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ithato 's review for:
The Emperor's Blades
by Brian Staveley
An excellent epic fantasy debut. Lots of combat, some intrigue, even some light-handed magic.
Slight gripe: chapter balance between the three POV characters felt a little uneven. Subjectively, it felt like Adare had about a quarter of the book or less. Valyn and Kaden dominate the show, which overall is alright with me as their passages were much more interesting to me.
My biggest gripe is that I got extremely tired of one specific in-world curse: 'Kent-kissing. 'Kent-kissing this, 'Kent-kissing that, it probably appears multiple times per page in various places. I have few problems with cursing, often or not, and even fewer problems with lore-friendly cursing, but this one just got really old for some reason.
I had a lot longer review written up but Chrome at it, so this all I've got for now.
Slight gripe: chapter balance between the three POV characters felt a little uneven. Subjectively, it felt like Adare had about a quarter of the book or less. Valyn and Kaden dominate the show, which overall is alright with me as their passages were much more interesting to me.
Spoiler
The imbalance gets even worse when I consider how both Valyn and Kaden come into some bad-ass powers near the very end of the novel, while Adare is just sharp, politically powerful and highly motivated, but otherwise a perfectly normal woman. I had been suspicious of the regent all along, but that betrayal was a lot later in the book than I would have guessed.My biggest gripe is that I got extremely tired of one specific in-world curse: 'Kent-kissing. 'Kent-kissing this, 'Kent-kissing that, it probably appears multiple times per page in various places. I have few problems with cursing, often or not, and even fewer problems with lore-friendly cursing, but this one just got really old for some reason.
I had a lot longer review written up but Chrome at it, so this all I've got for now.