by Sebastien de Castell

I planned to re-read these guys slowly and take in all the fantastic, but life got in the way and I was a little anxious over how book 3 was going to go that I decided that I’d just have to skim them and just read the best bits. I’m onto plan 3 right now which is somewhere in the middle as they’re ALL best bits…

If you’re yet to read these books I recommend you do that right now. They’re clever and so tragic it’s beyond belief and I really have no fathomable idea what book 3 is going to have in store for me. I’ve leant mine to a friend and she’s desperately waiting for book 3 – I have a review copy so I’ll be giving her my un-read hardback this evening. I hope she appreciates what a big deal that is! Only 3 people are on the lent-before-I’ve-read list…

My review of book one, Traitor’s Blade can be found HERE.

“I loved the idea of the Greatcoats and the Greatcoats themselves. Kest, Brasti and poor, poor Falcio. But mostly…mostly I loved the king. I loved him because Falcio loved him and because he loved Falcio, he loved his country and he even loved the people who are rejoicing in his death. I love how smart he was and how clever, though we don’t quite know yet EXACTLY how clever he was and how he said he wasn’t wise, when he was the wisest of them all. I hope we get to see more of him in the other books, I hope that the talks about prequels go ahead and we get to meet him properly and I hope that eventually, they can convince the world just how much he loved them all because I hate that they hate him when he was trying to save them.”

My review of book 2, Knight’s Shadow can be found HERE.

“We start to see just how clever Falcio himself is, and yet…he still can’t work out the Kings plan, so how much smarter was this king? This king who followed Falcio as much as Falcio followed him. As the book is told from Falcio’s point of view, to see this man as he is, we need people to actually tell him things, because inside his mind, he’s just a normal guy. They tell him some in this book and boy is he surprised!

I truly love the world that Sebastien de Castell has woven here and by now you may know I’m a big fan of banter and seemingly insignificant moments weaving into major plot points which these books are full of. There’s swords and bows and adventuring. Queens and knights and Greatcoats. Saints and Gods and quests. The one thing it’s short on is magic, but Falcio hates magic so perhaps that’s a good thing.”

Obviously at the time of first reading these I did a little research and I seemed to have thought that there were going to be FOUR books, and prequels. I’m on board with the prequels, but I don’t know if I can deal with waiting for a 4th book!! Haha

While I’d not necessarily forgotten that I love these books, I’d perhaps forgotten the WHY. Some of it was the sheer agony of this world and the hope I have that Falcio will be able to save it. Some of it was for Falcio himself, how clueless he is about himself and how much he inspires everyone around him so that they want to live up to his expectations, unaware that he’s being inspired by them too. And partly it was because I want to see him beat the odds like a medieval superhero.

Watch out for my review of book 3! It’ll be spectacular – if it doesn’t break me! haha