kumul, Areave loses a third of her capital, has her husband killed by Lynan, and miscarries her daughter, who had wounds open at birth. And to top it off, her gentle brother, Olio, was driven mad by not being able to save everyone with his healing powers during the battle, and was mentally reduced to being a child.
*end spoilers*
However, one downside: DID NO ONE EDIT THIS FREAKING THING??? There are all sorts of agreement and pronoun and grammatical errors throughoutthe book, which is a problem the first one didn't have. Though the most major problem was a slip that changes Berayama's parentage, which has a fairly major plotpoint in Inheritance.
*spoilers*
Typically, the character to suffer losses before the big fight is the hero, here it's Areava, who may not be the villain, as she's largely being used, but in the antagonist. While Lynan loses his mentor, Kumul, Areave loses a third of her capital, has her husband killed by Lynan, and miscarries her daughter, who had wounds open at birth. And to top it off, her gentle brother, Olio, was driven mad by not being able to save everyone with his healing powers during the battle, and was mentally reduced to being a child.
*end spoilers*
However, one downside: DID NO ONE EDIT THIS FREAKING THING??? There are all sorts of agreement and pronoun and grammatical errors throughoutthe book, which is a problem the first one didn't have. Though the most major problem was a slip that changes Berayama's parentage, which has a fairly major plotpoint in Inheritance.