Since I've seen some people in another thread in this Print Speculative Fiction subreddit wondering why they've never heard of this series before, here's an overview of it to help inform what it's like, and if it's for you or not. Original thread is located here

The Wars of Light and Shadow were fought during the third age of Athera, the most troubled and strife-filled era recorded in all of history. At that time Arithon, called Master of Shadow, battled the Lord of Light through five centuries of bloody and bitter conflict. If the canons of the religion founded during that period are reliable, the Lord of Light was divinity incarnate, and the Master of Shadow a servant of evil, spinner of dark powers. Temple archives attest with grandiloquent force to be the sole arbiters of truth.

Yet contrary evidence supports a claim that the Master was unjustly aligned with evil. Fragments of manuscript survive which expose the entire religion of Light as fraud, and award Arithon the attributes of saint and mystic instead.

Because the factual account lay hopelessly entangled between legend and theology, sages in the seventh age meditated upon the ancient past, and recalled through visions the events as they happened. Contrary to all expectation, the conflict did not begin on the council stair of Etarra, nor even on the soil of Athera itself; instead the visions started upon the wide oceans of the splinter world, Dascen Elur.

This is the chronicle the sages recovered. Let each who reads determine the good and the evil for himself.

So begins Curse of the Mistwraith, the first book of the Wars of Light and Shadow, a series very near and dear to my heart. In my opinion, this series is the most criminally underrated and underread long running work of epic fantasy. Today, I'm going to try to share part of just exactly why I love this series and gush about it with such enthusiasm, along with why you might just enjoy it too, albeit with a catch - I'm not going to mention anything about the plot or the characters.

Even though I can gush for pages and pages on the wonderful stories or characters that you'll find in these pages, since so much of the series relies on overturning the assumptions you bring with you and continue to make along the way, anything that I say about either will unfairly color your preconceptions before going in. (Besides, there are plenty other reviews of the series on here that do more justice to these aspects than I could.)

Instead, I'll talk more about the mechanical elements of the Wars of Light and Shadow - the prose, pacing, series structure, and worldbuilding, along with a little something special at the end so you can hopefully see if her work will appeal to you.

Prose

Instead of describing how wonderful Janny's prose is here, I'll just post an example of her prose here, and you can decide if her works are for you knowing that this is typical of the prose you'll find in her works.

One moment, inevitable, turned destiny’s card like the bell stroke that shattered all hope; or else, like the phoenix birthed from immolation, a spark struck in bright, helpless pain might salvage the cold course of destiny. No way to tell which ahead of the crux where possibility ended, and probability dimmed to opacity.

Seems a little difficult to take in? Don't worry, you'll adjust to the rhythm of Janny's prose after a couple of chapters - and trust me when I say that you do not want to skim, as it's on the little details that hinge the foreshadowing and explosive developments that are to come in future volumes.

If you don't know that her prose is for you, though? Simple, give To Ride Hell's Chasm a try, a standalone work in a separate universe with prose as rich and detailed as her main series, showing off the pacing structure that inhabits each of her works. Speaking of which:

Pacing

The works of Janny Wurts all have a similar but pretty unique characteristic to their pacing.

First off, Janny is all about the slow burn. Each of her works has a slow, but deliberate and carefully planned out build, and just when it seems that things are buidling towards a climax, you check your place in the book and - wait a minute, that can't be right! - you're only just barely halfway through! And amazingly enough, the pace and tension don't dissipate, but rather keep building and intensifying over the second half of the novel, resulting in a second half that is hard to put down.

If you're familiar at all with Brandon Sanderson's works, if you'll imagine the Sanderlanch but extended over the back half of a novel then you'll have a good idea of what Janny Wurts' pacing is like.

Moreover, this characteristic 1-2 punch of a slow build to halfway followed by a climactic rush towards the finale is evident not only in each volume of the Wars of Light and Shadow - each story arc (more about those later) also exhibits this same style of plotting, in addition to the series as a whole! So by the time you reach the back half of the series, each book is almost impossible to put down.

We only have one book left and Janny has promised it as being pure finale, pure denouement. So if you choose to undertake this journey, then be sure to hold onto your butts everyone once Song of the Mysteries comes out!

And don't forget, this series doesn't sprawl - rather, each new volume and new arc serves to only further deepen our understanding of all the pieces in play and serves to illuminate new facets of how they all relate together. And on top of that, there are no dropped subplots, no loos threads left unresolved, no extraneous detail - everything will matter and be resolved in the end.

Structure

Don't view The Wars of Light and Shadow as a series in eleven volumes.

While each volume is structured to have a distinct beginning, middle, and end, all the while exhibiting Janny's distinct 1-2 narrative punch, the series was first envisioned as a story in 5 arcs. Each arc features its own distinct narrative arc, climax, and resolution, and if it weren't for the limitations of publishing then each arc would be fully contained beginning-to-end under one cover and one volume.

Arc 1 consists of Curse of the Mistwraith

Arc 2 (The Ships of Merior) consists of Ships of Merior and Warhost of Vastmark

Arc 3 (Alliance of Light) consists of Fugitive Prince, Grand Conspiracy, Peril's Gate, Traitor's Knot, and Stormed Fortress

Arc 4 (Sword of the Canon) consists of Initiate's Trial and Destiny's Conflict

Arc 5 will consist of Song of the Mysteries

To get more in-depth:

Curse of the Mistwraith is the introduction, the stage setter, the foundation upon which the rest of the series is built on. It introduces us to the world, the main characters, and establishes the major conflict that drives the entire series forward from here on out. What seem to be at first insignificant details will turn out to be the fulcrum on which future explosive unveilings hinge, although if you aren't feeling the series it does have a good climax and enough closure that you can treat it as a standalone, if you wish to do so.

Arc 2 was originally published under one volume in the initial hardcover release, but it was too big for paperback and and so it was split into the two paperback volumes Ships of Merior and Warhost of Vastmark that we have today. As such, expect Ships of Merior to be almost all setup for the breakneck climax that is Warhost of Vastmark. This arc serves to deepen the main characters in addition to introducing a handful of secondary ones that prove to be crucial to later arcs, and it also raises the stakes of the series-spanning conflict to new heights - the climax is such that, at the time of its release, many thought that it was the end of the series, that's how explosive Warhost is. But those readers couldn't be more wrong, as now the stage is truly set for the explosive reveals and unveilings of the upcoming arcs to begin.

While spread across 5 volumes, the Alliance of Light arc is really one giant story that was too large to fit fully in one cover. Fugitive Prince functions in much the same way for the Alliance of Light as Curse of the Mistwraith did for the entire series, and so the pacing gears back a bit for foundational set-up - but the series doesn't sprawl here, and all the extra detail proves to be necessary by the time the arc finale rolls around as it all comes back to pay off in spades.

Arc 3 is where the series expands into world view - where we start to go really indepth into the various factions, the rules of law, the magic, the Law of Major Balance, the Compact, the Paravians, even Athera itself - and this is where the major unveilings really start to take place. This is where the series starts to shift and really deepen, and if you're only reading for the surface level plot - if you're only reading for 'what happens', and pay no mind to thinking about 'why it happens', 'how it happens', 'what are this character's motivations, what are they thinking', 'what is the purpose of this faction, what is their moral high ground, what guides them as a whole' - this is where you might start to get lost, because unless you're willing to engage the work at the levels that it asks you to, you might find yourself thinking that, for example, 'nothing happens throughout this series' - when this sentiment couldn't be further from the truth.

Peril's Gate is the tipping point in not only this arc, but for the entire series as well - this volume provides the 1-punch for the entire series, with the pace only speeding up from here not just in the rest of the Arc 3, but for the rest of the series, too. Stormed Fortress is basically a climax for the Alliance of Light that's as long as a standard fantasy novel, where all the threads converge into one location - and of course, it's such an explosive arc finale that many people once again thought the series was ending here back when it first came out.

So do you remember when GRRM planned to have a 5 year timeskip after A Storm of Swords, only to reconsider and write those events out anyway, resulting in the next couple of volumes scattering all the plot threads to the four winds? Janny avoids this with Sword of the Canon, where instead of picking up right after the climactic convergence of Stormed Fortress she instead jumps ahead to the next hot nexus of change in the story.

This shift of perspective not only keeps up the pace as the series charges ever onwards towards the finale, but a certain character's perspective lets us view events during this time jump as they become relevant, with the result of us getting reveals both backwards AND forwards in time, carrying more levels of plotting as we not only start to get the answers to important questions and mysteries that have been going on all series, but also sets everything up for the grand finale that will be Song of the Mysteries, which Janny has promised will be all denouement, with no stray threads left unraveled from the greater tapestry, no single mystery left unsolved, no question left unanswered by the time the last page of Arc 5 is turned.

Worldbuilding

Athera is one of the most unique and fully realized fantasy worlds that I've come across, but you might not realize it at first. Janny initially holds most of the cards close to her chest, giving you only just enough to seem familiar and lets your assumptions fill in the gaps at first.

The purpose of this is twofold: Not only does this let you focus more on the characters and their interactions in addition to the surface level plot on the first go around, but with each new reveal - each carefully placed new tidbit that is unwound; about the characters, the factions, the various races that inhabit Athera, even the very planet itself - each new bit of information upturns more of those assumptions that you've unconsciously made, casting prior events and knowledge into a new light.

And as more and more of the full picture unfolds, layers peeling away and unwrapping like an onion the further into the series you go, you will find that as you reread the series with the context of later events and revelations in mind that everything was there all along, even in Curse of the Mistwraith - you're just able to read between the lines now, and with that, an entirely different story unfolds, one that was always there but until now was hidden by your assumptions and lack of knowledge about the world.

And Janny rarely spoonfeeds you via infodumps, instead she immerses us with vivid prose and lets us experience events in a way that we learn about the world through example as the characters experience things themselves, letting the themes and philosophy she explores unfold themselves naturally as they all derive from the characters, their personalities and natures, and their experiences and encounters with each other.

For example, there's basic concepts underpinning all the various forms of magic used through the series - physics, resonance, quantum mechanics - but instead of telling us how the magic works, she shows us in detail the different magical workings and rituals and gives us enough information to let us divine for ourselves how the different factions tap into and shape the magical energy of Athera.

It is my honest opinion that Janny's worldbuilding easily rivals that of Erikson's and Esslemont's Malazan. But whereas The Book of the Fallen was based on a series of tabletop campaigns ran by various groups of people over the course of decades, Athera is all the product of Janny's mind, built up and expanded upon over the course of her life - the initial seed for the series was first thought up in 1972; and even today, during the course of writing the final volume Song of the Mysteries, she's still surprising herself as she's finally filling in the gaps between what were only sketched out scenes and bits of hastily scribbled notes that were the result of inspiration from decades ago.

And whereas Erikson just dumps you straight into the deep end and tells you to swim, Janny grounds us at first from the point of view of two half-brothers who come from foreign lands and foreign seas and lets us experience each new event and revelation from fresh eyes. Their experience and relative naivety fuel our assumptions at first and lay the groundwork for all we know to be blown away and seen anew over and over again, as what is initially seen as a bogstandard medieval fantasy setting is gradually revealed to be nothing at all like what we first assumed we saw.

As you will come to see, this series truly deserves to be called Epic Fantasy, with a capital E and a capital F.