The story focusses on a nameless land which has two people come together, the Kel-tii and the Ashai who are facsimiles for the Irish & Japanese people. They have been previously been at war but now have an uneasy truce and have come together for the prosperity of both. The story begins when an expedition is planned for Kildonan with travel along the Cowcheanne Way to discover what happened to the three missing caravans and the fighting platoon who have disappeared around there. They will however to overcome mutual distrust and find out what exactly happened to the previous expeditions while also trying to stay alive.

The story while seemingly a sword and sorcery quest novel is a bit more than that. Think of it as a cross between Raymond Fiest and David Gemmell, epic fantasy plot meets heroic fantasy characters. The author makes each character distinct with separate background stories before eventually kickstarting the main plot. Also the plot takes a while to get going for the aforementioned reason of the author setting up each character. 

However from then  the story pretty much goes into an action overdrive as our protagonists meet with various challenges during the journey. Some are created by the mutual distrust between both cultures, others are created by whatever or whoever has been haunting the Cowcheanne Way.

The main plus point of this book is the characterization, the author really goes out of his way to give us a big character cast and makes them three-dimensional folks. The plot line also hints at quite a few epic things that might have occurred in the past and might lead to bigger things in the future.  While some might accuse the author of utilizing this book as set-up for the sequels and eventual saga. 

They would be partially correct in that thought, but it’s not entirely so. I thought the author tried his best to find a suitable balance between the action and story setup. Lastly the action and plot pace are directly proportional to each other, as soon as the action begins, the pace picks up and then the readers will be racing to its explosive climax. The action sequences quite reminded me of the claustrophobic scenes in Aliens if they were occurring above the ground.

Lastly a major drawback of the book is that author very conveniently tries to make different characters couple up romantically, while one or two would be understandable, but when it occurred more than three times, it just felt incredulous. However for some readers, it might be easy to go with the flow. For me it all seemed rather too convenient happenings than occurring organically.  

Another drawback was that there’s not much of world-building showcased and for those readers wondering about the Kel-tii & Ashai people/cultures, will have to wait for the sequels to learn more about the dual cultures as well as the reason of their animosity. The world-building definitely takes a backseat to the characterization and action and that detracts quite a bit from the story.