Hard fantasy- dark, vibrant and gritty. Complex universe creation ( )

Hard one to rate , I thought a Shadow of all night falling was terrible 2/5 October's baby was a lot better with military battles and wizards 3/5 and All Darkness Met was damn awesome what a fucking bloodbath at the end 5/5

"He was the last, Bragi mused. None of us are left but me" And, after a while, "Why am I still alive?" ( )

Lacks the narrative intimacy of the fabulous Black Company series. Too many characters, not enough character development for my taste. I found it difficult to muster much interest in the fortunes of any particular party. ( )

Odd, even somewhat bland, an epic fantasy without a hero. Not even an anti-hero. A study in the wars of kingdoms over timescales of a couple of centuries maybe. You can't even really assign one of the kingdoms as 'good', they are somewhat interchangeable backdrops. Characters come, die and get replaced. A few old sorcerers linger on. The dread Empire of the series name is perhaps the constant opposition, but we also spend plenty of time with individuals over there, and none of them are particularly different from the Westerners.

The book opens with a young boy watching his mother being executed for the crime of witchcraft. He goes on to grow up on a farm (although the whole pig-boy learning the trials of life bit is skipped entirely) before learning the magical arts and seeking his revenge. Apparently he learnt the Arts from the Eastern country very similar to China. He casts a divination over his fate and learns he will wed a beautiful aloof woman - when she is born a couple of centuries later. She is the sister to some Storm Mages, (minor wizards) and we follow them for a while as they seek their revenge against a city that overthrew their ancestors. This goes awry and the woman marries an itinerant joker. The wizard is not amused - but bestows on her long life, with the promise to marry him next, when the joker dies. In return the wizard promises to help keep the joker alive. Part of the cause of the upset to the Storm Mages plans was an intervention from those Eastern powers that had supplied the wizards training. Time passes. The Joker is one of the childhood friends on one Braggi Ragnuson (just about he only name I could remember in the whole book, far too many of the others were far too similar). Braggi, now in his thirties is summoned as a mercenary to a small border kingdom. Here he helps defend Royal succession and discover yet more plots from the Easterners. This brings the joker and the various wizards altogether for the final battle. The survivors carry on.

The somewhat dry summary above gives a good feel for how the plot develops - the narrative voice moves forward from one character to another, and very rarely returns to check upon the older ones, although they continue to appear in the tale. People fall in love without the romance or courtship being described, and the elder children take up their father' mantles in the long going saga. None of the numerous battles are described in detail (hardly anything from the magic to the landscape is described in any detail). There are no swords slashed in uppercuts, no archers waiting for the balls of their eyes, just we attacked on the flanks and withdrew suffering casualties.

All that said it remains quick reading and strangely engrossing. You have to be fairly familiar with the fantasy genre to appreciate it, despite the lack of non-humans apart form a brief mention of dragons, and some magical constructs. Here it also suffers from a common problem in longlived fantasy worlds. After a few centuries, no-one anywhere has developed any more advanced from of technology. No industrialisation, no development, just the same medival background for centuary after centuary. There's suspension of disbelief, and then there is taking things too far.

It certainly isn't high literary prose, but it does give a good overview of the strategies of the long-lived from both sides, and also how these impact individuals along the way. Not ground-breaking stuff, but good enough. ( )

This is a giant 3 in 1 collection of novels in the Dread Empire series. Once you realize it is actually 3 different novels, this makes more sense, as Part 1 introduces a character that gets almost completely forgotten in book 2, and is a role player in book 3.
If you are familiar with Glen Cook, then you will be familiar with this style of fantasy novel. Gritty, realistic politics and warfare at the 'low fantasy' level, with a mix of individual and army action, but where heroic figures play a role in both. Wizardry, armies and politics mix to make a sometimes confusing mess of plot, but it all flows together at the end. Getting to that end can sometimes be slow, especially when politics takes over, but the military sections of the book are really excellent. Don't expect the story to be over at the end of this book though, it isn't. ( )