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A review by marie_22
The Trials of Empire by Richard Swan
adventurous
dark
tense
3.0
2.75 stars
The first two books in this series followed a somewhat similar concept. The characters were travelling through the empire, and then encountered some sort of mystery that they had to solve. At the same time, the overarching conflict slowly but surely kept building and tensions rose as the characters got more and more involved.
While I did have problems with certain aspects of these first two books (mostly the second book!) I still really enjoyed the mystery solving of it all, it definitely kept me interested. The writing style felt atmospheric, and the world building was nicely done.
This final instalment, however, changed direction and introduced so many new things, it felt disjointed. There was so much that was only briefly or never mentioned before trying to build up to the big finale that led to this story feeling very rushed. It needed much more build up for all of this to work, and that just wasn’t there.
Also, the whole Helena and Vonvalt thing was still somehow present in this story, so thanks, I hated that.
Overall, I still like the first book best. This final one had its moments and great scenes, but the pacing didn’t work and there was too much new information introduced in a very short amount of time too really get into it. And book two had already kind of ruined the main characters for me, so.. glad to be done with this series.
Thank you to NetGalley and the publishers for the arc in exchange for an honest review.
The first two books in this series followed a somewhat similar concept. The characters were travelling through the empire, and then encountered some sort of mystery that they had to solve. At the same time, the overarching conflict slowly but surely kept building and tensions rose as the characters got more and more involved.
While I did have problems with certain aspects of these first two books (mostly the second book!) I still really enjoyed the mystery solving of it all, it definitely kept me interested. The writing style felt atmospheric, and the world building was nicely done.
This final instalment, however, changed direction and introduced so many new things, it felt disjointed. There was so much that was only briefly or never mentioned before trying to build up to the big finale that led to this story feeling very rushed. It needed much more build up for all of this to work, and that just wasn’t there.
Also, the whole Helena and Vonvalt thing was still somehow present in this story, so thanks, I hated that.
Overall, I still like the first book best. This final one had its moments and great scenes, but the pacing didn’t work and there was too much new information introduced in a very short amount of time too really get into it. And book two had already kind of ruined the main characters for me, so.. glad to be done with this series.
Thank you to NetGalley and the publishers for the arc in exchange for an honest review.