Emperor of Thorns (Broken Empire, #3) in SOS: Serious Overload of Series

Oct 10, 2012 ~♥*Marianna*♥~ marked it as might-read · review of another edition

This will be awesome!

I wish Mark wasn't stopping the series at book number three. Why not a quadrilogy? Pentalogy?

Are these words or am I just making them up? ...more

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Jan 02, 2013 Jesslyn rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: cat-epic-fantasy, cat-series-completed, cat-dystopian-fantasy, auto-buy-series, audiobook-whispersync-companion, z2013-kindle-reads, audio-book, cat-will-reread, audiobook-great-narration, cat-dark-fantasy

REREAD 1/12/2017: Still in awe of how good this was.

8/6/2013: I don't even have words for how good this was. I am tempted to go find the author and shake another series out of him. Failing that, this trilogy will be on my to-read over and over list.

VERY nice work Mr. Lawrence. ...more

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Oct 03, 2016 Patrick rated it really liked it

Shelves: reviewed, book-series

So, I have a lot of mixed feelings about this book. I read the first two several years ago and while I thought they were fairly entertaining, they had never quite lived up to my expectations. The books always felt a lot longer than they really needed to be and the story has never really felt quite as compelling as one would be otherwise led to believe. Nonetheless, I decided to give the third book a chance in order to finally finish the trilogy once and for all and to see if it lived up to the f So, I have a lot of mixed feelings about this book. I read the first two several years ago and while I thought they were fairly entertaining, they had never quite lived up to my expectations. The books always felt a lot longer than they really needed to be and the story has never really felt quite as compelling as one would be otherwise led to believe. Nonetheless, I decided to give the third book a chance in order to finally finish the trilogy once and for all and to see if it lived up to the fantastic ratings that it has received from reviewers.

Mark Lawrence did create a decently entertaining story that has you rooting for a character that would be considered a villain in any other context. Jorg is a pretty neat character, but he's far from having the in-depth characterization of that of, let's say, Walter White. He goes around killing and hurting whomever he wants so that he can get his way, but there's very little about the character that makes him easy to relate to or sympathize with. Aside from Chella, none of the other characters are quite memorable. I couldn't tell you the difference between Makin, Red Kent, and other random names. Katherine and Miana stick out, but only slightly.

The Dead King serves as the novel's main antagonist and while I do like the idea of a necromancer king as the bad guy, I felt pretty underwhelmed. There was little to no characterization of him and you don't find out very much about the character until the last few chapters of the novel. He seemed to pretty much come out of nowhere and didn't pose much of a threat until the very end of the novel.

Like the previous two installments, Emperor of Thorns is broken into multiple stories: the current day story and the "Five Years Ago" story. However, this installment does have one extra story: "Chella's Story," which mostly serves to give insight as to what has been going on with The Dead King and Chella. Chella's Story is probably the most interesting of the three as the other two seem to meander on aimlessly throughout a good chunk of the book. Like any good fantasy novel, many of the chapters feature Jorg and company wandering through various parts of the world with random battles sprinkled throughout. It's pretty hard to tell which chapters can be classified as filler and which ones can not. Many of the chapters do contain important plot details, but they are often muddled with superfluous details. I did have some difficulty understanding what the point was of all the "Five Years Ago" chapters were about. There was a lot of fluff about the Builder-ghosts and mathmagicians, but it all felt very aimless after a while.

Overall, it was a decent effort from Mark Lawrence, but it doesn't quite live up to the hype set by Goodreads, Fantasy Book Review (who gave it a 9.8), or /r/fantasy. Much like I felt about the Black Jewels Trilogy, Emperor of Thorns is a decent ending to an incredibly promising series. ...more

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