A review by leeman729
The Emperor's Blades by Brian Staveley

4.0

“Obedience is a knife that cuts the cord of bondage.
Silence is a hammer that shatters the walls of speech.
Stillness is strength; pain a soft bed.
Put down your basin; emptiness is the only vessel.”

Four Stars: ✰✰✰✰

This book, shockingly, was actually better than I was expecting it to be, just from the blurbs and little snippets I've seen on Goodreads and Audible. I was expecting more or less just another typical modern fantasy book - that wasn't especially interesting or original; but this book surprised me with it's highly original world building and story. It's one of those books that I found myself really enjoying, in spite of the fact that I had a few issues.

I have a complaint that I'm going to voice right at the beginning though:

The prologue for this book was too good.

I'm serious. It really was WAY too good. Everything about the prologue in this book appealed to me. It carried a sense of weight and reality. The writing was compelling and mysterious. And it introduced a conflict that seemed so new and original and cool. I was thoroughly convinced of this book's merit by the time I got to the end of the prologue.

And then I got to chapter one, and never heard anything about the contents of the prologue until I was more than halfway through the book. The majority of the book had absolutely nothing to do with the conflict that the prologue introduces. By the time I got to the end of the book I started to understand why the author did this, but it was still frustrating, because I got all excited about a story I would never actually get to read.

It took me a little while to get into it because of that, but once this book got going, it was really quite good.

The worldbuilding and story, in particular, I found to be especially unique. The author took concepts that we are all relatively familiar with and used them in a way that added a unique spin onto these familiar ideas. It's light on the magic content, and this was both a good and a bad thing. Good, because I don't think that the story required a lot of magic content to keep it interesting. Bad, because the magic that *is* in the book I felt could have been better explained, especially regarding the people they call "Leaches".

The story is told from the perspective of three siblings - Kaden, Valyn, and Adare.

It was the characters that kept me from giving this more than four stars. I found them all to be more than a little bland, and just not very interesting. It felt like they all lacked any real personality, and especially after finishing [b:Wrath|27411345|Wrath (The Faithful and the Fallen, #4)|John Gwynne|https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1464179284s/27411345.jpg|47460126] and The Faithful and the Fallen, I had a really hard time relating to any of the characters in this book. Valyn was BY FAR the most interesting character in the book, but even his character didn't really draw me in until more than halfway through the book. Kaden's *story* kept me interested, but there was literally nothing interesting about him as a person. Neither of them were bad characters, I just really wasn't personally drawn to them.

And then there was Adare, who was about as painfully, annoyingly stupid as any character you could read about. She didn't get a lot of airtime in this book, and thank God for that, because I don't think I could have handled more of her than I got.

However, in spite of that, the overarching story in the book was seriously excellent, and it's the story and plot of this book that I think sets it apart from other fantasy series in the market today. It felt fresh. We're presented with totally original ideas, combined with familiar elements, that gave this book a really new feeling. So much of today's fantasy feels recycled, but Stavely really did something unique with the story in this book, and I'll definitely be finishing this series because of that.

Overall, if you're looking for something different, I really recommend checking this series out. Keep in mind that you might not fall in love with the characters, but if you can get into the story that's being told, it will be well worth your time.

Happy reading =].

For this review and more, check out my blog: Thoughts of a Thousand Lives.