Release Date: 22nd December 2010
Genre: Fantasy, Steampunk, Adventure, Mystery
My Rating:
Don't miss out on the best-selling Emperor's Edge series (2013 Goodreads Choice Awards Nominee).
The adventure starts here...
Imperial law enforcer Amaranthe Lokdon is good at her job: she can deter thieves and pacify thugs, if not with a blade, then by toppling an eight-foot pile of coffee canisters onto their heads. But when ravaged bodies show up on the waterfront, an arson covers up human sacrifices, and a powerful business coalition plots to kill the emperor, she feels a tad overwhelmed.
Worse, Sicarius, the empire's most notorious assassin, is in town. He's tied in with the chaos somehow, but Amaranthe would be a fool to cross his path. Unfortunately, her superiors order her to hunt him down. Either they have an unprecedented belief in her skills... or someone wants her dead.
I loved this book. It was a recommendation from a fellow blogger, and I take recommendations very seriously when it comes to books. I was a bit bored of romance reading and fancied a good fantasy read, but not any old fantasy, a steampunk fantasy. Oh boy, did this book deliver on an interesting and different story for me.
#1 Don’t Judge a Book By It’s Cover
I would never have picked this book up (or gotten it free on my Kindle) if it hadn’t been for the recommendation I received on this from Amy at Pages of Starlight but thank God I did! I really enjoyed it and it helped to remind me (again) that book covers do not always reflect the contents of the book and I need to stop being so judgmental.
#2 Humour In A Book Is Important
Look, I like my books to be funny. But I don’t like them to be trying too hard to be funny because that grates. It needs to be deliberately funny, but appear as if it isn’t trying to be funny. Did I say I made sense?
Thankfully this book is the perfect balance of serious and humorous and I loved it for that. I never felt like Buroker was trying too hard to be funny, which as an achievement given the style of writing in this book reminded me of a couple of books I’ve read before where the humour grated, so I was impressed that I liked this style in this one.
#3 Your Characters Aren’t Always Likable Individually, But As A Group It’s Love
The characters in the entire series are not exactly the best in society, a few of them are down right unlikable. You have Amaranthe Lokdon, one of the few female enforcers in the empire, who is very proper and strict and could come across a bit plain if it wasn’t for the events of the rest of the book. Then you have a well-known assassin, Sicarius, who is pretty damn unlikable with his lack of emotion and lack of remorse for his killings, but he is in someway likable without actually doing much of anything. And the ragtag bunch of people they accumulate around them? There are a few redeeming qualities in the bunch, I suppose, but somehow this cast of character, when put together, create such a lovely (if rather dysfunctional) family that I grew rather attached to.
#4 A Gripping Story is Important When You Go Into A Book Blind
I didn’t actually know what this book was about when I started reading. I knew there was something about an assassin and the rest I didn’t retain. The summary is brief, so it doesn’t exactly give too much away, so I was clueless about what to expect. I am normally a firm believer in reading a book summary before starting because I get bored far too easily otherwise, I need to know what to expect. With this book I liked not knowing, it was nice to be surprised. And more important than being surprised, the story was good. I didn’t have chance to think I was getting bored because there was so much going on in each page that I didn’t want to stop reading.
#5 But Being Aware It’s Part Of A Long Series Is Also Important
I read the first two books in this series in a matter of days, I still have the third and fourth book waiting for me on my Kindle and there are still a bunch more to buy after those. It is a long series. I discovered this when I started browsing Amazon to find the rest of the books. It’s good to be aware that you’re committing yourself to a series. I hate having series surprise when I pick up a bok expecting it to be a standalone, this time I knew it was part of a series, I just didn’t realise how much of one.
Final Thoughts
I’m not going to even convince you otherwise, I loved this book and hope others will read this and fall in love too. It’s a fun fantasy read with action, adventure, mystery, humour and some of the most likable characters I’ve read in a long time. And whilst there are hints about romance, there is no romance taking over the story
Have you read a really good recommendation lately, aren’t they the best? And have you been pleasantly surprised by a book you weren’t certain about? What makes us have these bookish doubts going in I wonder?
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