The Crown Tower

Executive Summary: This one starts slow, but ends really strong, and is a must read for any fans of the Riyria RevelationsAudio book: Mr. Reynolds once again does an excellent job with his narration. I particularly enjoyed his voices for Pickles and Staind, but all of his voices are well done as usual.Full ReviewThe book starts with a note from Mr. Sullivan covering two important things about writing a prequel to a completed series:1) Too much of a good thing/ruining a good thing by going on too long2) Reading order for new readersI want to cover both quickly at the start to give my take on them. For the first point, so far, so good. I had just devoured his original series and was eager to jump right in. This book did start slow, and had me worried a bit, but once it got going it was really enjoyable and makes for a great addition to the series.Mr. Sullivan says he made it a point to allow readers to choose their entry point, and I think he makes a good effort at it. I had a friend read this book first and he enjoyed it and wasn't confused.However, try as he will there are some things I'd consider spoilers in this book, which is pretty much inevitable with a prequel. They may only be minor things and I tend to be overly sensitive about that kind of thing. Either way I think you'll get more out of this book having read the original series first. There are definitely some subtleties and backstory that will missed by someone who starts with this book instead of [b:The Crown Conspiracy 4345290 The Crown Conspiracy (The Riyria Revelations, #1) Michael J. Sullivan https://d202m5krfqbpi5.cloudfront.net/books/1313141264s/4345290.jpg 21574260]So on to the book. There are two main POVs for most of this book: Hadrian and Royce Gwen? I was a bit surprised about the Gwen story as I didn't know much coming in. The start of her story is a large part of why I found the start of this book slow. It was worth it in the end however. Once her story got going I found it really interesting, and made for a nice contrast from Hadrian's story which was almost entirely devoid of woman. Gwen was an interesting minor character in the original series, and it's fun to see her promoted here.Hadrian's story starts a bit slow as well, but not as much and I did enjoy the character of Pickles a lot. Overall the book really doesn't get going until Royce and Hadrian are together though.Coming fresh from [b:Percepliquis 12174312 Percepliquis (The Riyria Revelations, #6) Michael J. Sullivan https://d202m5krfqbpi5.cloudfront.net/books/1312541516s/12174312.jpg 17145858], there had been a fair bit of mention of the “Crown Tower job” and I think Mr. Sullivan does a good job of fleshing that out into a full story here.The book finishes a lot stronger than it starts, and I made it a point to get some extra listening time in on the last day to make sure I'd finish.As a prequel, this really adds more detail to the back-stories of Royce, Hadrian and Gwen, and adds a lot of depth to the characters. Royce especially. I'm looking forward to reading about other past adventures of the Riyira pair. On to [b:The Rose and the Thorn 17163514 The Rose and the Thorn (The Riyria Chronicles, #2) Michael J. Sullivan https://d202m5krfqbpi5.cloudfront.net/books/1362121827s/17163514.jpg 23589581]!