The Emperor's Blades

I have been queuing for this book on my library app for a while now, maybe a month or so. I remember being excited for it when I discovered it was provided by my library and immediately forgetting what the plot was and why I was excited. As you can clearly tell, I loved it.

My overall feeling from the book is that this is an adultier, better version of An Ember in the Ashes (which I liked, possibly loved). This book follows two (kinda three, but honestly not really) children of the Emperor. One son is the heir and was sent to live in a remote monastery as a part of his training. The other was sent to train to become a member of an elite military squad. The Emperor dies (it's in the Goodreads blurb, so I can spoil it) and the sons are thrown in immediate danger. The book follows both boys closely as they try to complete their training but there is also a murder mystery at the heart of the story that is a stroke of genius. I want more fantasy murder mysteries.

I adored every second of this book. I initially planned on marathoning it in one day while I was in work. The initial 30% or so is a slow paced deep dive into the world, but as we get further into the plot we reach the surface of the water and things just gradually speed up until we reach a comfortable pace. The plot was complex enough, and the different connections between the separate story lines kept me interested.

I found the male characters to be compelling and enjoyable to read. There wasn't too much in terms of variation between the women, they were all gorgeous and adept at their required physical skill. This in some cases felt surprising (a young girl who has not trained physically can keep pace with three others who have trained relentlessly everyday) and repetitive. No bloke was described by how sexy or attractive he was, so I could have done with less of a focus on the women's bodies and more on their person. All that being said, there were some fantastic female characters that showed flaws and strengths at the same time. I think the main source of the poor characterisation came from the idea that the book was written from the point of view of a 19-21 year old man, so he will be focusing on the sexy aspects of the women. If we could abandon this idea and let young men in books control their genitals more often, that'd be great.

The setting was clearly well developed and I adored every aspect. I'm desperate to find out more and see a map, as my library ebook copy did not have one. The writing had me by the heart from the prologue and it didn't let me down once. I feel acutely aware that the next book I read is going to be heavily compared to this, and likely won't hold up.

I'm excited to see where the second book goes, and I will definitely keep an eye out for more of the author's works. My largest paragraph in this review is dedicated to a negative aspect of the book, but it was a minor issue and overall I felt like this was going to be a five star book all the way through from page one.

Executive Summary: Despite being a bit slow and predictable in places, this book was a whole lot of fun, and I'm looking forward to the next one.Audio book: I've listened to a few books read by [a:Simon Vance 5602 Simon Vance https://d202m5krfqbpi5.cloudfront.net/authors/1240014151p2/5602.jpg] now, and I always enjoy his narration. Not only is his normal reading voice clear and easy to understand, but he does a variety of voices and accents. His reading definitely added a little extra something to the book. As a first time author, Mr. Staveley lucked out to get such a quality reader. I plan to continue this series in audio as a result.Full ReviewI'm not sure what in the description made me choose this book to review. Maybe it was simply the fact that it was the first in a series. Since doing so I've seen a bit of buzz about this book, so I was eager to get my hands on my review copy.This being the first book of a new series, there is a lot of character development and world building to get through. For the most part I think Mr. Staveley does a good job of this, especially as a first time author. However it does suffer from a few slower parts and some predictable twists.His characters are interesting and have depth. The lore of his world is intriguing. The prologue seems confusing at first, but later on the reader discovers its significance, so just tuck it away for future reference.For the most part this is the story of two brothers. They just happen to be sons of the Emperor of the largest nation in the world. First there is Kaden, the heir to the throne who is studying with the monks of the Blank God in an isolated monastery. Then there is Valyn, who is training with the Kettral, an elite military force made up of the best of the best.Both suffer a bit from some of the fantasy school tropes. Valyn especially has his small group of friends and his rival with his group of cronies. However this being a military training facility, things are a lot more serious than bullying in the hallways.We also get a few chapters with their sister, Adare, who has remained with their father in the capital. These are short, but politically charged. I hope we see a more prominent role from her in the books that follow.This highlights the main flaw of this book. Like many fantasy books, the women are mostly relegated to secondary characters. They suffer a bit from stereotypes, but I think he does have some strong female characters that just don't receive as much focus as I'd like. In general, the secondary characters are all pretty interesting and have enough depth so as not to be interchangeable. Each brother's story starts off in very different places but eventually converge with one another at the end. Things really pick up when they do. Strange things are happening around both brothers and they appear to be linked to a conspiracy to kill the emperor and his family. This makes for a lot of politics and conspiracy theories.One of biggest concerns when reading books in a series is how the author chooses to end it. You need to strike a good balance between leaving the reader wanting more and wrapping up the main conflicts of the book. I think Mr. Staveley does a great job here and I'm looking forward to jumping right into book 2 when it comes out.

WHAT
Many small flaws overall and completely came undone in the end, but what it got right puts this book above the others of the genre.

TLDR
+ characterizations
+ world building
+ “school training” trope done right
- rushed Adare plot

ANALYSIS
The book has 2 stories to tell, 2 POV, 2 brothers, 2 protagonists, heirs to the Unhewn Throne. It should have 3, their sister Adare, but her story was so curtailed that it barely counts.

A good portion of the book revolves around the “wizard/military school” trope, which I hate, but the author manage to kept me enthralled. It was not overdone, using pages to describe how one would handle his sword, or all the steps to tying her shoes. Nor was it about the teachers, the classes, etc. This was just the background for the story as seen from the eyes of Kaiden and Valyn.

I liked the grim tone of the world. The harsh training of the protagonists, the gods, the mythical immortal Csestriim, defeated foes who just might be lurking around, the mysterious creature killing animals around the monastery, the sister left alone in the big city, unable to wield power because she is a woman. All contributed to a feeling o dread, leaving me rooting for all 3 of the siblings.

Many characters are given a proper personality. Kaden's stern teacher, his best friend, Valyn's love interest. The author himself said he wished he had more space/time to flesh out some other secondary characters. I believe that would be nice, but the book is thin in plot as it is.

Now for the bad parts. I was fascinated by the amount of useless tasks Kaiden, the eldest son, first in line for the succession, was put through. Here is a boy that will become the ruler to this huge empire, and yet he started his 10 year training by the age of 8, and said training revolved around the most Karate Kid shit you can think of.

Move a bunch of rocks up the hill, now move then back. Do this for a few days. Stay for a few hours in the frizzing water, and stop bitching about it. Stay completely immobile for a whole week. NEVER question your elders (what a GREAT lesson) or else you will be beaten senseless.

A few things were going through my mind. This will make him stronger, more resistent to the elements, get more physical stamina. WISER! But nope, none of this were truth. By the end of the book, he was still a worthless pice of Unhewnian crap.

He did got this cool party trick, which was hilariously bad. He got the incredible power of not giving a shit. Your brother is dying. Don't care. Your father is dead, his enemies are trying to kill you. Tough luck. And how did he use that power? The BBG had a weakness to this power. He was an **emo mage**, deriving his powers from his opponents emotions. Now it was shown that such mages could gather this energy as mana, as store it for latter use. But no, not this time. When met with Kaiden, in spite of having his belly full of sweet, sweet evilness derived feelings, he just took an arrow to the knee, I mean, shoulder, and fell of a cliff. And has that killed him? Noooooo, of course not. What's the purpose of having a BBG if you can't keep reusing him, over and over again? Expect to see him a future adventure near you. Also bad was the fact that Valyn knew the BBG had this power, and all he had to to to stop him was to control his emotions, something he was trained to do. But no, it was too hard. The guy kept insulting him, so yeah.

Now to Valyn's part of the story. There are two factions of badasses in the world. The Aedolians, the most badasses of all, the personal guard of the emperor, and the Kettral, a SEAL like elite team of soldiers. The Aedolians kick the shit out of the Kettral, which in turn kick the shit out of everyone else. Except when they don't. See, even though it was plainly established that no other faction can beat them, there are plenty of factions that can beat them. A whole ship filled with Aedolian soldiers got wiped out without leaving a single trace of a fight. In other words, they got the shit kicked/outsmarted out of them. Then there is the Skullsworn, assassins that love the God of Death and therefore (really?) can kill just about anybody, anywhere.

So, the emperor is dead, there seems to be a plot to kill his sons as well. And what does the “Empire” do? The Kettral, the Aedolians and everyone else who may care? Absolutely nothing. The only one who cares about the life of the emperor, and his life in turn, is Valyn. Yet, there are a few good attempts on his life and what does he do? Nothing! See, the Kettral might be a bunch of badasses, but Valyn seems to be on the bottom of their Chad food chain. But that is not how the author paints him, he is supposed to be this super hero kind of character, it just so happen that he needs to get outsmarted every step of the way in order to convey how difficult his life is to the reader.

Still I liked his progression. His life in the “fighter school” was interesting. Perhaps I thought it was so bad that curiosity won me over and I desperately wanted to see where this were going. And theeeeen he is wrongly accused of murder by the very people that are supposed to outwit their foes, then he is confined in his quarters, magically gain the respect of his squad which then immediately forfeit their lives in order to go out on a hunch to hunt down the most powerful squad of Kettral there is. They being the exact opposite, a bunch of rag tags that individually are worst then any other, and collectively can't work together to save their lives.

And when they find the enemy, Valyn once again prove his uselessness by surrendering his arms, because this guy he knew 10 years ago said so. And guess what, This guy was also and evil SOB. So, all this training he went through? Worthless. Oh, in another hilariously bad twist, the one thing that made him apart was getting the special eye darkening egg won during the special Kettral training program final test, was used solely to counter another of the BBG. They went into a dark cave, and his new super power was to see in the dark. So, his whole live revolved around getting this super special power, which enabled him to kill this one enemy in a very special set of circumstances.

So, clearly, this is not a book about super heroes. It is a book about clueless underdogs, that can through their sheer will, after going trough a lot of physical and emotional pain, somewhat prevail against an army of enemies, each one of them THE most elite and deadly soldier in the Empire.

There are many good reviews here that touched on these points as well:
Jessica
Alexa