 So, after months, I have finally finished reading the Broken Empire Trilogy, so that's Prince of Thorns, King of Thorns, and Emperor of Thorns. I had to stop in the middle to read both All of Evermore and The Lost Metal, so that's why it took me until now, because I think I started the first book in, like, September and it's February now, but yes, I have finished the whole series, and I really liked it. It's really good, at times I even think it's great, but I have trouble bringing that all together into any sort of thesis statement. You know, I have trouble summing up this series in any short way. This is the introduction song, it's not very good, but it's not too long. See, in some ways, this feels like a common heroic fantasy slash low fantasy slash epic fantasy sort of story, in fact in a lot of ways, it feels that way, because, like, when you look at the world it takes place in, the sorts of characters that are there, the sorts of conflicts that occur, it feels like that a lot, with the main exception and main standout just being the protagonist, because Jorg Ancrath is anything but a typical fantasy hero. You know, he's not a plucky farm boy, or any of the other archetypes you might be buying into. Very very different. He's a horrible person, and we'll get more into that later. But then after finishing, this really feels like it resists being put into any sort of box, you know? At times it feels like epic fantasy, but it really isn't. At times it feels like heroic fantasy, but it really isn't. At times it feels like it's a very character driven story, but at times it feels like it's a very very story driven story. At times it feels like science fiction rather than fantasy, but it is still mostly fantasy. And at times it feels like grimdark, but it really doesn't fit that either, like it just resists being put into any sort of box or being defined by any sort of genre. And in a way that's really impressive, you know, it's very rare for an author to create a whole genre from scratch, or at the very least reinvent one to the point where it's completely unrecognizable like this. For those unfamiliar, the story of this follows a guy named George Ancrath, and he was a prince of a kingdom in the Broken Empire. And basically the Broken Empire was once an entire united empire, but the Emperor died without an heir, and none of them have been able to elect a new one for almost 200 years now. And so it's just a hundred smaller kingdoms that are all fighting and trying to conquer each other, and they're all trying to become the next Emperor. And George was the prince of one of these kingdoms, and then when he was nine years old, his mother and his younger brother were murdered, and he survived because he wound up getting thrown into a bush, is that the word? I don't know, he got thrown into a bunch of thorns, and the thorns actually held him there, but they also gouged his arms pretty deep so he scars there even years later. And so that's where his nickname comes from, the Prince of Thorns. The main story picks up five years later when he's 14 years old, and even at such a young age, he's already the leader of a gang of bandits. And if you're wondering, how does a 14 year old get to be that? Because number one, he's really, really smart, and number two, he's fricking psychotic. You know, like, these are very hard men, I say the word hard, but that doesn't fully encapsulate everything. Like they're also crazy psychotic. They're nuts, they're crazy people, and they follow him because he's crazier, more psychotic, but also more competent than all of them. And basically from there, the entire story of this series is just following George's journey to becoming Emperor. Now this story is told from a first person perspective, like it is almost 100% just from George's perspective, and him going over the adventures that he's had. And when you tell a story in first person, your protagonist can really make or break everything. Like it does not matter how good everything around them is, if your protagonist is boring or annoying or stupid or anything like that, it can just cause everything to crumble down. And George, as I said earlier, is a horrible, horrible person. Like I said, he is a bandit. He's the leader of a group of bandits that roam around, attacking villages, and stealing stuff in order to make a living. And he's not any sort of Robin Hood type figure. He doesn't steal from the rich, give to the poor. Nor does he have any sort of real moral code in a more traditional story. He probably would. He'd be a leader of bandits, but he would attack a town and say, okay, don't kill anyone unnecessarily and don't shoot anybody or anything like that, and that is not at all what happens. Like literally the first scene of the first book is them attacking a town and then they go to a farmhouse and realize there's nothing there, so they say, okay, let's just see if this guy has any daughters we can... And like that is, that's your introduction to this character. And George keeps that attitude throughout. Now, he's not a sadist. You know, he doesn't attack people and torture them just because he enjoys it or anything. He is just willing to sacrifice pretty much anything and anyone in order to achieve his goals. So while, again, yes, he is an awful person, he's never boring. You know, he's very interesting to follow and he's very good at what he does. Like I said, he's very smart, very competent, and whenever there's battles or anything, he doesn't hide behind his soldiers. He's up there in the shit with them, so you can't say he doesn't put his money where his mouth is. It's just, he's an awful person because he's willing to sacrifice and risk anything including the lives of other people. This is encapsulated pretty well in the second book when he gets into conflict with this character named Oren, who is also a prince of another kingdom. The kingdom is called Aero, so he's the prince of Aero, which sounds like a nickname similar to Prince of Thorns, but it's not, that's just, that's his title. But anyways, Oren is also very young, he's also very intelligent, also a very competent battlefield commander and everything that George is, but he's a decent person. He has spent years conquering nearby kingdoms and bringing them into the fold, but he's actually a very good ruler and people like living under him, and the second book is basically about him coming into George's territory and trying to take over. And I'm sorry for minor spoilers, but I kind of have to bring that up in order to talk about this. And in a traditional fantasy story, Oren would probably be the protagonist, or at the very least he and George would switch personalities. Because think about it, we have this guy who's trying to conquer this entire empire in order to make it better and make life better for all the people under him. And then we have this person he goes up against who is sadistic and wants power just for the sake of power. Okay, he's not sadistic, let's be clear, he's brutal though, and he wants power just for his own personal desire to have power and he's willing to sacrifice anything in anyone, like in a more traditional story he would be a villain. Or at the very least they would just switch personalities, like again, you know, we still have George who had his mother murdered and led bandits and everything, but he'd be much nicer about it. And then in the second book he would again be the underdog because Oren's army outnumbers his by a huge margin, and so for most of the book he was thinking, how is he gonna get out of this? And after spending three entire books with him, I just felt gross. You know, George is a horrible, horrible person for a variety of reasons, like he kills people, he steals things, he just does not care. But again, he's never boring, you know? He makes no excuses for himself, he makes no excuses for why he is the way he is, like in fact in the third book there is a point where he is captured by some other bandits and he witnesses them torturing people in extremely horrific ways, and he doesn't want to end up that way, but he also specifically says in his narration that, yeah, they weren't really any worse than me and my old road brothers, you know, they didn't do anything that we wouldn't have done, really. And that kind of brings me into the actual prose, like the way the story is written, which is fantastic. Like, you know, like I said, it's mostly first person and I loved George's voice, you know? It is full of like information, like very straightforward information, you know? It doesn't feel like an encyclopedia entry about the world or anything. He just gives very straightforward info about the world, about people he knows, about just life in general. You know? It's very straightforward, very fun to read, and it reveals his personality and the way he's just extremely practical in pretty much all things. It has some very blunt truths about himself and other people. Like I said, he makes no excuses for the type of horrible person he is. He just says, yep. I want power, and in the first book he also wants revenge on his uncle, who is the one that killed his mother and his brother, and he doesn't make excuses for that. He just says, yep, here's me, and if you don't like that, you can go fuck yourself. And just watching his thought process as he comes up with plans and everything is, it's just great. It's a lot of fun. So, even if I didn't, well, I don't know if I'd say I like George, but even if I, George, but even if I wasn't invested in his journey and invested in watching this, I would probably still stick around just because I love the way these books are written. It's a lot of fun. Now, the story is kind of told weird though. I will say that because the first book is very straightforward, you know, it's just George explaining his journey in chronological order as the events happen. But then in the second and third books, it has like two parallel journeys, which are also still from George's perspective. But it has one journey which takes place like right after the first book. So he's still 14 years old, and it just goes on with some of his other travels throughout the second and the third book. And that introduces like several characters and bits of information about the world and everything that we need to know later. And it just, for the most part, doesn't come back until later. But it keeps cutting back and forth between that journey and the one where he's older. So in the second book, it's four years after that, so he's around 18 years old. And it just goes over his conflict with the Prince of Oran. And in the third book, he's 20. And that mostly goes over, again, more of his struggles to become emperor. And so switching back and forth like this, I get why they did it. It's a pacing issue. But it is kind of odd because the thing is, if they had just told the whole story in chronological order, then the first book would be the same. But then the second book, you'd probably have enough material for his other journey there in order to fill the whole book. But it wouldn't really have much of a climax. It would just be a series of, yep, this is going to be important later. Yep, this is also going to be important later. Yep, you need to know this for later. And then the third book would also be weird in terms of pacing because it would have like a relatively short section. In fact, I think most of the storyline when he's 18 in the second book takes place over the course of one day. But you would have that relatively short section there and then it would just skip ahead two years. And then it would be about everything with him trying to become emperor and going to the congression, which is where all the leaders convene to elect a new emperor. And so I get why they did it. It was a whole pacing issue. But it is still a little weird. And it took some getting used to. Like I don't know. I just I felt the need to mention that. And I have to say that for the most part, the pacing here is insane. Like you can see this is the last book. It's not it's not that thick. It's not that big. It's around 400 pages. And the other two books are also around that length, if not shorter. And despite being three not particularly long books, they cram like seven books worth of content in there. Like if this were told in the fashion of a more traditional fantasy, like I keep saying it's very different, then each of these books would be like twice as long and there would be twice as many of them. Like they would go into a lot more detail about certain things, like, you know, battles and stuff would be described in more detail. We get more information about the world itself. It would probably follow a much bigger cast of characters and show their perspectives on various events going on. But no, it's it just goes by like that really fast. And sometimes that's great, but other times that is to the series detriment. I also think that the world is cool and a little bit unique. Now, I did bring the series up months ago in my video on apocalyptic fantasy and why that's stupid and why we shouldn't be doing it so much. And I stand by most of what I said in that video. However, I do think that this series does that concept well, because excuse me, right from the beginning, we know that this is our world like a thousand years in the future. You know, there was a massive apocalypse, which is implied to be some sort of nuclear war because they call it the day of a thousand suns and that destroyed most of the world. And now a thousand years later, they've regressed to something akin to feudal Europe. But there's also magic and they are also aware that this is our world a thousand years later. Like they refer to our civilization as the builders and that they have builder technology and stuff. They don't necessarily understand how it works and how to use it, but it's there. And at first I was wondering, like, OK, where does magic come from then? Like, is this just really advanced technology? And there is an explanation given for that. I won't give it away because it's really interesting. But I did like that. So this is a cool world. It's a bit unlike anything I've seen before. I do wish we got some more info on it. But like I said, George's narration is very straightforward, very to the point. And he doesn't spend time on frilly details like how does the government of this kingdom work or what sort of cultural exports to the people over here have or things like that, you know? And maybe the author has an idea of that in his head, but it's just not brought up in the books, which is fine. But if you're looking for, you know, more of a travelogue where you really get to explore this world, you may be disappointed. Now for the problems. Sometimes the story feels like it's just moving George around because it needs him to be somewhere and it needs him to receive this knowledge or receive this item or something so that he can use it later. You know, it doesn't always feel like George is doing this because he needs to do it or because he has much motivation to do it. It just feels like, OK, we need him to travel there. So the author comes up with some sort of crappy excuse for it, especially in the flashback sequences after the first book where it's still him young going on this long journey over the course of months or maybe a year, I think, before it finally ties together at the very, very end of the third book. So yeah, it just doesn't feel that natural is what I'm getting at. The climax of the series and, in fact, the last book in general just goes by way, way too fast. And so it just does not have time to sink in or to have much real impact. Like we hear about these distant events happening, like we hear about this guy called the Dead King, who is a very powerful necromancer or something along those lines, at least. And he's raising an undead army and attacking people, but we don't really see any of that in person until the very end. Or at least we see very little of that in person until the very end. So I don't know, there's just not much of a sense of dread. You know, we're supposed to be feeling dread that this guy is coming closer and closer and how are the heroes going to deal with this? And the only way they can deal with it is if George becomes emperor and unites everybody, but it just, I don't know. It just, it doesn't work very well. And while George is a fascinating protagonist with a lot of layers to him, like it makes sense why he would be so psychotic. You know, he's basically a child soldier, like we see his childhood and the things he went through in the sort of abuse he faced from his father. He witnessed his mother and brother murdered, and then he had to survive on the road as a bandit, which I mean, again, that means fighting and killing people and stealing their stuff. So he's essentially a child soldier. So he's a very deep, complex character, but very few other characters get that much development. You know, like Miana gets a little bit, you know, she seems like a cool person and it makes sense why George and her would get along so well, but she just doesn't get that much time to shine in either the second or the third book and all of George's road brothers that follow him around. They have like little hints of personality, and I do remember some of them being different. But again, they just, there's not that much to any of them. And the villains, man, the villains are even worse because like the dead king or George's father, they just, they don't have that much to them, you know? And it's, it's a good thing that George is such a fascinating protagonist because if he wasn't, then he wouldn't be able to carry this series the way he does. Like if this were, again, a regular fantasy story where it was told third person and it jumped between characters, perspectives a lot, then I don't think it would work very well just because George would be the only one I was interested in. There are also a few moments, like nothing too awful, I don't think, but there are a few moments where it feels like the entire universe is just bending around George to make things work out for him. You know, like there's just one too many times where he takes a massive risk and like if he screws up at all or something doesn't happen, then he will die. And then the thing turns out exactly the way it needs to for him to just skirt by and barely succeed. You know, like that just happens one too many times. And so I don't know, it's it's a little frustrating to deal with. So yeah, overall, I do think that the Broken Empire Trilogy is great. I really enjoyed it. But if you hate the beginning section, like if you hate George from the start and you just can't get over how awful he is, then you're not going to like the series. You know, it's not going to change your mind. Like he gets maybe a little bit redeemed at the end, but it just does not make up for everything he does. It just it doesn't. So I would recommend this for people looking for original fantasy, looking for something different than what you would expect. But again, keep in mind, it is pretty dark at times. And if you don't like George from the beginning, you're not going to like him at any other point. No, perfect. It's in Japanese. Jingchao Nonging Tao. Wait, that's Chinese. Luckily, I can read barricade. So now for spoiler stuff, because I need to talk about the ending of the series because it's not great, but in order to talk about the ending, I have to explain a couple of things. So basically the builders, you know, us, our civilization, whenever that was destroyed, it was some time in the future, like at least a couple of decades in the future, because they have technology we do not have today. They have things like fully self-aware, sentient artificial intelligences, they have androids that can pass for human, you know, things like that. And apparently either this may have contributed to the apocalypse, it may not have, but the builders just broke physics at some point. Like they made it so that human thoughts and human willpower can affect the real world. And that's magic. That's where magic comes from. But at the same time, as this goes on and as more and more people use magic, it is slowly destroying the world or possibly the whole universe. Like, again, Jorg doesn't really understand exactly how it works. So he doesn't give a whole lot of detail about it, but it's clear that there are some other characters he talks to who understand it in more detail. So if you're looking for a better explanation, you're not going to find it here, but it's clear that there is one. And so the third book, a huge chunk of that is just Jorg traveling to Vienna. I think that's how you say it. Like, it's supposed to be like a bastardized, garbled version of Vienna. And that's like the capital of the empire. But anyways, a big chunk of the book is him traveling there. And then once he gets there, it's the Congression, which is, again, where all the leaders of the hundred kingdoms come together and try to vote on a new emperor. And he has to get a majority of the votes, which means 51. And while they're there, the dead king attacks. And there's a battle going on. And Jorg just barely manages, like with them literally beating down the door, Jorg manages to get elected emperor. And then he fights the dead king very briefly. And it turns out that the dead king is actually William, who was his brother, who was murdered years ago when they were children. Now, because Jorg understands that magic is basically just using your willpower to affect the real world, he pits his will against William slash the dead king and he just kills him that way. You know, he just thinks really hard about it, basically, and then kills him. But he knows that the world is still on the path to being destroyed. Like either it will unravel because everyone's using magic or the artificial intelligences, which are still around, are going to kill all of humanity in order to prevent them from, you know, doing that. And so Jorg, immediately after being emperor, has someone kill him. So he's emperor for like two minutes, and then he goes to a sort of afterlife. But it turns out that this afterlife, this heaven where he sees his brother, that was actually created by humanity because, again, it's willpower affecting reality. And so humanity's like collective consciousness created the afterlife. Like it feels like the ending of a Gainax anime, honestly. But yeah, him and his brother just shut off magic, basically. Like they put things back the way they were, and so magic disappears from the world. And in the epilogue, we find out that someone made an artificial intelligence copy of Jorg, and so the whole story, or at least most of the story, has been written down by that AI copy of him. And now Jorg's son, who is only a child at this stage, is the emperor of the empire, which I didn't realize that was how it worked until the last second, but because I figured that, OK, they had to vote on him. Now that he's dead, they have to vote and choose a different emperor, but apparently not. It just passes through his bloodline that way. So yeah, this is not a great ending, I don't think, because again, the whole thing that we were building up to was Jorg becoming the emperor. And at the end, he's on the emperor for a couple of minutes. And again, it passes to his son, it'll go through his bloodline, so that is victory of a sort. But it feels unsatisfying that the goal the character was working towards this entire time wasn't attained by them. And on top of that, like I mentioned, the super fast pacing means that the climax doesn't mean much either. Like this entire thing happens over the course of like 20 pages, maybe a little over 20 pages. Like I remember getting close to the end of the book and thinking, OK, how are they going to wrap this up all that quick? And as I was getting nearer to the end, I was thinking, OK, is there a fourth book? And I just thought this was a trilogy. But no, it just it just ends really quickly. And so it doesn't have much time to sink in. And yeah, again, just the fact that Jorg didn't really get to be emperor is immensely unsatisfying. You know, I wanted it to end with him being crowned and then saying, and I ruled for the rest of my days or something like that. And I get that a story not ending the way you want it to can still be great. But I just don't think it was handled well here. So yeah, really good books, but they did not stick the landing. They just they didn't. And yeah, like I said, I recommend it to people looking for a different type of fantasy because there's a lot of interesting stuff here, but, you know, the ending is a little iffy and also the storyline with Catherine never really felt like it went anywhere. And a couple of other issues that I don't know. I think this was Mark Lawrence's first book series that he wrote. So yeah, that explains some of the issues. But still, it it didn't stick the landing. That's all. Bye. Oh, my goodness. People are still watching this. I'm I'm not sure why I thought most people clicked away before the credits started. But yeah, these are all my patron, Patreon people. 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