Sins of the Mother is yet another brilliant entry in The War Eternal series.
It came as a pleasant surprise to me on social media when I found out Rob J. Hayes was writing the fourth book in this series. I had assumed that with 'From Cold Ashes Risen', Eskara's story was said and done. I had even tried to draw the moment where she confronts the emperor (the drawing turned out to be banta poodoo). Regardless, I loved the character and I love Rob's writing style as well. (Check out his 'Mortal Techniques' series if you like to see grimdark with a lot of Kurosawa flair in it)
'Sins of the Mother' takes place about twenty years after the events in 'From Cold Ashes Risen'. It opens like so many classic westerns have, with Eskara 'retired' and pretending to be a non-entity in some village. But, as expected, circumstances out her identity (conveniently) in time for her to join Imiko in the search for Eskara's younger daughter. The rest of the story is the chase and the motivation behind her daughter's disappearance.
Of course, since this is a Rob J. Hayes work, there is plenty of action and gore. At no point, does the pacing feel slow and there is a feeling of movement towards something momentous. The dialogues are sharp and witty. The characters do tend to involve in quite a bit of soul-searching, which is usually shown in the form of a flashback. Hey, its Eskara. What do you expect?
I am a bit surprised to find that there were a couple of places that felt too much like in your face level tropes. And I did find a couple of typos too in the KU version. In any case, these rough patches didn't detract from the overall sense of satisfaction from reading the book.