Category Archives: epic fantasy

books, epic fantasy, Fantasy, Reviews

The Hero of Ages (The Mistborn Saga 3) by Brandon Sanderson

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Stars: 5 out of 5.

This was a fitting end to an epic trilogy. What I love about Brandon Sanderson is that his worlds are always complex and well thought-out. Things happen for a reason, even if that reason isn’t immediately discernable by the reader. There will be no deus ex machina here. Everything that happens has been foreshadowed in the previous books or hinted upon in this one. 

I also like that he lets his characters be flawed and make mistakes. Vin isn’t a strong female lead that can do no wrong, and when she does, it’s not wrong because she is the protagonist. I’ve seen too many of those in the movies and TV series lately. No Vin is a very human character, with her needs and wants. She is rash and acts without thinking things through sometimes. And people die as a result. And Vin realizes this, and strives to do better, to try harder. 

It’s disheartening to see both her and Elend try so hard to protect their people, but no matter what they do, Ruin seems to prevail. I especially felt for Elend there because he came into this story as a stary-eyed idealist full of good intentions. Life proceeded to regularly beat him down and show him that good intentions aren’t enough when you are responsible for the lives of thousands of people. That sometimes you have to make hard decisions. I like the fact that even despite that, he kept the moral core that made him a good man right until the end.

And even though I love our main couple, there is no denying that Sazed, Spook, and TenSoon are the real heroes of this book. My heart broke for Sazed who experienced a veritable crisis of faith in this book. And Spook… Oh Spook. From a minor characters who could barely talk he becomes a leader worthy of Kelsier’s crew. 

Speaking for Kelsier. It’s amazing how a character who died in the first book manages to influence everyone he came in contact with for the next two books. God knows he wasn’t perfect, but he managed to inspire people to fight seemingly impossible odds. And, dare I say, he helped create the Hero of Ages.

I came out of this trilogy with a sense of immense satisfaction, but also with a broken heart, though I understand that things ended how they needed to end for all of our characters. I will definitely check out the books in the next era of Mistborn world, but I think I will take a break first. Because despite how much I love Brandon Sanderson’s style, these books are rather hefty tomes that require a lot of brainpower to get through.

books, epic fantasy, Fantasy, Reviews

The Final Empire (Mistborn 1) by Brandon Sanderson

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Stars: 3.5 out of 5.

If you can give one thing to Brandon Sanderson, it’s that he has a knack for creating unique and complex magical systems. Allomancy is a delight to read about and you can see that a lot of thought went into figuring out how this system would work and what its rules and limitations are. I love a well-thought out world where the author abides by the rules they created. It makes the world feel more real. Sure, it’s not our world, but something like that could exist somewhere.

I also like a good heist story, and what is bigger than organizing a heist to rob the supreme ruler of the Final Empire? I love the preparations and the unfolding of plans and contingencies when the original plans inevitably fail. I even liked the couple twist we had towards the end. 

So why did I give this book 3.5 stars then if I liked so many things? 

Well, a good world and plot are important for my enjoyment of a book, but I am also very character-driven. I need good characters to follow to fully enjoy a book. Unfortunately, Mr. Sanderson wasn’t very good at creating memorable characters, at least in his earlier books. No, actually, let me rephrase that, because it’s not entirely true. He wasn’t very good at creating memorable protagonists. 

Again, this is just a question of personal preference, but I really didn’t like Vin. She read a bit too much like a YA heroine for me: ball of insecurities that turns out to be a special snowflake, instalove, knows everything better than people who have years more experience than she does, etc. I mean some of the stuff she pulled with the nobility should have gotten her severely reprimanded by her crewmates at the very least. Instead they just shrug and give her a pat on the head. 

In fact, Vin’s arc was the most boring part of this book. I didn’t care about the balls, the gowns, and her budding love for the wonderful nobleman’s son. Especially since his characterization is rather weak. I honestly don’t think that putting a young boy with book knowledge and no experience in charge of reconstructing an entire empire is rather foolish.

The characters I liked were Kelsier and his gang of thieves with a heart of gold. They were “real”. They were interesting. There was criminally too little of them in the book. If we had cut out the balls and winy Vin and added more about Kelsier’s planning and plotting, it would have made a much better book, in my opinion. Then again, I don’t read YA, so any YA tropes make me burst in hives. 

As it stands though, this book made me interested in the world and eager to read the next installment to find out the answers to some of the questions that were left untold – what was the Deepness? Where do the mists come from? Why is the sun red instead of yellow now and why is ash falling from the sky? What really happened at the Well of Ascension one thousand years ago?

I want to learn about that, even if that means I will have to follow Vin once again. Let’s just hope the events at the end of this book made her more mature.

books, epic fantasy, Fantasy, Post-Apocalyptic, Reviews

Ashes of the Sun (Burningblade and Silvereye 1) by Django Wexler

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Stars: 4 out of 5

This is the third series I have picked up by this author and I can say with confidence that Django Wexler is a creator of worlds, which is good praise in my books. Each of his series has a very distinct feel, with an original world and engaging characters. 

I loved a glimpse of the world in this book, where humans live on the ruins of a war between two Elder races – the Chosen and the Ghouls, who had been intent on mutual annihilation. The Ghouls unleashed the Plague that wiped out the Chosen, but not before they bombed the ghoul underground cities into oblivion. That was 400 years ago. Humanity inherited a planet full of ruins, broken weapons, and magical artifacts. And also plaguespawn – an unfortunate side-effect of the Plague. These monsters have just one purpose – attack anything living and assimilated it, and they prefer humans. Unfortunately, they are also all over the place, so humanity lives in cities and walled villages, and travel is dangerous…

I also really liked both of our siblings – Maya and Gyre. Even though they are on the opposite ends of this conflict, it’s really hard to say who is right and who is wrong. They both believe in their own truths. They are both decent people deep inside. They are also very young, so they still see the world in black and white, even though they allowed a few shades of gray in the end which helped them find a compromise long enough to get out of a very bad situation they were in. 

I liked that they both felt “alive” to me. No, I didn’t agree with all of their actions, especially with what Gyre did in Deepfyre, but I understood their motivations. To me, that’s the most important part. I might not like the character or agree with them, but I need their actions to make sense with what I know about them. That’s exactly what I get every time I pick up a Django Wexler book. 

Of course, there are still a lot of questions left unanswered – who or what is that black spider that Maya keeps encountering. How did it get ahold of Jaedia? What is the Thing on Maya’s chest and why does the spider call her an experiment? What are the plaguespawn and are they really the by-product of the Plague? Are the Chosen really gone? And a lot more. 

So this book accomplishes what a first book in a series is supposed to do – introduces an interesting world with engaging characters and left us with enough questions to pick up the next book. Well done, Mr. Wexler, well done. I am definitely continuing with this series. 

PS: I received a fee copy of this book from NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.

books, epic fantasy, Fantasy, Reviews

Engines of Empire (The Age of Uprising 1) by Richard S. Ford

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Stars: 1 out of 5.

DNF at 30%.

The description of this book sounded so promising, and I was really excited to start it… Unfortunately, my excitement quickly turned into puzzlement, then annoyance, then simply boredom.

This story feels so… disjointed. First we have a prologue that has almost nothing to do with the story itself – we are introduced to characters that never appear in the book again (at least in the part I read before I called it quits), in a location that is barely mentioned again, only because one of the protagonists is sent there. But then again, that particular protagonist has the least page time, so I maybe got to read his POV twice before I dropped the book.

Then we are briefly introduced to our protagonists who are promptly sent their separate ways, so we don’t really get a feel for their family dynamics or feelings. They are together for maybe a couple pages and manage to squabble like kindergarteners for that whole duration. There is no sense of familial ties or history there. Then they leave to their specified locations… and that’s it for the ties between them.

I understand that that the author wanted to show different parts of this seemingly vast empire through the eyes of the protagonists. Unfortunately, that didn’t work for me. There isn’t enough meat in the worldbuilding to visualize the actual world. We have this Empire that is seemingly ruled by industrial Guilds. And the Emperor is the head of the most powerful Guild… Okay, how does this work? Apart from a brief reception for a foreign dignitary (during which the emperor behaved like a simpleton), and a sham of a trial in front of the Guild council, we get nothing about what makes this empire tick – what about the non-guild citizens? Army? Militia? Judiciary system? Anything? Same for the “Demon empire” that supposedly was their enemy for a thousand years. We get disjointed glimpses of things but they don’t make a clear picture.

It didn’t help that I couldn’t like any of the protagonist enough to care about them. Especially Tyreta, who behaves like an entitled brat with no self-control for most of the story I managed to get through. And while that could have been excused for a teenager, her mother, who is supposedly in her 40s, isn’t much better. This book suffers from a distinct lack of good characterization.

Finally, the fight scenes are… uninspired to say the least. Who could imagine that a fight scene can be boring? Well, they are in this book. They last for pages at a time but aren’t dynamic or suspenseful. They are just boring. I found myself skipping paragraphs during the fights.

Maybe I am just spoiled by other great epic fantasy books I read this year, since a lot of people seemed to have loved this one and left me cold.

PS: I received a copy from Netgalley in exchange for an honest review.

books, Dark fantasy, epic fantasy, Fantasy, Reviews

The Empire’s Ruin (Ashes of the Unhewn Throne 1) by Brian Staveley

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Stars: 3 out of 5

This was an okay book, but nothing special. I mean, it kept me engaged enough to plod through 600+ pages, but it never got me engaged enough to be truly invested in the story. 

The world is interesting, and I really wanted to read more about it. I also realized that this was a sequel to an existing trilogy, but I don’t think you need to have read the previous books to understand the world. From what I could gather, this story follows a different set of characters anyway.

So why did I give this only three stars? I had two problems with it. 

The first one is the pacing. There is no sense of urgency, no real stakes for our characters. Gwenna is sent to the butt end of the world to recover kettral eggs, but there is no timeline on this. We are told that the empire is falling apart and that restoring the kettral is crucial in saving it, but nowhere in the book are we given an indication that the fall is imminent. We are TOLD that it’s the case, but we aren’t SHOWN. It’s hard to be invested in a quest when the stakes aren’t known. Gwenna could take years to get those eggs back, and the empire might still stand. Who knows? The readers certainly don’t. 

Same problem with Ruc’s storyline. We are told at the beginning of the book that this supernatural badass “First” is coming with an army and he will subjugate this city… then we don’t hear from him at all until the very end of the book. Again, we are TOLD. We are shown a dead messenger who didn’t even try to resist and some kind of bat creature who, supposedly, killed several people before it was captured. We are TOLD that, but we don’t see that happening. So again, the stakes are unclear. The urgency is minimal. Especially since we spent the entire book in one place – the Arena. The characters kept talking about escaping, but never really actively doing anything about it (apart from almost at the very end). So there is this big army coming, and we keep hearing that Ruc and Bien need to escape the city… yet they are still in the Arena every time the narrative comes back to them.

As for Akiil’s storyline, I still have no clue why it was even necessary to include it, apart from that one little seed at the end. Other than that, he was my least favorite of the characters, so reading through his POVs was a slog. One of the reasons is that I can’t understand his motivation. I figured out Gwenna and was onboard for her slow descent into depression and cheered when she finally clawed her way out of it. I was mildly sympathetic to Ruc’s efforts to suppress his violent tendencies, but Akiil? I still have no clue what motivates him. It honestly felt like he was making bad choices just for the sake of making bad choices. And that whole ark with the Captain and Skinny Gwenn? I’m not even sure what the point of that was…

So all in all, I was engaged enough to finish this book, but I’m not sure if I am invested enough to pick up the next one, or to go back and read the original trilogy.

PS: I received a copy of this book via NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.

books, Dark fantasy, epic fantasy, Fantasy, Reviews

The Bone Maker by Sarah Beth Durst

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 Stars: 5 out of 5

Most epic fantasy books end with our mighty heroes defeating the big bad and riding into the sunset and their happy ever after. But ask yourself this question – what happens after the sun sets? What does that ever after look like? Especially if you spent years preparing for this one battle, dedicated your whole life to it. If you walked from it physically and mentally scarred and lost your heart in the process? This is what this book is about. 

Kreya was the leader of the Five Heroes of Vos, the brave crew who defeated the nefarious bone maker Eklor… but that was 25 years ago. And she lost everything in that battle – she lost her husband, who took a fatal arrow trying to protect one of their friends. This death broke Kreya – they were supposed to spend their life together after this battle, to travel the world and experience life to the fullest, to see and do everything they had put on hold while they were saving the world. They were supposed to grow old together. Now Kreya had 25 solitary years trying to resurrect her dead husband using the research of the very monster they sacrificed so much to defeat.

It was interesting to see that famed ever after and follow a band of heroes in their lives after the main story had seemingly ended. I found the portrayal of how these people would try to rebuild their lives after such a traumatic event very realistic. Some try to rebuild their lives and become successful, and never ever think about the war again. Some found a family and find happiness in a quiet life. Some are so broken that their mind fractures over time, and some, like Kreya, put their entire life on hold in order to bring back the person they love.

I also loved that even though they hadn’t seen each other in years, when one of them needs help, they all gather around that person and offer all the help they can. Sure, some will grumble about it, but they will still do it. That’s what true friends are. And like true heroes, when a new evil threatens their country, they will still rise to the occasion.

As you can see, I absolutely loved the characters. All six of our heroes are very human, with their flaws and their battle scars. And yes, I include Stren’s wife in this, because she is just as much part of the crew this time around as the original 5. They make mistakes, they doubt themselves, they don’t want to be responsible for saving the world again, but they still do it when they realize that nobody else will. 

I would have loved a bit more details about the world. It’s mentioned that Vos is built entirely on mountaintops, that a perpetual mist shrouds the valleys between the peaks and monsters live in that mist. I would have loved to learn a bit more about that. Is this a natural occurrence? Is this the result of some ancient war? Are other countries like that as well or not? Unfortunately, there are no answers to these questions.

But this gripe notwithstanding, this was an excellent book. I highly recommend it for fantasy fans out there.

PS: I received a copy of this book from NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.

books, epic fantasy, Fantasy, Reviews

The Kraken’s Tooth by Anthony Ryan (The Seven Swords #2)

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Stars: 3.5 out of 5.

I liked this book better than the first one, which I reviewed here.

One of the reasons is that there are a lot less characters, so the author gets the chance to focus a bit more on each of them. So they actually feel like people instead of cardboard cutouts. It helps that we already met Seeker and Pilgrim in the first book, so the author doesn’t have to reintroduce us to them. He can focus on fleshing them out more instead.

This is where comes my first complaint. Pilgrim is the only one deserving fleshing out and a back story, it seems. Oh, we dwelve into his past plenty in this book. We even learn how he got bound to his demin sword. Don’t get me wrong, it’s interesting and I welcomed the knowledge… I just wish the author would have done the same with Seeker.

As it stands, she is still the mysterious beast master who is looking for her kidnapped daughter. Deadly with a now, masterful in animal control, silent and not very fleshed out. We don’t even get to learn her name, unlike Pilgrim. Oh, and we still haven’t found her daughter, imagine that. I hope that the author pays her more attention in the next book, because she is an interesting character who deserves to come out of Pilgrim’s shadow and get a voice of her own.

The world continues to be imaginative and intriguing. Therr are gods, demons, ancient heroes, and strange cartographers who are much older than they appear. I’m not entirely sure how all this fits together just yet, but I’m happy to stick along for the ride. As ling as the hints thrown here and there in the books end up fitting into a coherent picture in the end.

Can’t help but notice that so far all Pilgrim and Seeker did in their quest was bring ruin and destruction to magical places that had stood for millennia. I hope that’s not a trend. Otherwise by the time Pilgrim assembles all the cursed swords, the world would be in ruins.

PS: I received an advanced copy of the book from Netgalley in exchange for an honest review.

books, epic fantasy, Fantasy, Reviews

cinders on the wind by louis emery (The tapestry of retha 1)

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Stars: 2.5 out of 5

I made it halfway through the book before I decided that enough was enough. Unfortunately, I am DNFing this one. I’m sure there is a good story somewhere in there, but even after reading half the book, I’m still waiting for it to grip me. The author would have benefited from a good content editor, because this book suffers from a lot of pitfalls rookie authors encounter:

1. Infodumps. We got literally the whole geopolitical introduction to the world in the first few pages. Problem with that? My eyes glazed over after a few paragraphs. I didn’t know those countries or kings or events, so I didn’t know to CARE about remembering them. So when they are mentioned again a few chapters later, I’m lost. I already forgot who was fighting with whom and why.

2. Endless flashbacks. Every time a character is introduced, we get a 4-6 pages flashback that explains their story, their motivation and what brought them to the moment in time we are reading about. EVERY SINGLE TIME!!! We are in the middle of an action scene, there is a build up in tension, then bham! new character… and a snooze-fest of a flashback. Yes, let’s kill the pace of an already very slow moving story even more.

3. Lots of tell, not enough show. You might have inferred that from the infodumps and flashbacks, but the author doesn’t know how to show very well. Or thinks that the reader isn’t intelligent enough to understand the character’s reactions and actions unless it’s fully explained to them. Trust me, the reader is smarter than you think, and being spoon fed the information is very annoying. 

4. The blurb is misleading. That young Seer mentioned in the blurb? Haven’t heard or seen her after the first 3 chapters or so. The Kingsguard that is supposed to protect her on her journey? He is off to a neighboring kingdom waging war for his king. There is no mention of that journey and I am halfway through the book. Instead we have 4 characters stuck in different locations doing seemingly unconnected things. There is talk of a rebellion, but who is rebelling, and who is attacking whom is cryptic to me. Probably because my brain switched off during the 6 page infodump in chapter one.

5. I don’t think the author has a very clear idea about his own mythology and divine system. He mentions that the main divinity is the Dragonmother and that there are a bunch of minor gods. The kingdom where most of the action takes place worships the Dragonmother… yet their elite soldiers are called God’s Burden? Yes, with a capital G…

So after wading through half the book and battling with the above mentioned irritating details, I am throwing the towel. This is not for me.

PS. I received an ARC from Netgalley in exchange for a honest review. Sorry, it had to be negative

books, Dark fantasy, epic fantasy, Fantasy, Reviews

City of Miracles (The Divine Cities 3) by Robert Jackson Bennett.

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Stars: 5 out of 5

I love the Divine Cities series and I await every new book with great trepidation and excitement, because I know that Robert Jackson Bennett won’t disappoint. I read and reviewed the two previous books as well, if you are interested to read my opinions: City of Stairs and City of Blades.

City of Miracles is the closing chapter in the stories of a lot of characters that I grew to know and love in the two previous books, so I have a bitter-sweet feeling upon finishing this book. Even if the author continues this series, it will be a different world with different characters, because the events in this book brought the end of an era and paved the road for a new one.

Don’t get me wrong, I will still pick up the next book with just as much trepidation and will be excited to see the direction in which this world will evolve, but it will sure feel empty without Shara and Sigrud and all the others…

Sigrud had been hiding, moving from place to place, from one meaningless job to another, just waiting for Shara to call him back. Instead, he learns one day that the former Prime Minister Shara Komayd had been assassinated. And Sigrud sets out on a journey of revenge, doing what he does best – track and kill those who killed his friend. Only there is a lot more at stake than anyone could have imagined, because all these years Shara had been waging a secret war with a Divinity, and the outcome of this war will change the world.

When previous books were about the Divine wars and its casualties, as well as the guilt of the survivors, City of Miracles is about lost souls. It’s about the war orphans, both human and Divine, whose lives had been shattered by war and who can’t quite fit in this brave new world.

We know that the Radj killed all of the Divinities except one, but what happened to the multitude of Divine children that those Divinities created in the thousands of years of their existence? It was assumed that they simply vanished when their parent Divinities died or were hunted down and exterminated as well. And the most powerful ones certainly met that fate. But what of the weaker ones? The unimportant ones that didn’t have their own followers and had always lived in the shadow of their powerful siblings and parents?

Turns out they survived. Kolkan hid them, made them seem human, erased all memories of their divine nature. He hoped to bring them all back once the war was over and he came out of hiding himself, but we all know how that played out in City of Stairs. So those children, those orphans, are condemned to drift from orphanage to orphanage, from family to family, never aging, never remembering their past, their memories resetting every time their families start to wonder why the child they adopted 7-8 years ago didn’t seem to age. Yes, they survived, but isn’t that a terrible price to pay?

But what happens when some of those Divine children remember who they are? What happens if one of them was captured by the new regime and tortured for years? Wouldn’t he want revenge when he escaped?

I think this book, more than the previous two, shows that no matter what happens to the world, no matter what horrors, humans will find a way to survive, adapt and move past it. And the biggest proof of that is the city of Bulikov – we saw it in ruins in City of Stairs, its citizens beaten down and oppressed, yet in City of Miracles, merely 50 years later, it’s a thriving metropolis again, where the old and the new are intertwined and found a way to coexist. Or Voortyashtan, where Signe’s dream of opening the river to ship traffic again is finally a reality, even if Signe died without seeing it happen…

Legacy is another recurring theme in this book. What do we leave behind when we die? Signe left a dream of an engineering miracle and others made it a reality. Shara spent her whole life trying to change Saypur and bring peace to the continent, and she succeeded. Even Kolkan managed to leave a legacy by saving all those Divine children from certain death.

I think this is the strongest message of this book. That we need to live our lives in such a way that we leave behind a positive legacy, instead of a destructive one, even if this legacy is important only to our family and friends…

So to summarize, this book is a must read, but I would recommend starting at the beginning of the series with City of Stairs, following up with City of Blades, and finishing off with City of Miracles.

books, epic fantasy, Fantasy, Reviews

Portal of a Thousand Worlds by Dave Duncan.

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Stars: 4 out of 5.

I am a fan of everything Asian, so when was asked to review a book set in alternative nineteen century China, I said, “Heck yeah!”. And for the most part, I loved the story. I have a few minor gripes that I will voice at the end of this review, but for the major part, this is a book I would recommend to my friends.

The Good Land is in trouble – the Bamboo Banner rebellion originated in the South and is slowly moving North towards the Heart of the World and the seat of the Empire. They claim that the young Emperor is dead, and that the Empress Mother hides that fact and rules in his name. And the natural disasters befalling the Good Land in the last years seem to corroborate their claim that the Eleventh Dynasty has lost the Mandate of Heaven – drought, then floods, then unusually cold winters threaten famine on a large portion of the Empire. Then an earthquake of unprecedented magnitude flattens cities and villages across the Good Land, killing millions and leaving even more homeless. The very foundations of the Empire are shaking, even though those living in the Inner Palace don’t seem to notice it.

But scholars know that all those disasters are the portents of a bigger event – the opening of the Portal of Worlds, a mysterious carving in the cliffs of the great mountain range that guards the northern border of the Good Land. It is said that once a millennium, that carving becomes a real door. It is unclear what comes out of it, but every time it brings a time of great upheaval and suffering and the change of the ruling dynasty…

There isn’t one single protagonist in this book. We follow the stories of several different characters instead. They come from different backgrounds and have different goals and aspirations.

We have several Gray Brothers, the Order officially in charge of all the funerary rites in the Good Land… and unofficially, the only sanctioned guild of assassins and spies in the Empire. Brother Silky is in charge of making a wealthy merchant even wealthier, even though he is also trying to advance a more personal cause of making a name for himself and founding his own family. Brother Butterfly Sword doesn’t want anything to do with assassinations, but ends up on a mission in the most dangerous place in the entire Empire – the Inner Palace itself.

We have several members of the Bamboo Banner, from the lowest of henchmen to the nephew of Bamboo himself.

And finally, we have the Firstborn and his small retinue, who are travelling towards the Portal of Worlds in the hopes that maybe, for the first time in thousands of years, the Firstborn will live long enough to see it open…

I loved all the characters, the good ones, the bad ones, the in-between ones. Because they were exactly like people around me – not entirely good or bad, but both at different times. They were flawed and petty, ambitious and self-serving, but capable of compassion and sacrifice at times as well. I am glad that at least some of them managed to accomplish their dreams in this time of turmoil, and I am sad that others didn’t survive the upheaval. This says a lot about the author’s writing skill that he managed to keep me invested in so many different characters, each with their own small story, all of which wove into one big tapestry that is this book. I enjoyed every minute I spent with them, and even though the book is 389 pages long, I never felt like it dragged.

In fact, I would have loved it to be a bit longer, which brings me to my first gripe with this book – the ending feels rushed and anticlimactic for the build-up we had during the rest of the story. I won’t put any details to avoid spoilers, but it basically goes like this: Portal opens. A certain character goes through. The rebels and the Imperial army don’t even meet in confrontation, even though they’ve been chasing each other for the best part of the story. Everybody goes home. The End.

This ending left more questions than it gave answers. Who was the Firstborn? Why was he stuck in the Fourth World for so long? It’s implied that it was a punishment, but for what? And why is that punishment suddenly over now instead of say a thousand years ago or a thousand years later? We get no answer to those questions.

My second gripe is with Bamboo, the leader of the Bamboo Banner. What was his ultimate goal, apart from toppling the existing dynasty? He had to know that an army of addicts would never stand a chance against trained soldiers with guns and cannons. Or was he so crazy that he didn’t care? Was all this just the ravings of a delusional megalomaniac or was he guided by greater forces? In any case, it seems suspicious that he would manage to gather such a big following in the first place, because he didn’t strike me as a very charismatic leader. I think that this whole storyline would have benefited from a bit more focus.

But despite those minor details, I really enjoyed this story and I would recommend it to my friends. If you are tired of the usual Western-based worlds and want to try something new and unique, this is definitely a book for you.

PS: I received an advanced reader copy of this book from NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.