The Broken Kingdom: Episode Three: Arthur’s Revenge by Angus Donald
My rating: 5 of 5 stars
A satisfying middle episode in of itself and a reason to keep reading.
I’m fascinated by this experiment in storytelling. This is Episode Three of what will be Book I of a trilogy. Book I will contain five episodes, so we are crossing the mid-point of the story here.
Before reading this, you must read the first two episodes to understand who’s who and what they’re doing as we pick them up here. If you have, you might want to go back and review those episodes since the episodes are coming out every month or so. Because I’ve read a few other books since the last episode, I had to go back and remind myself who was who and what was going on. Because of this, It would have been nice to have a “…previously on The Broken Kingdom” section like they do on a streaming service series. Perhaps a list of characters would help, too. Or maybe I could just be a bit smarter.
What’s interesting is that Donald is ultimately writing a novel with an overall story arc and pacing. Yet he still has to pull off individual episodes that are satisfying, have arcs of their own that include a climax, and compel the reader to come back for the next one. Episode Three does this well.
I won’t spoil anything here, especially for those who haven’t read the first two episodes. Episode Three picks up the story of several of the characters and follows them as they begin to converge. There’s an action-packed climax at the end, which may seem like a conclusion. However, Donald reminds us at the beginning of the episode that there is still a much larger threat looming in the distance. I’ll be interested to see how this threat presents itself and how the characters, both friends and foes, deal with it over the final two episodes.
If you haven’t read the first two episodes, you should. If you’re on the fence about this one, you definitely won’t be disappointed.
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