5/5 stars
"This pestilence cooked away pretense and showed people's souls, as surely as it eventually showed their bones."
At its core, Between Two Fires is an amalgam, not only in fantasy and horror, as others have aptly pointed out, but also in the way it's told. Its darkness reminds me of Dante's Inferno or Berserk. Bits of Thomas and co's adventure reminded me of Geralt with an added touch of darkness, too.
Buehlman has a twisting plot that's very hard to predict and exhilarating to read. The characters are all easily identifiable from one another, which makes it easier to navigate the way it is told. (I have a feeling this would be hard to navigate in audiobook format, but as I physically read it, no such issue).
The story itself is great. Thrilling, violent, dark. My absolute favorite, though, is his ability to somehow alchemically produce an image in my head. And not in a way he describes every painstaking detail. More that he DOES NOT. I wouldn't call the prose poetic per se, but maybe elegant? It's not at all confusing nor does it babble. The efficiency of words is immaculate, and there are countless times where I stopped, stared at a line, and said to myself "damn. that was such a great sentence" or paragraph, or even page. And I love the research that seemingly went into all this: of the time period, of botany, all of it. I very much want to check out his other books, because man, if this is how they are written? I may have found a new favorite author.