[FB4]≫ [PDF] The Last Mortal Bond Chronicle of the Unhewn Throne Book III eBook Brian Staveley

The Last Mortal Bond Chronicle of the Unhewn Throne Book III eBook Brian Staveley

Download As PDF : The Last Mortal Bond Chronicle of the Unhewn Throne Book III eBook Brian Staveley

The Last Mortal Bond Chronicle of the Unhewn Throne Book III eBook Brian Staveley

The Emperor's Blades had such a promising beginning--fun, entertaining flying warriors on giant birds...An emperor murdered and empire in crisis? What's not to like? However, progressively Staveley deviated from this formula for the second and third books and instead bored ever deeper into trying to create a gritty world driven by its fatally flawed divinities.

Each book pushes deeper into this increasingly dark, introspective venture, and the third installment pushes the dark, bitter, and hopeless quest for realism even further--and, to me, with disappointing results. While the first book may have been guilty of engaging in some of fantasy's cliches, Staveley trades that for darkness and hopelessness that pits his characters against increasingly impossible situations and mutually-destructive ends. There seems to be no winning for them at times, and I found the slim strand of hope Staveley eventually tosses them is completely overwhelmed by the sheer bulk of the depressing theology he depicts.

After painting mankind's plight in hues of pain, suffering, and brutality on one side, or dispassionate bleak emotionlessness on the other, the tone of the entire book is drawn down the darkening path he began in the second book.

Are there highlights? Certainly. Deep, flawed, and interesting characters? Yes--in fact, I feel like his characterisation for the two brothers took a great step forward in this book. However, through their eyes we see the bleak hopelessness of Staveley's world of curiously impotent yet all-encompassing psychotic gods and their followers. Honestly, I would've been happier with Staveley's world had i stopped with the first book. Instead, I found myself depressed and finishing the third book on inertia--to a vaguely dissatisfying ending that leaves as many lose ends as real life frequently does.

The question is, do you want that kind of depressing ending for your fantasy / escapism reading? I'll say, "No."


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The Last Mortal Bond Chronicle of the Unhewn Throne Book III eBook Brian Staveley Reviews

In the end, I found this the most disappointing of the series. There are a lot of interesting ideas here, but it just isn't a very rewarding read. It's definitely not for those wanting a happy ending - which is something I can accept sometimes. The writing may be wordy at times, but I enjoyed it. The worldbuilding is appealing. The story itself, though...

After consideration, though, what bothers me most is the lack of agency for most of the characters. For that reason, I found the only thread of the story I enjoyed was following Gwenna and her Kettral unit. Even when things go sideways for them, they can act and make plans. The three royal siblings so critical to the series have either completely lost any sense of purpose and goals (Valyn) or are operating against immortals and gods (Kaden and Adare) who have them constantly running from one reaction to the next with very little opportunity to take the initiative. As it turns out, that's just not all that interesting.
I can't believe this book was written by Brian Staveley, the author of the masterpiece "The emperor's blades," and an intelligent and insightful blogger on all things literary. It has almost everything you fear to see in a bad fantasy book endless pointless moving around of characters from A to B, and then to C, back to A, whence to C; hollywoodesque behavioral patterns of all characters (I've never met an empress in person, but I would hope for more than foul language and temper tantrums); pseudo-philosophical drivel; super-powerful villains that are invincible for thousands of pages, only to be finally killed off by a well timed kick in the behind; characters that make absurd choices for the sole purpose of adding an element of "tragedy"; and, of course, the warlike savages that are eager to kill you, but all in good humor, and you'll make friends quickly there if you just kill a few of them in return (will we ever get a fantasy book without those?).

I'm still giving the book 2 stars because I was sufficiently interested in learning how it ends that I read it all the way through, but it was a chore. I'm done with this author.

Finally, the language; I was impressed with Staveley as a prose stylist in the Emperor's Blades, but someone must have told him in the meantime that you're not a serious author if you don't use the f-word at least once on every page. Ok, it's a book for adults and I can actually take this once in a while, but it really doesn't add anything when used in the narrator's voice (as it is all the time in this book). What happened to good old English words such as "quite", "rather"? Instead, all we get is f******. That's f****** unnecessary.
This was a good ending to the series, but I didn't love it as much as the previous books, mostly because my few problems with the earlier books were even more evident in this book. Mainly that I strongly disliked the one main viewpoint character, Adare. I haven't really liked her that much in any of the books, but reading every chapter of her's became a real chore. At some points it almost seems like she's going to become the villain of the story, but I think the reader is supposed to like her. Kaden's story is okay, but I wasn't a huge fan of the whole gods angle, and it became a much bigger part of the story in this book. I definitely liked Valyn and Gwenna's stories the most again, but some of the turns Valyn's character took towards the end were a little goofy. Overall, I enjoyed this book, and it's a good conclusion to the story, but I didn't love the end. I'll definitely be reading his next book, and I would recommend the series, but it's not as strong as a third book of a trilogy I would have preferred.
The Emperor's Blades had such a promising beginning--fun, entertaining flying warriors on giant birds...An emperor murdered and empire in crisis? What's not to like? However, progressively Staveley deviated from this formula for the second and third books and instead bored ever deeper into trying to create a gritty world driven by its fatally flawed divinities.

Each book pushes deeper into this increasingly dark, introspective venture, and the third installment pushes the dark, bitter, and hopeless quest for realism even further--and, to me, with disappointing results. While the first book may have been guilty of engaging in some of fantasy's cliches, Staveley trades that for darkness and hopelessness that pits his characters against increasingly impossible situations and mutually-destructive ends. There seems to be no winning for them at times, and I found the slim strand of hope Staveley eventually tosses them is completely overwhelmed by the sheer bulk of the depressing theology he depicts.

After painting mankind's plight in hues of pain, suffering, and brutality on one side, or dispassionate bleak emotionlessness on the other, the tone of the entire book is drawn down the darkening path he began in the second book.

Are there highlights? Certainly. Deep, flawed, and interesting characters? Yes--in fact, I feel like his characterisation for the two brothers took a great step forward in this book. However, through their eyes we see the bleak hopelessness of Staveley's world of curiously impotent yet all-encompassing psychotic gods and their followers. Honestly, I would've been happier with Staveley's world had i stopped with the first book. Instead, I found myself depressed and finishing the third book on inertia--to a vaguely dissatisfying ending that leaves as many lose ends as real life frequently does.

The question is, do you want that kind of depressing ending for your fantasy / escapism reading? I'll say, "No."