Emperor's Sword

2.5/5 stars for me on this one.

Everything about this book was exceedingly average. Except the dialogue, which was cliche and eye-rolling. If I had been reading this normally, I probably wouldn't have finished it, but I got a free copy from Netgalley and like I said, it wasn't bad, it was just very average. The story starts off on a bad track with me to begin with, doing the whole “violence against women and children to give the man a reason to fight” blah blah blah. Plenty of things do this, but it never ceases to be uninspired, and if this is something that bothers you, skip this book. This book also felt too heavy on plot and not enough on connective tissue, like it just skipped to things happening, a report to the Emperor, things happening, report to the Emperor. The action was also uninspired, the characters were not memorable, and as I said before, the dialogue was wooden and something I felt you'd write in a first draft. I know this is Gough's first book, so maybe he improves in this aspect. But this book made me think a lot of the time that I'd be better off reading something else. However, it was passively entertaining. I love Roman fiction in general and this era (Severus's late reign) is not covered often enough, so I appreciated that.

Thanks to Netgalley and the publishers for a copy in exchange for an honest review!