Book Review: Emperor of Thorns (Broken Empire, #3) by Mark Lawrence)

2 stars

Emperor of Thorns is the last book in the Broken Empire trilogy and, as the name suggests, shows Jorg on his way to becoming Emperor. The book starts a little after the events of King of Thorns (to which I did not write a review) with Jorg traveling to Vyene to vote on the new emperor.

I gave 2 starts to the other two books in the trilogy and it is not different for this one. Many of my problems were repeated in this book as well and different problems appeared.

What I liked:

- Some of the side characters got interesting character development and they participated more in the story (with that I mean that they were more important to the narrative than in the previous ones, even though Jorg is still the one that does most of the things by himself). Katherine, for one, was a character that was more interesting and powerful. It was nice to see more female characters doing important things;

- Not only the secondary characters got more development but Jorg did as well. He still does things his way, he is still careless and always manages to get away with it, but he is a little more humane;

- We got more answers concerning the world of the narrative and more “scientific” explanations as well.

What I didn’t like:

- We may have gotten more answers but the world still does not make sense to me. Why did only some books (and only books that fit the medieval vibe of the story at that) survive and other did not? How can many of the technological devices still work with no power source to keep them running? And the explanation as to why there are ghosts, monsters, and the like did not work for me – even though it fits the story;

- The book drags on and on. There are too many scenes and descriptions that are completely unnecessary. This space could have been used for the final conflict;

- Many of the “scary things” were not scary at all and they have zero utility;

- I liked that we had some chapters showing Chella’s, the necromancer, side (3^rd person instead of 1^st as it is for Jorg), but they did not bring any new information;

- I really did not like the ending. Things were solved too easily and too quickly. The identity of the Dead King was too obvious. I thought the author took the “easiest way out” with this finale. He could have expanded the book a little more (or gotten rid of some useless parts) and created an ending that would actually fit the character’s personality and arc.

Over all, speaking of the trilogy as a whole, I liked the idea behind the story and even the world (had it been better explained), but I did not like the execution. I believe things improved from one book to the other and as the story progresses, but even so I could not get over my initial problems.