Synopsis:
It is the richest empire the world has ever known, and it is also doomed. Governed by an imposturous Emperor, decadence has blinded its inhabitants to their vulnerability. The Yellow Empire is on the verge of invasion--and only one man can see it.Haunted by prophetic dreams, Orhan has hired a company of soldiers to cross the desert to reach the capital city. Once they enter the Palace, they have one mission: kill the Emperor, then all those who remain. Only from the ashes can a new empire be built.
The company is a group of good, ordinary soldiers, for whom this is a mission like any other. But the strange boy Marith who walks among them is no ordinary soldier. Young, ambitious, and impossibly charming, something dark hides in Marith's past--and in his blood.
Rating: 🌟🌟🌟🌟
This book is like a ghost. Its language, its characters, its world – all
of it haunts you long, long after you’ve closed the book.
Anna Smith Spark is an absolutely brilliant writer, and for exactly that reason you’ll either love or hate this book. Spark’s prose is complex, at times feeling more akin to poetry in structure and style. I’d say it’s as close to literary as a fantasy novel can get. Her images can be anywhere from earth-shatteringly beautiful to so gruesome it churns your gut. It’s one of those novels that’s just so artfully written, it keeps me up at night thinking about it. I wish I could write this good.
You follow four main POV characters: a seasoned mercenary, a gay politician, a high priestess who’s never left her temple since birth, and Marith. (There’s no good way to truly capture the essence of who Marith is, so Marith he will simply be.) Each character is familiar in archetype but made so deliciously complex that they’re unique, and at some point or another you’ll probably hate every single one of them. That’s the brilliance of each of them: they feel terribly human. They love and they hate and they make morally grey decisions.
Also, the chapters following the priestess will be narrated in either in third- or first-person. You might hate that. I didn’t. Her voice feels consistent despite the change in presentation, and the shifting narration gives you a fuller picture of her character by exposing her inner (first-person) and outer (third-person) life.
As for the world-building, I don’t even know where to begin. It’s incredible. It feels real. I think where Spark succeeds the most is that her world feels old. It feels laden with history and people and cultures past - that the world we experience in The Court of Broken Knives is shaped by all the people and cultures that came before the present story. It gives the world such a feeling of vastness and weight, like there’s a richness lying beneath the text itself. I’ve never seen a feeling like this so masterfully captured in a fantasy novel before.
I could just pile on the praise for how damn much I love this book, but I will admit I didn’t enjoy the second half of the novel as nearly much as the first. The second half of the novel slows down. It’s for that reason that I can’t give The Court of Broken Knives five stars. But the first half of the novel shines so brilliantly that for me it overshadows my disappointment with the second half, and I can’t help but be absolutely in love with everything this book has to offer.
Anna Smith Spark is an absolutely brilliant writer, and for exactly that reason you’ll either love or hate this book. Spark’s prose is complex, at times feeling more akin to poetry in structure and style. I’d say it’s as close to literary as a fantasy novel can get. Her images can be anywhere from earth-shatteringly beautiful to so gruesome it churns your gut. It’s one of those novels that’s just so artfully written, it keeps me up at night thinking about it. I wish I could write this good.
You follow four main POV characters: a seasoned mercenary, a gay politician, a high priestess who’s never left her temple since birth, and Marith. (There’s no good way to truly capture the essence of who Marith is, so Marith he will simply be.) Each character is familiar in archetype but made so deliciously complex that they’re unique, and at some point or another you’ll probably hate every single one of them. That’s the brilliance of each of them: they feel terribly human. They love and they hate and they make morally grey decisions.
Also, the chapters following the priestess will be narrated in either in third- or first-person. You might hate that. I didn’t. Her voice feels consistent despite the change in presentation, and the shifting narration gives you a fuller picture of her character by exposing her inner (first-person) and outer (third-person) life.
As for the world-building, I don’t even know where to begin. It’s incredible. It feels real. I think where Spark succeeds the most is that her world feels old. It feels laden with history and people and cultures past - that the world we experience in The Court of Broken Knives is shaped by all the people and cultures that came before the present story. It gives the world such a feeling of vastness and weight, like there’s a richness lying beneath the text itself. I’ve never seen a feeling like this so masterfully captured in a fantasy novel before.
I could just pile on the praise for how damn much I love this book, but I will admit I didn’t enjoy the second half of the novel as nearly much as the first. The second half of the novel slows down. It’s for that reason that I can’t give The Court of Broken Knives five stars. But the first half of the novel shines so brilliantly that for me it overshadows my disappointment with the second half, and I can’t help but be absolutely in love with everything this book has to offer.
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