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A review by edgedancer
The Empire of the Dead by Phil Tucker
4.0
This was fun!
I picked up The Empire of the Dead completely on a whim. I had just finished a book and was anxiously waiting another's release a few days later and had no idea what to squeeze into that short time-frame. Phil Tucker's other series, the Chronicles of the Black Gate, had been on my TBR pile for a while but I wasn't quite ready to jump into a 600+ page fantasy at the moment. So, after seeing Phil talk about The Empire of the Dead on r/fantasy and realizing it is a relatively short read, I picked it up without really knowing anything about it.
Overall, I really enjoyed the story. The setting is not quite what I usually like (very necro...Phil actually describes the book as "necro-Sumerian Ocean's 11's heist-style fantasy" and I'd say that is definitely accurate) and it took me a little while to really get into it, but it finally clicked around the halfway point. The characters are great and once the "heist" Phil refers to kicks into gear I found myself reading away until the end. There were a few minor issues I had with the story...mostly around how the pacing, but overall, I enjoyed the book and plan to read the sequel whenever it is released.
I kind of used this book as a way to see if I liked Phil's writing before diving into his Black Gate series, and I'm happy to say that I definitely did and will be reading those books shortly as well. I split my time on this between the kindle and audio-book versions and thought the narrator, Paul Guyet, did a great job. He lists this as his first work with Audible, so I'm not sure if he's done previous audiobook work before outside of Audible, but major props to him if this was his first one. Indie narrators can be hit or miss, but Paul was excellent.
I picked up The Empire of the Dead completely on a whim. I had just finished a book and was anxiously waiting another's release a few days later and had no idea what to squeeze into that short time-frame. Phil Tucker's other series, the Chronicles of the Black Gate, had been on my TBR pile for a while but I wasn't quite ready to jump into a 600+ page fantasy at the moment. So, after seeing Phil talk about The Empire of the Dead on r/fantasy and realizing it is a relatively short read, I picked it up without really knowing anything about it.
Overall, I really enjoyed the story. The setting is not quite what I usually like (very necro...Phil actually describes the book as "necro-Sumerian Ocean's 11's heist-style fantasy" and I'd say that is definitely accurate) and it took me a little while to really get into it, but it finally clicked around the halfway point. The characters are great and once the "heist" Phil refers to kicks into gear I found myself reading away until the end. There were a few minor issues I had with the story...mostly around how the pacing, but overall, I enjoyed the book and plan to read the sequel whenever it is released.
I kind of used this book as a way to see if I liked Phil's writing before diving into his Black Gate series, and I'm happy to say that I definitely did and will be reading those books shortly as well. I split my time on this between the kindle and audio-book versions and thought the narrator, Paul Guyet, did a great job. He lists this as his first work with Audible, so I'm not sure if he's done previous audiobook work before outside of Audible, but major props to him if this was his first one. Indie narrators can be hit or miss, but Paul was excellent.