Julia Wilson
Character: ★ ★ ★ ☆ ☆
Plot: ★ ★ ☆ ☆ ☆
Prose: ★ ★ ★ ☆ ☆ (I always forget how much Paolini loves making people tttrot~)
OVERALL: ★ ★ ½ ☆ ☆ ☆
My ridiculously long essay about this book, hosted on Substack, can be found at the URL at the end of this review.
Let it be known that, just like Eragon, Murtagh is not very bright. It must be from Mum’s side of the family.
This was one of my most anticipated books of the year, but I’ve had mixed feelings on the whole affair since the announcement. Like many, The Inheritance Cycle was my all-time favourite series from when I was about nine to somewhere in my early teens, and Murtagh left such a huge impression on me as a kid that his archetype (the angsty, angry, yet tragic bad boy loner with parental issues) is still one of my favourite things ever. That being said, I think the magic for the series started fading in my eyes with the release of Inheritance, which I didn’t love, and my admiration for Paolini as a writer dulled with his other novel To Sleep in a Sea of Stars, which I thought was pretty … meh; the only thing I could and can really say about it was, “yup, that was indeed a book I read”.
So I was excited to revisit my OG bad boy, but I was worried about Paolini’s ability to deliver a *good book*. And mixed feelings is a good way to put it now that I’ve finished.
Firstly, I adored getting to see Murtagh and Thorn’s psyches seventeen years after being introduced to them and deciding that these two would be my favourite poor little meow meows/blorbos (or whatever the kids say nowadays) forever. My throat did all the closing up and my heart ached whenever I read the passages about their experiences in Urû’baen at the hands of Galbatorix and his court. A shining beacon throughout the novel was in watching the two of them struggling with and addressing the trauma they experienced, most notable in Thorn’s fear of confined spaces and the ugly consequences that follow.
The book is very good at making me feel emotions for Murtagh and Thorn. But I wanted to feel, well, more. I wanted Murtagh to be a book about them navigating a post-Galbatorix landscape where they must deal with the fact that they’ve committed these atrocities. I wanted the main conflict to be centred around the fact that people don’t trust Murtagh and Thorn. I wanted a character-driven piece of storytelling.
Instead, the book is mostly a plot-driven sequel-setter. It’s not left me a happy camper as it stumbles into the age old sequel problem of oh shit, we need to escalate the stakes by introducing a Deep State, cheese-morality, Westboro-fire-and-brimstone-esque Cthulhu cult that Murtagh and Thorn need to take out, but oops, we ran out of pages please buy the next book. I thought this was to be a character study standalone D:
So it’s an action-adventure book, it’s a book with all the swords and gore and magician duels of the previous books. It’s a winning formula, but, this time around, not for me. The characters stumble about from one plot point to the next through blind luck and by making strange (stupid) decisions, and I struggled to find a solid, motivational throughline for the events going on other than “we need to get the book to happen”.
So in summary, Murtagh feels like a book teetering on the edge of having something interesting to say, but never quite succeeding because it’s more focused on doing things for later books.
Criticisms from the original books that have been addressed and I am super happy about!
- The Empire’s soldiers aren’t all just comically evil anymore! Hooray! Care is taken to point out that many of these soldiers were drafted against their wishes, and Murtagh talks about how he had a kind of camaraderie with them (as much as there can be when common soldiers are breaking bread with Dragon Riders), and how he feels sad about their deaths and wonders where the survivors are.
- Murtagh is also, unlike Eragon, not ridiculously bloodthirsty. Sure, he is dangerous, but he’s not going about punching people so hard their hearts stop and coming away with the conclusion of “huh, I should change my knuckles to kill people even harder”, or “man, I wish I could kill three more people for my literal murder mountain so I can have an even headcount of two hundred”. Murtagh and Eragon may be equally stupid, but at least Murtagh (mostly) escaped the psychopath gene that Eragon and Roran have.
However …
- Murtagh and Thorn’s relationship feels very much the same as Eragon and Saphira’s in that the Rider is definitely in charge and the dragon is, at best, a flying sidekick. Very frustrating. There are nice scenes between Murtagh and Thorn which show them as equals in the relationship, don’t get me wrong, and I love how they’re in each other’s corners, but Murtagh’s the one making the big decisions and calling the shots, with Thorn always going along with what Murtagh wants to do. So I’m not really sold on this being an equal partnership.
- We also return to the weirdly worded pseudo-medieval speak, and I’m still not a fan. Pls Chris. And whilst we’re on the subject of dialogue, can we stop with the written accents please. It’s so frustrating to read these “not-quite-Cockney-but-aping-on-something-vaguely-East-London” accents and I wish the trend would die. Just stop.
- Paolini still cannot write poetry and verse. I automatically skip these now because they’re the reading equivalent of nails on a chalkboard.
- There is still a looot of filler going on here. Flying around filler, random musings filler, random worldbuilding filler, descriptions that are so lengthy that they become, for me at least, ineffective. This book could have easily been 100 pages shorter if the filler was either cut or strictly edited down.
I will read the next book because Murtagh and Thorn are my favourites, but can it reach the heights of its potential? Well, that’s up to Chris, now.
Also who decided that the world map at the front of the travel book would be in made-up runes? Sir, I just want to talk to the art department.
Originally posted at englishbutter.substack.com.
Character: ★ ★ ★ ☆ ☆
Plot: ★ ★ ☆ ☆ ☆
Prose: ★ ★ ★ ☆ ☆ (I always forget how much Paolini loves making people tttrot~)
OVERALL: ★ ★ ½ ☆ ☆ ☆
My ridiculously long essay about this book, hosted on Substack, can be found at the URL at the end of this review.
Let it be known that, just like Eragon, Murtagh is not very bright. It must be from Mum’s side of the family.
This was one of my most anticipated books of the year, but I’ve had mixed feelings on the whole affair since the announcement. Like many, The Inheritance Cycle was my all-time favourite series from when I was about nine to somewhere in my early teens, and Murtagh left such a huge impression on me as a kid that his archetype (the angsty, angry, yet tragic bad boy loner with parental issues) is still one of my favourite things ever. That being said, I think the magic for the series started fading in my eyes with the release of Inheritance, which I didn’t love, and my admiration for Paolini as a writer dulled with his other novel To Sleep in a Sea of Stars, which I thought was pretty … meh; the only thing I could and can really say about it was, “yup, that was indeed a book I read”.
So I was excited to revisit my OG bad boy, but I was worried about Paolini’s ability to deliver a *good book*. And mixed feelings is a good way to put it now that I’ve finished.
Firstly, I adored getting to see Murtagh and Thorn’s psyches seventeen years after being introduced to them and deciding that these two would be my favourite poor little meow meows/blorbos (or whatever the kids say nowadays) forever. My throat did all the closing up and my heart ached whenever I read the passages about their experiences in Urû’baen at the hands of Galbatorix and his court. A shining beacon throughout the novel was in watching the two of them struggling with and addressing the trauma they experienced, most notable in Thorn’s fear of confined spaces and the ugly consequences that follow.
The book is very good at making me feel emotions for Murtagh and Thorn. But I wanted to feel, well, more. I wanted Murtagh to be a book about them navigating a post-Galbatorix landscape where they must deal with the fact that they’ve committed these atrocities. I wanted the main conflict to be centred around the fact that people don’t trust Murtagh and Thorn. I wanted a character-driven piece of storytelling.
Instead, the book is mostly a plot-driven sequel-setter. It’s not left me a happy camper as it stumbles into the age old sequel problem of oh shit, we need to escalate the stakes by introducing a Deep State, cheese-morality, Westboro-fire-and-brimstone-esque Cthulhu cult that Murtagh and Thorn need to take out, but oops, we ran out of pages please buy the next book. I thought this was to be a character study standalone D:
So it’s an action-adventure book, it’s a book with all the swords and gore and magician duels of the previous books. It’s a winning formula, but, this time around, not for me. The characters stumble about from one plot point to the next through blind luck and by making strange (stupid) decisions, and I struggled to find a solid, motivational throughline for the events going on other than “we need to get the book to happen”.
So in summary, Murtagh feels like a book teetering on the edge of having something interesting to say, but never quite succeeding because it’s more focused on doing things for later books.
Criticisms from the original books that have been addressed and I am super happy about!
- The Empire’s soldiers aren’t all just comically evil anymore! Hooray! Care is taken to point out that many of these soldiers were drafted against their wishes, and Murtagh talks about how he had a kind of camaraderie with them (as much as there can be when common soldiers are breaking bread with Dragon Riders), and how he feels sad about their deaths and wonders where the survivors are.
- Murtagh is also, unlike Eragon, not ridiculously bloodthirsty. Sure, he is dangerous, but he’s not going about punching people so hard their hearts stop and coming away with the conclusion of “huh, I should change my knuckles to kill people even harder”, or “man, I wish I could kill three more people for my literal murder mountain so I can have an even headcount of two hundred”. Murtagh and Eragon may be equally stupid, but at least Murtagh (mostly) escaped the psychopath gene that Eragon and Roran have.
However …
- Murtagh and Thorn’s relationship feels very much the same as Eragon and Saphira’s in that the Rider is definitely in charge and the dragon is, at best, a flying sidekick. Very frustrating. There are nice scenes between Murtagh and Thorn which show them as equals in the relationship, don’t get me wrong, and I love how they’re in each other’s corners, but Murtagh’s the one making the big decisions and calling the shots, with Thorn always going along with what Murtagh wants to do. So I’m not really sold on this being an equal partnership.
- We also return to the weirdly worded pseudo-medieval speak, and I’m still not a fan. Pls Chris. And whilst we’re on the subject of dialogue, can we stop with the written accents please. It’s so frustrating to read these “not-quite-Cockney-but-aping-on-something-vaguely-East-London” accents and I wish the trend would die. Just stop.
- Paolini still cannot write poetry and verse. I automatically skip these now because they’re the reading equivalent of nails on a chalkboard.
- There is still a looot of filler going on here. Flying around filler, random musings filler, random worldbuilding filler, descriptions that are so lengthy that they become, for me at least, ineffective. This book could have easily been 100 pages shorter if the filler was either cut or strictly edited down.
I will read the next book because Murtagh and Thorn are my favourites, but can it reach the heights of its potential? Well, that’s up to Chris, now.
Also who decided that the world map at the front of the travel book would be in made-up runes? Sir, I just want to talk to the art department.
Originally posted at englishbutter.substack.com.
Character: ★ ☆ ☆ ☆ ☆
Plot: ★ ★ ☆ ☆ ☆
Prose: ★ ½ ☆ ☆ ☆ ☆
OVERALL: ★ ½ ☆ ☆ ☆ ☆
Well … that was a book.
A book full of typos and incorrect terminology (you do not holster a sword, a holster is for a firearm), and boring, inconsistent characters that I just … urgh. URGH. The best bit was reading it on Discord with friends, because that made it the funny kind of bad instead of the kind of bad where you have to suffer on your lonesome because you have no one to talk to about this book I have been reading and please I need to talk about it my GOD —. Anyway, this is how I want to read these YA/NA TikTok books from now on. For my mental health, see. I should probably stop reading them all together, but where’s the fun in that?
ONWARDS!
A Broken Blade is a story about our main girlboss, Keera, being a reluctant assassin for the evil tyrant colonising king. She then goes on a quest to find and apprehend a terrorist called the Shadow who has been targeting the kingdom, and learns more about the kingdom and those she serves than she’d ever dared to imagine. In order to free her fellow minorities, she must girlboss all over King Aemon (no, not a Targaryen).
Keera, as mentioned before, is our main girlboss. Just like Celaena before her, she is the bestest of best assassins ever, but she comes with a slight drinking problem, self-harm tendencies (kind of), and a truckload of depression enough to have a dramatic scream to the heavens when two people she has never met die in front of her. She was very frustrating to follow, being inconsistent with her motives (she does not want to be the Blade and tells us how much she despises taking life, but then will turn around and stab people for being collateral when there are literally other solutions available with about three seconds of thinking) and a crippling case of “I must be the most badass character in the room” and subsequently robbing people of being smart and capable themselves. Did you know you can capture a 5000 year old warrior elf just by sneaking up on her with a blowdart? Because how else is Keera going to show how much of a badass she is when she executes the rescue mission? Her whims and motives have the same unfortunate tendencies as one of our favourite BookTok queens, Sarah Maas’s, characters, that being their entire existences coast off “vibes”. In this part of the book, we want badass vibes so that she can cold-heartedly murder people. In this part of the book, we want dramatic vibes so that we can race the clock and ride our horses to death (despite the fact that huffing them up on magic cocaine is not a solution). In that part of the book, it’s tragic hero vibes when she almost blows herself up and asks to be left to die, for she is too damaged, and tired, and evil for this world, as her boyfriend tearfully carries her off bridal-style to try and save her life.
Can we stop writing YA protagonists whose entire personalities are vibes? Thanks! :)
The supporting characters were likewise frustrating to read about. They didn’t seem very smart or beholden to being themselves because of the whims of the plot. They defer to Keera for seemingly stupid reasons, they constantly hold the Idiot Ball so Keera can show off, and overall just plain suck. Their only purpose is to act as Keera’s cheerleaders. You go, girlboss! Go gaslight gatekeep them bitches!
Next, I want to touch on the insane number of typos in this book and the countless examples of misused terminology, such as the holster one mentioned above. We have characters who treaded off the main path, despite treaded only being a word in the context of “treaded tyres”, characters “setting the charges” for their gunpowder plots, despite setting charges needing electricity to actually work, the leaf of rabbit (wtf?), the constant “farther” vs. “further” confusions, etc. The typos were at least funny. You have characters avoiding each other in alleys by giving them “wide births”, one character biting the inside of his “check”, and a particularly memorable one at the end where the apostrophe in “don’t” is replaced by its unicode character (don2019;t). I hope these typos are not in the print version. Especially the last one.
This is an excellent part to segway into the poor prose. You can really tell this is one of the author’s first attempts at writing a book, if not the first. Overall, it was amateur. The characters are constantly communicating with the same five actions of body language (smirking, stiffening backs, brows furrowing, taking single steps towards another character/object, etc. did you know the word “brow” appears in the book more times than Keera’s name? (137 vs. 120)), and there is very little variety in the prose; lots of sentences starting with “I did action”, lots of fragmented sentences, and repeating words. The more egregious instances of the bad writing though were in the action sequences, which were written in a very wooden step-by-step manner of “I did this, my opponent did that, and this was the outcome. Repeat until scene is finished”. Very video gamey. Very IKEA manual. Slay, kween! This book definitely needed more time in the oven, and more drafts.
The worldbuilding was not that well thought out, especially, for me, regarding how old stuff is. You have characters who are hundreds or even thousands of years old, but acting like shitty teenagers or incredibly stupid adults who go through life by throwing literal tantrums. What? I think the idea of multiple celestial bodies such as the multiple suns or moons was cool, but it really feels like an afterthought. There wasn’t anything in the way how two suns might affect anything. Are the lengths of days and nights different to Earth’s because of how light falls on spheres? Do the suns and moons even have different names? There were mention of “gods” in the world, but what gods? What religion? Is Keera religious? Or is it just a left over expression from a time before the king oppressed religion and now everyone’s agnostic or atheist or they worship him as a god king? Be prepared to never find out because it’s only mentioned once at the end. For flavour like so much else.
Finally, the book wanted to do an exploration of a colonised people, but I felt this was a very surface level kind of exploration. There’s a lot of talk about Halflings being oppressed, but the oppression they face is very … I want to say “20th/21st century flavour” as in these characters aren’t allowed to do things full-blooded humans can because they have icky Elf/Fae blood, and are enslaved by either being put into brothels or made into assassins for the king or they’re put into work camps or something. I’m not actually sure, because it’s never really talked about other than as bad things that are happening somewhere vaguely on the map. The situation sucks, but it sucks in a very sanitised “over there” fashion. It’s something we as readers can all agree is bad without having to do much else. It’s a Colonialism Aftermath 101 online echo chamber, and for that it’s just boring, and kind of insulting. It’s acknowledging a very harmful, traumatised, hurting, and deepset issue in society, and just slapping a bandaid on it by having Keera roast other characters reminiscent of what one does when constructing clapback arguments in the shower. But the big solution to fixing this as presented by the book is our main cast plotting to kill the head of government. Because that makes sense I guess. Never mind that the government has been running on this system for seven hundred years and so produced dozens of generations of people (on both sides!) who like it and wouldn’t want it to change. Didn’t you know that discrimination stops being a thing when a head of government vacates their position and all the prejudices and policies and attitudes that are baked into the society they were the head of are just wiped out overnight? Damn, me neither. That’s what I wanted to explore. Keera girly, you stinky badger, I thought you were supposed to be the smart one here.
Finally, we’ll touch on Keera’s drinking. Her alcohol dependency was not well written. She can kick it with very little effort other than some cravings every so often to remind us that that was a thing. Because didn’t you know, if you just try hard enough, you can bin any of your drug dependency habits just like that! If you’ve got the willpowerrr! What do you mean it can come with health effects? What do you mean going cold turkey after thirty years of drinking daily until you’re blind drunk can kill you? The same lack of thought is taken regarding the self-harm. Keera cuts the names of her targets into her skin every time she kills them, and says she does it to remember her victims. I thought this was a cool idea until she mentions that she makes her scars look pretty by designing them like Elven warrior tattoos, which really distorts the message being delivered. Are you doing penitence, do you actually have mental health issues regarding self-harm, or are you just doing it to give yourself edgy tattoos?
I guess mixed messages is the ultimate message of the book, and I hope the next books Melissa Blair writes have gone through more rounds of revision. But for now, I’m just glad it’s done.
Character: ★ ☆ ☆ ☆ ☆
Plot: ★ ★ ☆ ☆ ☆
Prose: ★ ½ ☆ ☆ ☆ ☆
OVERALL: ★ ½ ☆ ☆ ☆ ☆
Well … that was a book.
A book full of typos and incorrect terminology (you do not holster a sword, a holster is for a firearm), and boring, inconsistent characters that I just … urgh. URGH. The best bit was reading it on Discord with friends, because that made it the funny kind of bad instead of the kind of bad where you have to suffer on your lonesome because you have no one to talk to about this book I have been reading and please I need to talk about it my GOD —. Anyway, this is how I want to read these YA/NA TikTok books from now on. For my mental health, see. I should probably stop reading them all together, but where’s the fun in that?
ONWARDS!
A Broken Blade is a story about our main girlboss, Keera, being a reluctant assassin for the evil tyrant colonising king. She then goes on a quest to find and apprehend a terrorist called the Shadow who has been targeting the kingdom, and learns more about the kingdom and those she serves than she’d ever dared to imagine. In order to free her fellow minorities, she must girlboss all over King Aemon (no, not a Targaryen).
Keera, as mentioned before, is our main girlboss. Just like Celaena before her, she is the bestest of best assassins ever, but she comes with a slight drinking problem, self-harm tendencies (kind of), and a truckload of depression enough to have a dramatic scream to the heavens when two people she has never met die in front of her. She was very frustrating to follow, being inconsistent with her motives (she does not want to be the Blade and tells us how much she despises taking life, but then will turn around and stab people for being collateral when there are literally other solutions available with about three seconds of thinking) and a crippling case of “I must be the most badass character in the room” and subsequently robbing people of being smart and capable themselves. Did you know you can capture a 5000 year old warrior elf just by sneaking up on her with a blowdart? Because how else is Keera going to show how much of a badass she is when she executes the rescue mission? Her whims and motives have the same unfortunate tendencies as one of our favourite BookTok queens, Sarah Maas’s, characters, that being their entire existences coast off “vibes”. In this part of the book, we want badass vibes so that she can cold-heartedly murder people. In this part of the book, we want dramatic vibes so that we can race the clock and ride our horses to death (despite the fact that huffing them up on magic cocaine is not a solution). In that part of the book, it’s tragic hero vibes when she almost blows herself up and asks to be left to die, for she is too damaged, and tired, and evil for this world, as her boyfriend tearfully carries her off bridal-style to try and save her life.
Can we stop writing YA protagonists whose entire personalities are vibes? Thanks! :)
The supporting characters were likewise frustrating to read about. They didn’t seem very smart or beholden to being themselves because of the whims of the plot. They defer to Keera for seemingly stupid reasons, they constantly hold the Idiot Ball so Keera can show off, and overall just plain suck. Their only purpose is to act as Keera’s cheerleaders. You go, girlboss! Go gaslight gatekeep them bitches!
Next, I want to touch on the insane number of typos in this book and the countless examples of misused terminology, such as the holster one mentioned above. We have characters who treaded off the main path, despite treaded only being a word in the context of “treaded tyres”, characters “setting the charges” for their gunpowder plots, despite setting charges needing electricity to actually work, the leaf of rabbit (wtf?), the constant “farther” vs. “further” confusions, etc. The typos were at least funny. You have characters avoiding each other in alleys by giving them “wide births”, one character biting the inside of his “check”, and a particularly memorable one at the end where the apostrophe in “don’t” is replaced by its unicode character (don2019;t). I hope these typos are not in the print version. Especially the last one.
This is an excellent part to segway into the poor prose. You can really tell this is one of the author’s first attempts at writing a book, if not the first. Overall, it was amateur. The characters are constantly communicating with the same five actions of body language (smirking, stiffening backs, brows furrowing, taking single steps towards another character/object, etc. did you know the word “brow” appears in the book more times than Keera’s name? (137 vs. 120)), and there is very little variety in the prose; lots of sentences starting with “I did action”, lots of fragmented sentences, and repeating words. The more egregious instances of the bad writing though were in the action sequences, which were written in a very wooden step-by-step manner of “I did this, my opponent did that, and this was the outcome. Repeat until scene is finished”. Very video gamey. Very IKEA manual. Slay, kween! This book definitely needed more time in the oven, and more drafts.
The worldbuilding was not that well thought out, especially, for me, regarding how old stuff is. You have characters who are hundreds or even thousands of years old, but acting like shitty teenagers or incredibly stupid adults who go through life by throwing literal tantrums. What? I think the idea of multiple celestial bodies such as the multiple suns or moons was cool, but it really feels like an afterthought. There wasn’t anything in the way how two suns might affect anything. Are the lengths of days and nights different to Earth’s because of how light falls on spheres? Do the suns and moons even have different names? There were mention of “gods” in the world, but what gods? What religion? Is Keera religious? Or is it just a left over expression from a time before the king oppressed religion and now everyone’s agnostic or atheist or they worship him as a god king? Be prepared to never find out because it’s only mentioned once at the end. For flavour like so much else.
Finally, the book wanted to do an exploration of a colonised people, but I felt this was a very surface level kind of exploration. There’s a lot of talk about Halflings being oppressed, but the oppression they face is very … I want to say “20th/21st century flavour” as in these characters aren’t allowed to do things full-blooded humans can because they have icky Elf/Fae blood, and are enslaved by either being put into brothels or made into assassins for the king or they’re put into work camps or something. I’m not actually sure, because it’s never really talked about other than as bad things that are happening somewhere vaguely on the map. The situation sucks, but it sucks in a very sanitised “over there” fashion. It’s something we as readers can all agree is bad without having to do much else. It’s a Colonialism Aftermath 101 online echo chamber, and for that it’s just boring, and kind of insulting. It’s acknowledging a very harmful, traumatised, hurting, and deepset issue in society, and just slapping a bandaid on it by having Keera roast other characters reminiscent of what one does when constructing clapback arguments in the shower. But the big solution to fixing this as presented by the book is our main cast plotting to kill the head of government. Because that makes sense I guess. Never mind that the government has been running on this system for seven hundred years and so produced dozens of generations of people (on both sides!) who like it and wouldn’t want it to change. Didn’t you know that discrimination stops being a thing when a head of government vacates their position and all the prejudices and policies and attitudes that are baked into the society they were the head of are just wiped out overnight? Damn, me neither. That’s what I wanted to explore. Keera girly, you stinky badger, I thought you were supposed to be the smart one here.
Finally, we’ll touch on Keera’s drinking. Her alcohol dependency was not well written. She can kick it with very little effort other than some cravings every so often to remind us that that was a thing. Because didn’t you know, if you just try hard enough, you can bin any of your drug dependency habits just like that! If you’ve got the willpowerrr! What do you mean it can come with health effects? What do you mean going cold turkey after thirty years of drinking daily until you’re blind drunk can kill you? The same lack of thought is taken regarding the self-harm. Keera cuts the names of her targets into her skin every time she kills them, and says she does it to remember her victims. I thought this was a cool idea until she mentions that she makes her scars look pretty by designing them like Elven warrior tattoos, which really distorts the message being delivered. Are you doing penitence, do you actually have mental health issues regarding self-harm, or are you just doing it to give yourself edgy tattoos?
I guess mixed messages is the ultimate message of the book, and I hope the next books Melissa Blair writes have gone through more rounds of revision. But for now, I’m just glad it’s done.
Character: ★ ★ ★ ☆ ☆
Plot: ★ ★ ★ ½ ☆ ☆
Prose: ★ ★ ★ ½ ☆ ☆
World: ★ ★ ★ ★ ☆
OVERALL: ★ ★ ★ ½ ☆ ☆
This is my review for the trilogy, which I’ve been slowly reading over the last couple of months.
Ashes of the Sun came to my attention sometime during its release in the pandemic for two reasons. Firstly, the gorgeous cover designs, specifically the UK’s choice to have it be in black and white with those striking splashes of red. But most honestly — it was the hand. I can’t get over how much I love it?? It and the whole illustration look so otherworldly and interesting, and when I look at it I grow happy and end up wishing I could draw hands like that; Scott M. Fischer killed it. Secondly, it was marketed on one of my bedrock favourite dynamics — childhood friends-to-enemies, more specifically in the form of estranged siblings. For these reasons the series has been on the back of my brain for at least two years, and I finally took the plunge once I decided I was sick of starting series and not finishing them; I needed to train myself to go do that again, dammit!
And so here we are. That’s two trilogies done this year, now I need to go back and mop up some of the others scattered through my list.
Not going to lie, I thought there would be more interpersonal drama than ended up happening, and that’s deflated some of my opinions. I can’t say which of the siblings I “liked” more, as I found both to be a little … slippery. The easiest to pinpoint a “why” on is Gyre, due to him not really having a character arc in the first book which had unfortunate knock-on effects for me across the second and third entries. I found myself thinking during that book that if I was the editor, I would have axed the prologue and held the reveal that Gyre and Maya were siblings until they met each other again as adults. As it stands, Gyre is always a guy who hates the Twilight Order and is never faced with the hard questions on what if he’s (sometimes) wrong about his position? Maya has this, but not Gyre, and that made me sad.
With Maya, I’m not as sure; I think I just wanted more exploration of what it means to her to be a centarch, as in, inner reflection from her of how she came to the Twilight Order? The story she was told by the Order vs. what Gyre tells her kinda gets brushed over and man, that has so much potential to dig up other aspects to her situation I can’t help but feel there was … I hate saying this, but wasted opportunity here. I thought she had interesting flaws in that she had difficulty accepting the complications of the world/not easily seeing things from other perspectives, something that ends up costing her dearly, but I don’t think she had enough opportunities to interact with outsiders and show this characterisation to its fullest potential, as the people she mostly interacts with are either those within the Twilight Order, or enemies she’s out to slay.
As for other characters, Kit annoyed me very much in the first book due to her Manic-Pixie-Dream-Girl characterisation, but it did get better in the next two books once she had more people to dilute her page time. Varo was also fun with his stories about all his friends that either die or are awfully mutilated on the job. I also found the main antagonist of the series to be … okay. I don’t mind how he’s just some bad guy that needs to be dealt with, but I wish we got to see more of how his presence impacts the characters than ended up happening; one of my complaints with Emperor of Ruin are the flashbacks, the information of which I would have liked to have been delivered in a different manner.
Now, I’m pretty relaxed on worldbuilding in fantasy books. I’m equally happy with the five-minute crafts Abercrombie “the northern country is called the North and they speak Northern” approach as I am with the more elaborate Sanderson “here are fifty pages of characters musing on Alethi gender roles” style (actually I kid; please do not make me read fifty pages on made-up gender roles). So, imagine my absolute surprise when my favourite thing in this trilogy ended up being the world Wexler built. Four hundred years before the start of the story, a war between two factions called the Chosen and the Ghouls broke out. The Chosen wielded genetically disposed divine magic, and the Ghouls everyman biomagic. The sides wiped each other out, leaving behind a plague-ridden, gross-biomagic fallout post-apocalyptic fantasy world. But before the Chosen died out, they entrusted a group of humans capable of wielding divine magic to shepherd humankind as they did before; this group then became a Jedi-like order called the Twilight Order. What a playground to delve into! I loved the way the post-war politics shaped this story in the form of the Twilight Order, the government, and the rogue, fiercely independent Splinter Kingdoms. It was an amazing, interesting setup that other fantasy books only wished they could have the depths of, and I will be eagerly looking for more books with this much world potential in the future.
Overall, I enjoyed my time with these books and am glad I read them. I don’t think I’ll be rereading these any time in the future, but I will carry fond memories of the worldbuilding in particular.
Character: ★ ★ ★ ☆ ☆
Plot: ★ ★ ★ ½ ☆ ☆
Prose: ★ ★ ★ ½ ☆ ☆
World: ★ ★ ★ ★ ☆
OVERALL: ★ ★ ★ ½ ☆ ☆
This is my review for the trilogy, which I’ve been slowly reading over the last couple of months.
Ashes of the Sun came to my attention sometime during its release in the pandemic for two reasons. Firstly, the gorgeous cover designs, specifically the UK’s choice to have it be in black and white with those striking splashes of red. But most honestly — it was the hand. I can’t get over how much I love it?? It and the whole illustration look so otherworldly and interesting, and when I look at it I grow happy and end up wishing I could draw hands like that; Scott M. Fischer killed it. Secondly, it was marketed on one of my bedrock favourite dynamics — childhood friends-to-enemies, more specifically in the form of estranged siblings. For these reasons the series has been on the back of my brain for at least two years, and I finally took the plunge once I decided I was sick of starting series and not finishing them; I needed to train myself to go do that again, dammit!
And so here we are. That’s two trilogies done this year, now I need to go back and mop up some of the others scattered through my list.
Not going to lie, I thought there would be more interpersonal drama than ended up happening, and that’s deflated some of my opinions. I can’t say which of the siblings I “liked” more, as I found both to be a little … slippery. The easiest to pinpoint a “why” on is Gyre, due to him not really having a character arc in the first book which had unfortunate knock-on effects for me across the second and third entries. I found myself thinking during that book that if I was the editor, I would have axed the prologue and held the reveal that Gyre and Maya were siblings until they met each other again as adults. As it stands, Gyre is always a guy who hates the Twilight Order and is never faced with the hard questions on what if he’s (sometimes) wrong about his position? Maya has this, but not Gyre, and that made me sad.
With Maya, I’m not as sure; I think I just wanted more exploration of what it means to her to be a centarch, as in, inner reflection from her of how she came to the Twilight Order? The story she was told by the Order vs. what Gyre tells her kinda gets brushed over and man, that has so much potential to dig up other aspects to her situation I can’t help but feel there was … I hate saying this, but wasted opportunity here. I thought she had interesting flaws in that she had difficulty accepting the complications of the world/not easily seeing things from other perspectives, something that ends up costing her dearly, but I don’t think she had enough opportunities to interact with outsiders and show this characterisation to its fullest potential, as the people she mostly interacts with are either those within the Twilight Order, or enemies she’s out to slay.
As for other characters, Kit annoyed me very much in the first book due to her Manic-Pixie-Dream-Girl characterisation, but it did get better in the next two books once she had more people to dilute her page time. Varo was also fun with his stories about all his friends that either die or are awfully mutilated on the job. I also found the main antagonist of the series to be … okay. I don’t mind how he’s just some bad guy that needs to be dealt with, but I wish we got to see more of how his presence impacts the characters than ended up happening; one of my complaints with Emperor of Ruin are the flashbacks, the information of which I would have liked to have been delivered in a different manner.
Now, I’m pretty relaxed on worldbuilding in fantasy books. I’m equally happy with the five-minute crafts Abercrombie “the northern country is called the North and they speak Northern” approach as I am with the more elaborate Sanderson “here are fifty pages of characters musing on Alethi gender roles” style (actually I kid; please do not make me read fifty pages on made-up gender roles). So, imagine my absolute surprise when my favourite thing in this trilogy ended up being the world Wexler built. Four hundred years before the start of the story, a war between two factions called the Chosen and the Ghouls broke out. The Chosen wielded genetically disposed divine magic, and the Ghouls everyman biomagic. The sides wiped each other out, leaving behind a plague-ridden, gross-biomagic fallout post-apocalyptic fantasy world. But before the Chosen died out, they entrusted a group of humans capable of wielding divine magic to shepherd humankind as they did before; this group then became a Jedi-like order called the Twilight Order. What a playground to delve into! I loved the way the post-war politics shaped this story in the form of the Twilight Order, the government, and the rogue, fiercely independent Splinter Kingdoms. It was an amazing, interesting setup that other fantasy books only wished they could have the depths of, and I will be eagerly looking for more books with this much world potential in the future.
Overall, I enjoyed my time with these books and am glad I read them. I don’t think I’ll be rereading these any time in the future, but I will carry fond memories of the worldbuilding in particular.
Character: ★ ★ ★ ☆ ☆
Plot: ★ ★ ★ ½ ☆ ☆
Prose: ★ ★ ★ ½ ☆ ☆
World: ★ ★ ★ ★ ☆
OVERALL: ★ ★ ★ ½ ☆ ☆
This is my review for the trilogy, which I’ve been slowly reading over the last couple of months.
Ashes of the Sun came to my attention sometime during its release in the pandemic for two reasons. Firstly, the gorgeous cover designs, specifically the UK’s choice to have it be in black and white with those striking splashes of red. But most honestly — it was the hand. I can’t get over how much I love it?? When I look at it I grow happy, and end up wishing I could draw hands like that. Secondly, it was marketed on one of my bedrock favourite dynamics — childhood friends-to-enemies, more specifically in the form of estranged siblings-to-enemies. For these reasons the series has been on the back of my brain for at least two years, and I finally took the plunge once I decided I was sick of starting series and not finishing them; I needed to train myself to go do that again, dammit!
And so here we are. That’s two trilogies done this year, now I need to go back and mop up some of the others scattered through my list.
Not going to lie, I thought there would be more interpersonal drama than ended up happening, and that’s deflated some of my opinions. I can’t say which of the siblings I “liked” more, as I found both to be a little … slippery. The easiest to pinpoint a “why” on is Gyre, due to him not really having a character arc in the first book which had unfortunate knock-on effects for me across the second and third entries. I found myself thinking during that book that if I was the editor, I would have axed the prologue and held the reveal that Gyre and Maya were siblings until they met each other again as adults. As it stands, Gyre is always a guy who hates the Twilight Order and is never faced with the hard questions on what if he’s (sometimes) wrong about his position? Maya has this, but not Gyre, and that made me sad.
With Maya, I’m not as sure; I think I just wanted more exploration of what it means to her to be a centarch, as in, inner reflection from her of how she came to the Twilight Order? The story she was told by the Order vs. what Gyre tells her kinda gets brushed over and man, that has so much potential to dig up other aspects to her situation I can’t help but feel there was … I hate saying this, but wasted opportunity here. I thought she had interesting flaws in that she had difficulty accepting the complications of the world/not easily seeing things from other perspectives, something that ends up costing her dearly, but I don’t think she had enough opportunities to interact with outsiders and show this characterisation to its fullest potential, as the people she mostly interacts with are either those within the Twilight Order, or enemies she’s out to slay.
As for other characters, Kit annoyed me very much in the first book due to her Manic-Pixie-Dream-Girl characterisation, but it did get better in the next two books once she had more people to dilute her page time. Varo was also fun with his stories about all his friends that either die or are awfully mutilated on the job. I also found the main antagonist of the series to be … okay. I don’t mind how he’s just some bad guy that needs to be dealt with, but I wish we got to see more of how his presence impacts the characters than ended up happening; one of my complaints with Emperor of Ruin are the flashbacks, the information of which I would have liked to have been delivered in a different manner.
Now, I’m pretty relaxed on worldbuilding in fantasy books. I’m equally happy with the five-minute crafts Abercrombie “the northern country is called the North and they speak Northern” approach as I am with the more elaborate Sanderson “here are fifty pages of characters musing on Alethi gender roles” style (actually I kid; please do not make me read fifty pages on made-up gender roles). So, imagine my absolute surprise when my favourite thing in this trilogy ended up being the world Wexler built. Four hundred years before the start of the story, a war between two factions called the Chosen and the Ghouls broke out. The Chosen wielded genetically disposed divine magic, and the Ghouls everyman biomagic. The sides wiped each other out, leaving behind a plague-ridden, gross-biomagic fallout post-apocalyptic fantasy world. But before the Chosen died out, they entrusted a group of humans capable of wielding divine magic to shepherd humankind as they did before; this group then became a Jedi-like order called the Twilight Order. What a playground to delve into! I loved the way the post-war politics shaped this story in the form of the Twilight Order, the government, and the rogue, fiercely independent Splinter Kingdoms. It was an amazing, interesting setup that other fantasy books only wished they could have the depths of, and I will be eagerly looking for more books with this much world potential in the future.
Overall, I enjoyed my time with these books and am glad I read them. I don’t think I’ll be rereading these any time in the future, but I will carry fond memories of the worldbuilding in particular.
Character: ★ ★ ★ ☆ ☆
Plot: ★ ★ ★ ½ ☆ ☆
Prose: ★ ★ ★ ½ ☆ ☆
World: ★ ★ ★ ★ ☆
OVERALL: ★ ★ ★ ½ ☆ ☆
This is my review for the trilogy, which I’ve been slowly reading over the last couple of months.
Ashes of the Sun came to my attention sometime during its release in the pandemic for two reasons. Firstly, the gorgeous cover designs, specifically the UK’s choice to have it be in black and white with those striking splashes of red. But most honestly — it was the hand. I can’t get over how much I love it?? When I look at it I grow happy, and end up wishing I could draw hands like that. Secondly, it was marketed on one of my bedrock favourite dynamics — childhood friends-to-enemies, more specifically in the form of estranged siblings-to-enemies. For these reasons the series has been on the back of my brain for at least two years, and I finally took the plunge once I decided I was sick of starting series and not finishing them; I needed to train myself to go do that again, dammit!
And so here we are. That’s two trilogies done this year, now I need to go back and mop up some of the others scattered through my list.
Not going to lie, I thought there would be more interpersonal drama than ended up happening, and that’s deflated some of my opinions. I can’t say which of the siblings I “liked” more, as I found both to be a little … slippery. The easiest to pinpoint a “why” on is Gyre, due to him not really having a character arc in the first book which had unfortunate knock-on effects for me across the second and third entries. I found myself thinking during that book that if I was the editor, I would have axed the prologue and held the reveal that Gyre and Maya were siblings until they met each other again as adults. As it stands, Gyre is always a guy who hates the Twilight Order and is never faced with the hard questions on what if he’s (sometimes) wrong about his position? Maya has this, but not Gyre, and that made me sad.
With Maya, I’m not as sure; I think I just wanted more exploration of what it means to her to be a centarch, as in, inner reflection from her of how she came to the Twilight Order? The story she was told by the Order vs. what Gyre tells her kinda gets brushed over and man, that has so much potential to dig up other aspects to her situation I can’t help but feel there was … I hate saying this, but wasted opportunity here. I thought she had interesting flaws in that she had difficulty accepting the complications of the world/not easily seeing things from other perspectives, something that ends up costing her dearly, but I don’t think she had enough opportunities to interact with outsiders and show this characterisation to its fullest potential, as the people she mostly interacts with are either those within the Twilight Order, or enemies she’s out to slay.
As for other characters, Kit annoyed me very much in the first book due to her Manic-Pixie-Dream-Girl characterisation, but it did get better in the next two books once she had more people to dilute her page time. Varo was also fun with his stories about all his friends that either die or are awfully mutilated on the job. I also found the main antagonist of the series to be … okay. I don’t mind how he’s just some bad guy that needs to be dealt with, but I wish we got to see more of how his presence impacts the characters than ended up happening; one of my complaints with Emperor of Ruin are the flashbacks, the information of which I would have liked to have been delivered in a different manner.
Now, I’m pretty relaxed on worldbuilding in fantasy books. I’m equally happy with the five-minute crafts Abercrombie “the northern country is called the North and they speak Northern” approach as I am with the more elaborate Sanderson “here are fifty pages of characters musing on Alethi gender roles” style (actually I kid; please do not make me read fifty pages on made-up gender roles). So, imagine my absolute surprise when my favourite thing in this trilogy ended up being the world Wexler built. Four hundred years before the start of the story, a war between two factions called the Chosen and the Ghouls broke out. The Chosen wielded genetically disposed divine magic, and the Ghouls everyman biomagic. The sides wiped each other out, leaving behind a plague-ridden, gross-biomagic fallout post-apocalyptic fantasy world. But before the Chosen died out, they entrusted a group of humans capable of wielding divine magic to shepherd humankind as they did before; this group then became a Jedi-like order called the Twilight Order. What a playground to delve into! I loved the way the post-war politics shaped this story in the form of the Twilight Order, the government, and the rogue, fiercely independent Splinter Kingdoms. It was an amazing, interesting setup that other fantasy books only wished they could have the depths of, and I will be eagerly looking for more books with this much world potential in the future.
Overall, I enjoyed my time with these books and am glad I read them. I don’t think I’ll be rereading these any time in the future, but I will carry fond memories of the worldbuilding in particular.
So this is just Dishonored but *checks quickly* uhhhhh not good?
Admittedly I picked this book up knowing it was going to be a hot pile of garbage (just the vibes, you know?), but my goodness. My goodness.
Firstly, the overarching conflict was so juvenile it was frustrating. Richard Swan, who's the author of The Justice of Kings, talked about how one of his frustrations with fantasy that led to worldbuilding and character choices in his book was that he noticed “sides” were presented as monoliths, i.e., everyone in the good kingdom is good, and everyone in the bad kingdom is bad. Granted, Richard's example was Tolkien, but damn, if that wasn't true for this book too. Everyone in the good kingdom is good and righteous, and everyone in the invading empire, down to the gruntiest of grunts, is a zealot for their God Emperor, and it doesn't ring true as to how humans work. Shades of grey are well and good in stories, and many don't need them, but it would have been nice to see some variety to characters on both sides, whether it be Guard #1026 screaming battle cries as he runs towards certain death, to the people caught in the middle who maybe put loyalty to their lives and themselves above loyalty to any one righteous cause.
Secondly, the religious aspect of this book was not handled well. I think the most frustrating thing about this was I thought Dalglish intended to write a sincere depiction of how religion plays into people's daily lives, and the pain they experience when it's been banned by an overpowering nation, but it comes off as someone who's very areligious and has been coasting along on those dang vibes again to write the book. The only theology that seems to be in place is “our dude/s are better than your dude/s and we'll prove it by killing you in a gruesome fashion”. I felt like the competing religions were treated more like sports teams which wasn't ... great.
Thirdly, there was a whole lot of logic lacking in this. Like, sure, the deposed heir assassinating his way back into power is like, a sick and timeless fantasy trope, but there are so many ways these characters could have strengthened that premise, you know? Just by asking some few, obvious questions or having some sense of empathy for people other than the main cast. The plan to make Cyrus the one and only Vagrant was ... questionable? If he's to hide behind a mask, make lots of them! Don't put all your eggs in one basket! Maybe that way you can help the people of Thanet in the meantime whilst you're training Cyrus up because he's the one who knows the secrets of the ones in power or something. I was disappointed. What happens if he refused to be trained? What happens if he dies on a mission through random bad luck? What if he quits because he can't stomach it anymore? Does your whole rebellion then fall apart? Again, it just felt like a lot of very simple questions were not thought about.
(Also made me laugh that this evil empire is intent on conquering a small island nation that has the same distance between itself and the empire's mainland that Europe and North America have, if it takes two to three months to reach it via sail.)
Finally, my other sticking point is that the narrative felt unfocused. The first and last parts felt solid, but the core of the book really did feel like a bunch of scenes mushed together until they were book length. I didn't feel much of a cause and effect going on; it was just characters running from gory scenario to gory scenario, only for them to wait and be directed towards the next bad guys they had to take down. It felt like a bunch of side quests? Lending to the unfocused feeling too were the number of POVs. I wouold have appreciated if these had been cut down to a handful.
Overall, even though I wasn't expecting much going in as, in my experience, assassin premises are executed more poorly than not (why is that anyway? It's weird that the only “good” assassin book/s I tend to hear about are the Night Angel ones (also provided you close your eyes to the sheer amount of rape going on in those)), I wish more thought was put into character and drama instead of sneaking, swordplay, and gore as I love assassin/rogue archetypes :(
So this is just Dishonored but *checks quickly* uhhhhh not good?
Admittedly I picked this book up knowing it was going to be a hot pile of garbage (just the vibes, you know?), but my goodness. My goodness.
Firstly, the overarching conflict was so juvenile it was frustrating. Richard Swan, who's the author of The Justice of Kings, talked about how one of his frustrations with fantasy that led to worldbuilding and character choices in his book was that he noticed “sides” were presented as monoliths, i.e., everyone in the good kingdom is good, and everyone in the bad kingdom is bad. Granted, Richard's example was Tolkien, but damn, if that wasn't true for this book too. Everyone in the good kingdom is good and righteous, and everyone in the invading empire, down to the gruntiest of grunts, is a zealot for their God Emperor, and it doesn't ring true as to how humans work. Shades of grey are well and good in stories, and many don't need them, but it would have been nice to see some variety to characters on both sides, whether it be Guard #1026 screaming battle cries as he runs towards certain death, to the people caught in the middle who maybe put loyalty to their lives and themselves above loyalty to any one righteous cause.
Secondly, the religious aspect of this book was not handled well. I think the most frustrating thing about this was I thought Dalglish intended to write a sincere depiction of how religion plays into people's daily lives, and the pain they experience when it's been banned by an overpowering nation, but it comes off as someone who's very areligious and has been coasting along on those dang vibes again to write the book. The only theology that seems to be in place is “our dude/s are better than your dude/s and we'll prove it by killing you in a gruesome fashion”. I felt like the competing religions were treated more like sports teams which wasn't ... great.
Thirdly, there was a whole lot of logic lacking in this. Like, sure, the deposed heir assassinating his way back into power is like, a sick and timeless fantasy trope, but there are so many ways these characters could have strengthened that premise, you know? Just by asking some few, obvious questions or having some sense of empathy for people other than the main cast. The plan to make Cyrus the one and only Vagrant was ... questionable? If he's to hide behind a mask, make lots of them! Don't put all your eggs in one basket! Maybe that way you can help the people of Thanet in the meantime whilst you're training Cyrus up because he's the one who knows the secrets of the ones in power or something. I was disappointed. What happens if he refused to be trained? What happens if he dies on a mission through random bad luck? What if he quits because he can't stomach it anymore? Does your whole rebellion then fall apart? Again, it just felt like a lot of very simple questions were not thought about.
(Also made me laugh that this evil empire is intent on conquering a small island nation that has the same distance between itself and the empire's mainland that Europe and North America have, if it takes two to three months to reach it via sail.)
Finally, my other sticking point is that the narrative felt unfocused. The first and last parts felt solid, but the core of the book really did feel like a bunch of scenes mushed together until they were book length. I didn't feel much of a cause and effect going on; it was just characters running from gory scenario to gory scenario, only for them to wait and be directed towards the next bad guys they had to take down. It felt like a bunch of side quests? Lending to the unfocused feeling too were the number of POVs. I wouold have appreciated if these had been cut down to a handful.
Overall, even though I wasn't expecting much going in as, in my experience, assassin premises are executed more poorly than not (why is that anyway? It's weird that the only “good” assassin book/s I tend to hear about are the Night Angel ones (also provided you close your eyes to the sheer amount of rape going on in those)), I wish more thought was put into character and drama instead of sneaking, swordplay, and gore as I love assassin/rogue archetypes :(
Added to listSigned Bookswith 63 books.
