Characters don’t have thoughts … they have exposition. Clumsily phrased and unnatural: <i>Gus is a good man. My people believe all lowland humans are brutish and weak. I have met some like that since coming down here, but most are polite and helpful. Sometimes they are suspicious or even fearful if they know we are Others, but most will talk to us.</i>

This is a thought in Aylon’s mind as she and several others board a boat to look for missing twins — children of her estranged aunt (whose names she wasn’t given in the conversation where she learned they existed.) It’s just so stilted and made of nothing but world building rather than character building. Another example …

<i>How could someone so big move so smoothly? And what’s he doing? That’s Aylon coming out of the shadows! She’s watching … Wait! No, she’s judging his timing. Yes. She’s joining in the dance. She’s in perfect unison with him. It reminds me of the ballets back in New Den’ah. If this were a ballet it would tell the story of love and war. It’s beautiful, but in the near dark it’s kind of eerie. what’s the purpose of the dance of the others? It requires strength and grace. Is it a kind of exercise, or some morning ritual of their people? Strange as it is, it’s somehow comforting.</i>

These are the inner thoughts of a woman as she watches her two guests … what, do yoga? Martial arts? Why is she narrating the events rather than watching them? She has no reaction, just the monologue (and this happens again and again as every POV character will eventually narrate events and reveal some moment of history). To be honest, I didn’t care for the writing style; it just didn’t work for me, and the constant telling — through the inner thoughts of characters — read oddly.

Conversations don’t flow naturally. While asking a random woman they meet in the forest about the missing twins, children who have been missing a week or more, they have to sit and listen to the story about the raiders and where they come from. No point asking questions of the woman, she has a monologue to give and she’ll take every second she can to give it — something that shows up again in many conversations where people talk at one another rather than to one another.

The plot wanders a bit; the children are captured by evil raiders who wander off to join their evil raider army. Aylon and Goonta, the titular Traveler hook up with the random forest woman to track them to the army and try to rescue the twins before one gets conscripted into the evil raider army and the girl gets sold to the evil king. They fail, but end up with a different army instead. Now with more people, they follow the evil raider army to rescue the twins … and it just goes on.

Every chapter is titled in a way that lets you know what the chapter will be about, and I did appreciate that. There are ideas here and there that almost worked for me, but overall — between the writing, the lack of genuine conversations, the constant narration of history, ecology and rehashing of events that had just happened, and the <i>constant</i> threat and warning of rape hanging over Hollis’s head in her POV chapters, I didn’t enjoy this book. The characters are all one note with no character growth, the pacing is slow, much of the writing is redundant and so much is overly explained. I’m sorry, but this book is not for me.

However, if you like classic fantasy stories where good guys are good and bad guys are bad, quests across various kingdoms, you might have fun with this book. I do wish to thank NetGalley and the publisher for giving me access to an ARC.

Thanks to Frank & Netgalley for the opportunity to read this book for a fair review.

A town without an inn, sends two traveller's to the house of the town leader. The town at the end of the road, where these two believe some folks they seek, may be....

During conversation secreta become revealed and lead the story on another path that sees the a faster paced adventure.

This relatively short, book isn't flowery in its prose, but more to the point. A decent read, but a little slow at times, and I found it a little difficult to find a likable or relatable character. I believe if the characters were more fleshed out and/or quirky, they would more enjoyed.

While there some twists, and the foundation solid, it was not a memorable book for me.

The easiest rating for me would be 2/5 stars.