The War Within – Stephen Donaldson
The first book in the latest Stephen Donaldson epic The Great God’s War played out along familiar fantasy fiction lines with little in the way of surprises, but there were signs – not least from the relative slimness of the book – that Seventh Decimate was just a prelude or pretext for a larger story to unfold. The War Within is indeed a rather more substantial book, or at least considerably longer than Seventh Decimate , and it does expand on there being more to this world than a long running war between the Amika and the Belleger, but it’s still very serious and slow moving and not in any real hurry to get to any major developments. In the first book, Seventh Decimate , the reason for the war between the Belleger and the Amika has long been forgotten or at least subject to very differing accounts. A crisis point however had been reached when the traditional means of sorcery or theurgy, the power of the Decimates used by Magisters to unleash lightning, earthquakes, famine etc. had m...