Acacia: The War with the Mein - David Anthony Durham This was a great epic. The characters were complex, and they changed and grew, for better or worse, throughout the story. There were unexpected twists in the plot, and some I was able to predict. There was a ruthlessness to the story that just kept amazing me. The only criticism I had was that there were a few too many characters, and I often really would have preferred to just spend a bit more time on certain people and cut out a few perspectives. This is a common problem in fantasy novels these days, though.