A court ruled by an Emperor-in-Name only, a murderous intrigue plotting to topple the Emperor, led by Lord Orhan Emmereth, an exiled murdering youth named Marith, and a priestess, Thalia, of a murderous religion are at the dark heart of Anna Smith Spark’s debut novel, The Court of Broken Knives. The novel launches a Grimdark saga, The Empires of Dust and if there was any question about the grimdark nature of the writer and her work, look no further than her twitter handle, “@QueenofGrimdark.”
In this dark and gripping debut fantasy that Miles Cameron called “gritty and glorious!” the exiled son of the king must fight to reclaim his throne no matter the cost.
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.
Dark and brilliant, dive into this new fantasy series for readers looking for epic battle scenes, gritty heroes, and blood-soaked revenge.
Spark immediately sets the stage for the novel with a vicious, harried, and bloody battlefield. Tobias leads the band of mercenaries known as “The Free Company of the Swords” hired by Orhan to murder the emperor in the city of Sorlost. These mercenaries are not unlike mercenaries many fantasy novels feature, except these mercenaries come across as a bit more dark and somewhat more decadent, especially the foppish, striking, drug addict Marith who latched onto the crew. He soon proves that he can more than hold his weight when he kills a dragon. Through the point of view of Thalia, Spark also focuses a great deal of the plot and action on a dark religion (Great Tanis, the Lord of Living and Dying) that is the epitome of grimdark, in order for the religion to prosper, children must be sacrificed. Further, the “current” high priestess is always murdered by her successor. Fun stuff, right?
Once Tobias and his crew arrive in the city where the Emperor resides and the murder games chaotically commence, Thalia takes the opportunity to leave her church. Young love soon takes up residence as the murder-prince and murder-priestess see stars in each other’s eyes and fall for each other. Spark also adds a well-realized romantic triangle involving Orhan, his wife, and his male lover. The relationship between the men is shown to be a problem not as much because it was between two men, but because of the implications it would have for this councilor’s social status and ability to sire an heir.
The world is broken down in many respects. The nation and world are posited as in decline, decadent, and seemingly rotting at the core. When an adulterating high-class citizen and the leader of a group of mercenaries and assassins come across as two of the more redeeming character, then the author has gone to some reasonable lengths to make the majority of the characters unlikeable and dishonorable.
As more was revealed about Marith, I found him to be very similar to Jorg, the protagonist of Mark Lawrence’s epic Broken Empire trilogy, a series many consider a grimdark masterpiece. There’s a similar disaffected nature to the two protagonists, as well as their youth and casual entrenchment in extremely violent acts. That said, Marith has his own depth, as do many of the characters in the novel. Spark invested enough time and novel-space to these characters that they fell fairly genuine. The world itself walked a fine line between a familiar medieval-esque decadent kingdom with some bits here and there to set it apart. In other words, Spark does some things really well with this novel.
Despite the well-realized characters, I felt very disconnected to the story. The prose was disjointed, switching from first person point of view to more of a third person point of view as chapters ended and new chapters began and as characters took center stage. It was initially quite jarring and made more so by some of the stilted, abrupt dialogue and descriptive passages that felt inconsistent in terms of how complete they were. Not all the character’s motivations are always clear which perhaps contributed to my disaffected feelings. Overall, there’s an emptiness that I can’t quite pinpoint that prevented me from enjoying it completely. That may be the point of the novel and Grimdark as a whole, but perhaps I’m wearying of Grimdark, or at least stories where the bloody, decadent and depraved Grimdark elements are pervasive and weigh down the story.
That said, Grimdark is a popular subset of fantasy and this book hits a lot of the notes that exemplify Grimdark quite precisely. Spark does many things well in her debut, but others left me frustrated (that stilted and hiccupy prose). The Court of Broken Knives will likely find an audience and will appeal to readers who enjoy Mark Lawrence and Michael R. Fletcher. In other words, I recognize the quality of the novel even if it doesn’t completely align with my (current) reading sensibilities.
© 2017 Rob H. Bedford
Orbit, August 2017
Trade Paperback, 512 Pages
Empires of Dust #1
http://courtofbrokenknives.org/
Review copy courtesy of the publisher, Orbit Books
I am currently reading this book!