First Post

Hello to my one reader. I've decided that I'd like an easy forum in which to post all my book reviews. I'll try to post a review every time I finish a book, so hopefully every week or two. I also will post some reviews from books I've read in the past. No point ignoring those, both the bad and the good. We'll start with:

Title: The Emperor's Blade
Author: Brian Staveley
Format: Audiobook
Time to Finish: 5 days

My brother, a fellow fantasy nerd, recommended this book to me. For some reason I decided to trust his judgement. For the most part, I was not disappointed. The story follows the three children of an Emperor in the wake of his death. This is not a spoiler, his murder is the starting part of the story. The elder son and heir Kaden is training with ascetic monks, attempting to find their equivalent of Nirvana. The younger son Valyn is training with the Kettral, the elite fighting force of the empire. The daughter Adare (eldest sibling but not in line for the throne) is the minister of finance, having been kept in the capital to learn the intricacies of the bureaucracy. Each of the three faces major trials, and their stories become entwined as they must discover who is plotting to wipe out their entire family. Throw in the possibility of a longlived race believed to be extinct returning to destroy humanity and it's becomes a page turner (or audio equivalent).
The story is pretty good. Going into it, I was worried that it would be a bit derivative of The Acacia Trilogy by David Anthony Durham (great series), but other than the premise of following the lives of the children of a deceased monarch, they are completely different. The story has good exposition, moments of brilliant dialogue, and an interesting premise. There is magic, mystical beasts, and sword fights, but not in a campy, overdone manner. Instead the style is brutal and efficient, like the characters. By having the siblings do such different things Staveley is able to write mostly independent stories that inform each other, but do not necessarily rely on the others to be understood. This quite an accomplishment and allows each sibling to develop more fully.
I only have two complaints. One, we did not get to spend much time with Adare. She is a great strong female character, but unlike many similar figures in fantasy (or cross genre) her femininity is not her defining characteristic. She is an interesting, complex, and wonderful character who also is female. I commend this choice. But she has many fewer chapters than her brothers, which seems unfair and left me wanting much more of her.
My major complaint is that Staveley created his own swear words. There's nothing wrong with that in principle, but he creates very few, and overuses them to the point where I started to roll my eyes. Any reader will know the one I'm thinking of soon after starting.
I would recommend this book to any fan of epic fantasy. It's a good start to what could be a great series
7/10