Happened to find another Victory of the Hawk review googling this afternoon, and while I am not going to go and engage directly with that review, I will note that the reviewer freely admitted that they had not read the first two books in the trilogy. Accordingly, and, well, justifiably, they were rather confused and this impacted their ability to enjoy the book.
So let me emphasize, just to get this on the record: if you want to read Victory of the Hawk, and you have not already read Valor of the Healer and Vengeance of the Hunter, yes, you will be very confused!
It has always been my intent that the Rebels of Adalonia trilogy should be considered one big story split into three books, akin to how Lord of the Rings is split into three books. (This being the ONLY scenario in which you will hear me mention my work and Tolkien’s in the same ballpark, heh.) My editor for these books kept trying to get me to write books 2 and 3 to try to allow for new readers coming in, but this is a fantasy trilogy, people. You don’t come into a fantasy trilogy two books in and expect to know what’s going on. You just don’t.
So yeah. If you have any interest in reading Victory, and you haven’t already, get caught up and read Valor and Vengeance!
Fortunately, you can get the whole series for less than the price of a trade paperback, and comparable to the price of many mass market paperbacks! How awesome is that? You can find all the pertinent links to buy the books on the Valor of the Healer, Vengeance of the Hunter, and Victory of the Hawk pages!
And now that Victory is about to release, let me say that I am VERY proud of how this whole story came out. Elapsed turnaround time between a slave girl healing an assassin and the shakedown of the entire Adalonian religious system: three years and three books real time, a handful of weeks in-universe. And if you choose to read Victory, I hope you’ll enjoy this conclusion to the Rebels of Adalonia story!