Jorg of Ancrath has broken free of his thorny prison as a prince, he’s ascended a throne to become King and in the conclusion to Mark Lawrence’s fantastic Broken Empire trilogy Jorg, as the title implies, seeks to become Emperor of the Broken Empire. What has come before in the previous two novels is more like the first and second acts of a three-act play with Emperor of Thorns fitting the spot of final (triumphant) act of the play.
Going into the finale of a trilogy, the reader has certain expectations, certain hopes, and certain story beats they’d like the writer to hit. In many respects, the story and character of Jorg fight against expectations. In the previous volumes, Jorg has committed heinous acts and while he continues his misbehaving ways in Emperor of Thorns, in the “current” timeline of the novel he is more insightful of his past actions. Part of that is the result of the pending birth of his child, for one of Jorg’s greatest concerns in the narrative is not being a callous, heartless parent to his child like his father was to him. An older Jorg now reflects on how he should be proactively unlike his father rather than react to how his father treated him. Subsequently, this older Jorg has a goal that is greater than himself, extending even beyond the safety of his wife and child.
Lawrence continues the multi-threaded narrative begun in King of Thorns. Whereas Prince featured a singular narrative, the second installment King featured two narratives, the third logically features three narrative threads with a ‘current’ storyline, a ‘Five Years Earlier’ and a thread from the point of view Chella a necromancer pledged to the Dead King.
So, then who is that darker-than-Jorg antagonist The Dead King? Initially he seems to come out of nowhere as a doppelgänger for Jorg, but Lawrence only lulls the reader in with such minimal surface details. But yes, The Dead King is an antagonist and necromancer who has set his sights on Jorg and bringing down the Empire before it can be reborn and Jorg can fully take power as the Emperor. Through mostly Chella’s point of view, Lawrence slowly reveals the power of the Dead King and hints of the Dead King haunt the main Jorg storyline as other characters constantly remind Jorg that the Dead King is coming. These two viewpoints on the necromancer manage to make for a more menacing threat to the Dead King. This dual perspective also builds a great amount of tension until Jorg’s inevitable confrontation with him.
While Jorg’s journey to become Emperor could be considered the ‘skeleton’ of the novel, the muscles and support could be considered the backstory of the world. Details such as the Data Ghosts, the Builders and other elements that hint at the world before it was ‘broken’ become more prominent. The fact that these novels take place in a Post-Apocalyptic landscape of our future is no longer much of a secret to readers and Jorg’s exploration of ancient ruins become conjure familiar images. Through that, a dark sense of dread simmers off the page. Some of the dark depths to which Jorg delves are quite evocative to the point I’d like to see Lawrence try his pen with a full out horror story.
Emperor of Thorns is a powerful and layered narrative whose details don’t overburden the narrative flow of the novel. Admittedly, I feel like there was almost too much to digest in one reading of the novel. One reading; however, is enough to realize that Lawrence has accomplished something quite powerful and resonant with this trilogy. Because of the fantasy-feel-in-a-far-future-apocalypse, the unreliability of the narrator and much of the “feel” of the novel, I felt a great deal of resonance to Gene Wolfe’s Book of the New Sun. Granted, Wolfe’s text has been a landmark for a few decades, so only time will tell if Lawerence’s trilogy will have the same sort of legacy, but readers of Wolfe’s landmark saga would find much to enjoy in The Broken Empire. Similarly, The Broken Empire held a similar resonant hum with another series that stands quite high on my shelves for many reasons – Stephen King’s seven-book Dark Tower saga.
All that having been said, the best compliment I can give Emperor of Thorns and the whole of The Broken Empire trilogy is that I will be re-reading the three books in the future. Lawrence has layered many details that beg for discovery upon a required multiple reading and with all three books now published, a successive reading from book one to book three uninterrupted. These three novels, the whole story, is a testament to how a smart, powerful story can be told with a framework of expectations that soon wends itself outside those expectations into something of brilliance.
The Broken Empire as a whole, and Emperor of Thorns in specific are must read novels of the genre.
Highly Recommended
© Rob H. Bedford 2013
Ace, August 2013
Hardcover 592 Pages
978-0-425-25685-5
Book Three of The Broken Empire
