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

4.0

I loooooooooved this! Despite some unnecessarily long info dumps & Valyn acting like a typical teenage boy in nearly every one of his chapters, I got inexorably drawn into this book. The chapters are set up much like GoT where each chapter has a focus on one of the three children of the Emperor; the eldest Adare had the fewest chapters but the best reveal at the end (I began to smell it out at the beginning of that very chapter but it was still a big omg moment). Since this book was focused on the characters so much, we didn't get to learn a lot about the world or its societies & I hope that's elaborated upon in the next book. There's a whole hierarchy of gods - some 'younger' ones that even personally meddled in affairs?! - but they don't sound Malazan-esque so I don't think I'll have to steel myself for that level of carnage lol

I'm kind of kicking myself now for having sat on this book for so long, but if anything it does mean I can jump straight into the 2nd book now!