The Emperor's Blades by Brian StaveleyMy rating: 5 of 5 stars
I received a free set of all three volumes of this series from The Grim Tidings Podcast. I'm a huge fan of the podcast.
A brief review....
The world building is fantastic. Three siblings enter a new phase of life when their father, the Emperor, is murdered. One brother has been sent to live with a group of months. He was to learn their ways of meditation and perception about the world. Why? It isn't exactly clear until later on.
His sister has never been eligible to inherit the throne. Yet she was the one who studied everything her father did. Of the three, she is the one that knows the most about how the empire functions.
Their brother was sent off to serve in an elite military unit. Each combat detail flys around strapped to the legs of a giant raptor. (Brian Stavely rescued me from another author that had totally lost me on the concept of people riding below the body of a bird. Congrats, Brian!)
The murder of the Emperor opens up each of them to various elements of a coup intended to seize control of the empire. They are geographically separated, so each begins to do what they can to find the murderer(s) and to rescue the empire from chaos.
This is a fine first book in a series.
Books 2&3 were a little bit of a letdown. They both will get 4 star ratings from me. While both were well written, they just failed to take full advantage of the setup that was done in this book.
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