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Rise Of Empire (2011)

by Michael J. Sullivan(Favorite Author)

4.33 of 5 Votes: 1

ISBN

0316187704 (ISBN13: 9780316187701)

languge

English

genre

Historical Fiction

publisher

Orbit

review 1: The tale continues in this book part two. Good story!! Needs list of characters, perhaps. There's a list of places and religious figures. In this volume the author added two more characters whose name begins with an A and stuck to his rather curious habit of using the same letter of the alphabet for characters, adding Wesley and Wyatt in immediate proximity. Since the book has a zillion characters it might be hard to keep thinking up names, but...
review 2: Below here I state my opinion of the entire series - the Riyria Revelations - rather than just this individual book.The last couple of decades every high fantasy author has been trying so hard to be non-traditional in what they write that the genre has become skewed towards weirdness too much and now somethi... moreng like this brilliant work by Michael J. Sullivan is suddenly very different from what everyone writes these days... So, while some readers may discard it as “too traditional”, “typical” or even “cliché”, it actually isn’t at all, in the light of those trends!Anyway, the Riyria Revelations can only be considered “old-school” (i.e. - a sort of “LoTR” style) in terms of things such as the species of characters used in it - Elves, Dwarves, Men and Goblins. But, as Mr. Sullivan himself rightly says, it doesn't matter what the author calls them - what matters is how they are used by him and whether the whole thing is well written. And this one is brilliantly written, and very well thought out overall! When you read half of the first book, you might mistakenly think the story is a bit naive and simplistic. But then, after that you gradually start learning that certain people and things were not what you thought they were - truths about them get gradually revealed (hence, the title of the entire series). Some new misconceptions and lies (by characters, of course, not by the author – he never lies to you; he just lets you foolishly believe in the misconceptions and lies by characters) are mixed in at times along the way, just to throw you off the scent. And then you get to the really big and shocking revelations in the final book... It's like a combination of high fantasy with detective fiction.And the writing style is always smooth and the whole thing is very easy to read, without being childish. The (very important for me) ratio of "world building and character development / number of words being used for it" is really high. And it’s a really good story, with all types of characters, including “grey” ones. But, while none of the protagonists is a Marty Stu or a Mary Sue, they are still written in a way that the reader inevitably sympathizes with them. And that is a welcome and refreshing change from a lot of recent fantasy literature, where too often we have to follow the story through the eyes and twisted thoughts of villains - frankly, at some point that becomes frustrating and hard to read for me.To sum it up - this is one of the best and most well written high fantasy series of all time, in my humble uneducated opinion. less

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