Bastards of Liberty
Ratings2
Average rating3.5
15
Ratings2
Average rating3.5
The Crimson Struggle ended after the Battle of the Reaping. Prince Damon attempts to consolidate the Holy Imperium's holdings tightening his grip on the free city-states of Vineland. Nobles struggle over power catching the Ashburn siblings in the middle of the fray. Runt Ashburn attempts to reach his father journeying across the land with a band of misfits. Alysha Ashburn deals with her new position in life, plotting her revenge, while Benjamin Ashburns finds a soldier's life isn't the dreamt he thought it would be. Join the Bastards of Liberty as they try to do right and survive a country that may tear itself apart.
Reviews with the most likes.
Holy exposition! Yeah, there are some stylistic issues with the writing that I really struggled with, but conceptually there are some interesting ideas. Overall this was a mixed lot with some very good things and some very bad...
First lets get the cat out of the bag. This book is incredibly exposition heavy. And that exposition is very intrusive, being thrown into conversations in a very mansplaining way on a regular basis. It is also repetitive. The same unsubtle exposition is thrown up multiple times in random conversation. The book felt under edited and the author seemed to be learning as he went on as it did improve through the book (but the tendency never went fully away). Unfortunately it definitely detracted from my enjoyment of the novel.
On the positive side - the conceptual basis for the book is very interesting. Taking the American Revolution as an influence and applying a fantasy skin is something I haven't really seen before. And this book manages to feel very American, even from a cultural perspective, distinctive from the more euro centric classic fantasy stories. Yes we get the classic tropey fantasy races of elves, orcs and dwarves, but they are given a distinctively American twist. The growth of industry, the allusions to slavery and treatment of the natives are all linked in with the fantasy races and how they are treated in the book. The names of places and empires draw heavily on real things, just given a slight twist, tying closely into American history.
This is definitely an interesting setting for a fantasy novel, and whilst I may have struggled with the it stylistically I applaud the conceptual work that went into it.
This was a book that I was eager to start having heard great things from the community. Now having finished, I look forward to the next in the series.
The pacing through multiple POVs hit the right tempo for me, without pushing “filler” that didn't develop or drive the story forward.
There were several moments throughout that I found myself asking “What?!” and continued turning the page to find out what happened next. Devastated when the last page crept up on me.
