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A review by nooralshanti
Empire of Chains by Ryan W. Mueller
3.0
This book is difficult to rate because it had so many good elements, and the world seems to be really well-built, but there were a few things that weren't pulled off as smoothly as they could have been. Everything was well-planned and well-built, but it was hard to really get into it and feel the stakes or care about the world as much and so it kind of dragged and felt long.
I think the main issue for me was that the evil Emperor Warrick's scenes were all so vague, we were led to believe that maybe he has good reasons for some of his evil deeds or maybe he is somehow being forced to commit them or whatever, but we weren't given enough detail or inside information into what he was seeing in the webs of fate, what was compelling him to do these things and so it was hard to buy this whole angle.
Something about the level of detail, which wasn't necessarily too much detail, just kind of included at the wrong times bogged down some of the action scenes and the tension fizzled away a little bit.
I also found that there wasn't enough pay off at the end for such a long book. It's the first in a series, of course, so I didn't expect a decisive conclusion, but I would have liked to see that there was more point to all the wandering around in the Empire.
Anyway, as I said, this book has a lot of good elements and I'm interested to read some of the author's later works because I'm certain that with a tiny bit more writing experience he could tell some fascinating fantasy stories.
I think the main issue for me was that the evil Emperor Warrick's scenes were all so vague, we were led to believe that maybe he has good reasons for some of his evil deeds or maybe he is somehow being forced to commit them or whatever, but we weren't given enough detail or inside information into what he was seeing in the webs of fate, what was compelling him to do these things and so it was hard to buy this whole angle.
Something about the level of detail, which wasn't necessarily too much detail, just kind of included at the wrong times bogged down some of the action scenes and the tension fizzled away a little bit.
I also found that there wasn't enough pay off at the end for such a long book. It's the first in a series, of course, so I didn't expect a decisive conclusion, but I would have liked to see that there was more point to all the wandering around in the Empire.
Anyway, as I said, this book has a lot of good elements and I'm interested to read some of the author's later works because I'm certain that with a tiny bit more writing experience he could tell some fascinating fantasy stories.