Ben Galley

The Forever King is full of strong elements: motivationally complex characters, strong visual flare, and a wide arrange of fantastical elements. But it suffers from a variety of small issues, albeit relevant issues, that make it hard to enjoy the book. Yes it it full of scenes and moments intended to be visually rich and impressive, but often times the prose fails to deliver on what the author so clearly envisioned.
The characters are complex, and make many relevant and defining decisions, but they're also hard to like. Mithrid starts off strong with a great narrative catalyst, and her core personalities traits of vengeful and mistrustful make her dynamic but she doesn't evolve beyond these, or garner more positive traits, as the narrative progresses, resulting in a character that's constantly negative and combat with everyone she interacts with in almost every scene. This is exacerbated when a side character accurately points out that Mithrid is acting constantly furious with everyone around her as if she's the only one with a reason for vengeance when everyone around her has just as much greivance with the book's antagonist, highlighting a streak of self-important to the reader. And yet Mithrid doesn't change at all in her behavior, doesn't grow. (This was where I began to sour on her.) A secondary issue with the book's characters (most primarily in the first half) was that it dedicated a significant amount of time to the legacy characters of the previous series. I've not read that series, so this resulted in me constantly being forced to look away from Mithird (A character with narrative and motivation that I had developed) to a character that I had no investment in, and had no development in the works. (Mithird at this time had both potential character development, and several questions that were being teased.) It was frustrating. There's also an attempt at romance, but it's gets barely any attention and happens almost entirely off scree with no effort put to developing chemistry or positive interactions. It kind of just gets teased once, then bluntly stated attraction later on.
The second major issue was the antagonists, and how they were constantly rendered impotent. The tyrannical king (and primary antagonist for this book) is constantly being blatantly manipulated in front the reader. He commands demons, who achieve nothing despite multiple scenes of conflict and action and a fair amount of hype in their descriptions and history. They would arrive in a scene, gutted hyped up with some form of description, and then be defeated. The malignant dragons were constantly outclassed, and a huge amount of time and effort was devoted to the buildup and introduction of a new powerful mage type called the Scarred that were meant to balance out our protagonists one major advantage, only for them again to achieve nothing and again be absolutely outclassed in every interaction. (Likely because the mages they're supposed to be balancing out are all legacy characters.) Add into this a helping of blatantly, and knowingly, idiotic military decisions (literally sacrificing a huge number of troops for no reason other than to make a statement.) It all results in antagonists that aren't allowed to be threatening, and who only succeed when the narrative needs them to. (another minor issue was how the siege was conducted, with the evil army somehow surviving in a harsh northern environment despite terrible equipment without suffering apparent casualties, and somehow making headway against trained soldiers atop immense battlements with untrained conscripts. On the open field, yes the radically superior numbers would affect the balance, but not on walls after the attacker spent all night freezing, and starving. Oh, and there was no moat around this fortress that was specifically built and designed for this battle. Yes, that might seem like such a small, and likely esoteric, thing, but it just niggled at me and compiled with all the other minor issues in the siege, like converting new recruits into competent fighters over a span of weeks.
I found the actual magic system a little simplistic, mostly just throwing fire, lightning, or raising shields.… (more)

This was a slower read than I had anticipated, but I thoroughly enjoyed it. Chock full of action, adventure, and suspense, I was left hanging on every word. While the plot was a bit slow at times, I felt the author did a fantastic job of making the characters believable, especially Farden, who has constantly been unsure of himself and his abilities.

I found myself so angry at the end to find out that he had simply been a pawn in the hands of those he called his friends, even the woman he loved. But The written ended in such a way to lend hope to Farden and to the reader that retribution will come soon enough for Farden's enemies.

The second installment in the Emaneska series, Pale Kings, will be read soon.… (more)

I've had some time to try and wrangle my thoughts. I think my overwhelming feeling is disappointment. There's so many things about this book and the series as a whole that are disappointing, specifically because Chasing Graves was such a fresh, original, and bloody brilliant book that took concepts and tropes in a genre utterly drowning in mediocrity and formulaic versions of versions of versions. I'm going to talk a bit about the first two books, but I'll do my best to keep them vague enough to mot be too spoilery.

Chasing Graves is acerbic, unsentimental, gritty, grim, and genuinely amusing in ways so many other fantasy books strive for, but in taking one or more of those elements more often than not they miss the mark and/ or plunge into cheap, problematic shortcuts that are so often ignorant, bigoted, and harmful. I was so here for this!

(I've not got my Goodreads wings yet, so just imagine the Tyra Banks 'We were all rooting for you' GIF here)

There was such rich worldbuilding and characters that emerged naturally through the story with the dual perspectives of the self-centred, unlucky master locksmith and the self-righteous, spiky Empress that begin to unfold the political intrigue, criminal enterprise, supernatural quandaries, and imperial (and family) divisions. Chasing Graves sets up this world, premise, and tone perfectly, but it's downhill from there.

I won't talk about Grim Solace too much, but it is very much the middle passage of the trilogy with our erstwhile locksmith being battered around like a political football and discovering a unique ability, which is fine, but stretched out to half a novel means it feels a bit like treading water, while the Empress continues her tiny Mad Max fury Road journey on a mission that the true impetus isn't revealed until most of the way through the next book. She's a sneering Furiosa with trials and tribulations aplenty, and I'm here for them. Unfortunately, these two storyline aren't enough or rather are filled with so much unnecessary dead air and repetition that I was starting to seriously zone out as I felt the wheels starring wobbles and the momentum starting to wane.

This brings us to Breaking Chaos and the culmination of this trilogy and the collision of the two protagonists and every other faction and player. We find out why a master locksmith was original sought out and so viciously fought over, which is a serious let down as the job was obvious from the start and we have known what is or isn't behind that door from book one. There's some reveals that aren't that interesting, although I do have to recognise a tower becoming an emergency steampunk airship is pretty cool, but nothing really comes of it. All the players converge with some fortuitous happenstances along the way that veer into deus ex machina territory a little too much for the overall tone of this series for the climax.

This is what this whole series of interesting characters, underhand dealings, mysteries and entreaties of the dead gods, and political machinations have been building to -- a big, generic, fantasy battle with the protagonists going beastmode, complete with the cavalry turning up on the darkest hour in a story element take directly from A Song of Ice and Fire with none of the very obvious and serious ramifications, and some unbelievably painful and hypocritical, extremely white 'Western' (read: unbelievably ignorant, problematic, centrist, and obscenely racist) perspectives and moralising that made me want to start eating my headphones.

I'm a big enough gal to admit it, Ben Galley fully Pierce Browned me, Chasing Graves into the cisheteronormative white capitalist death spiral of Red Rising. Dudes may rock, but they absolutely smash their hard work and talent to pieces with their ham-fisted, privileged, and dangerous world views. While Red Rising was a saga of exploited workers taking a stand to ultimately go full great man, war crimes are cool, former friends turned fascist are worthy of more respect than dead comrades and innocents, Chasing Graves went from greed, authority, slavery are bad to full fear of reprisals and retaliation fantasy with maintaining the oppressive systems, but maybe just a little bit nicer, and effectively genociding the oppressed it was worried were going to do a genocide. Not to mention, the heroic efforts of the nightmare capitalist slavers who have been trying to trap and kill a main character throughout the book saving the day, so another brave hero can disregard the agency and autonomy of countless others so they can go Super Saiyan!

I'll talk more specifically about my issues in a moment as they will need to be marked as spoilers.

I was so thankful to be back in this world after reading a bunch of other things in between and I loved being back in the bleak, sarcastic tone of these books that Moira Quirk and Samuel Roukin bring so perfectly to life with their narration. My first updates are so full of joy and hope. But then it dragged so much harder than the last book in the middle, before completely messing the bed with the ending, both in terms of the tone and vibe of everything that came before, and the repugnant events, motivations, and politics.

This story wasn't enough for three full novels and this is one of its major weaknesses. The dual narratives are great, but both end up having to tread water or dash forward at times to keep pacing and ultimately culminate together. One big book or being a much tighter duology would have really made the good parts of this series sing. Nothing short of a total rewrite, including plotting and changing the events, or at the very least the perspective with which they are shown can do anything to work as damage control for the ending.

Just like Red Rising, it was the best of times and then the worst of times that made me wish I had never has the good times to begin with and had either avoided these books entirely or just read the first one and pretended like it was just a stand alone brilliant book.

***Spoilers Ahead***

Okay, I've already spent way too much time thinking and writing about this book, so let's just hit some points that I hated:
- 'Good Cop' character seems like they are going to do the only good thing a cop can do - stop being a cop (ACAB), but instead they want to be an imperial cop and convince the Empress who wants to do good and then step down to be the Girlboss she deserves to be because she's the empress baybee!
- 'Good Cop' sacrifices themselves to a bounty hunter as the fake Empress and then manages to convince the Consortium of capitalist slavers to save the city because they can exploit it. Believable, but not shown as bad at all.
- Consortium of capitalist slavers are the cavalry, save the day, and are heroes with no discussion or criticism.
- The emancipation of the slave shades is used as an excuse for the dead to genocide all of the living, so our protagonist hero turns on his new friend without telling her or anyone of his plans, so it can be a dramatic reveal for the book, saying that actually maybe we need the slavery instead to avoid this. Presenting this binary is beyond disgusting and racist. This is the fear of reprisal that is a cornerstone of white supremacy and colonialism that is used as the excuse as to not give colonised and indigenous people autonomy to make decisions for themselves and the land Stolen from them. I actually thought Galley did quite well over the series to not make the enslavement of ghosts and their treatment as second class citizens too much of a racial allegory -- this could be my own ignorance and privilege for sure. It's definitely better than things like Detroit: Become Human. To throw that away with racist fears and a black and white approach is colossally disappointing.
- After having this moment of disgust at the potential genocide, our now morally upstanding hero proceeds to forcibly incorporate a bunch of shades into their body to power themselves up. This is described in detail as being against their will and them fighting as their selves are subjugated and their essence is subsumed. This is unbelievably awful and never portrayed as the horrific abuse and ignorance of consent or reflected upon in any critical manner. It's okay though because the people it happened to were baddies...
- Actions taken essentially lead to a lot of the shades being genocided - sent to the afterlife against their will. In a world where ghosts are people, especially one in which they are almost entirely slaves, a good ending would be them having some choice and agency, but nope that's only for important characters.
- They really wanted to do the whole 'person who holds the thing is in charge', after showing how gross it was that class and power were more literally tied to the weight of wealth a person has in this city than in real life? But it's turned down and we get the 'rightful' Empress for a new age of benevolent dictatorship...
- The series is book ended with a not very good prank. A literal poop joke. In the offing it was establishing character. In the end it is a metaphor for this book and the total vapid stagnation of authoritarian rule of the city and the total lack of character depth or development.

I never thought I would end up hating this book and series and much as I loved the first one. I didn't think I could be broken again so spectacularly as I was by Red Rising. Morning Star fully had me heartbroken fury sobbing, but Breaking Chaos just brought bitter tears to my eyes. At least I'm getting more inured to this BS.

Thanks, I hate it.

--

Original Review: 2/5

I will need to come back when I am capable of more cogent thoughts, but I am become Tyra Banks.

At first I was so happy to be back in this world I enjoyed some much.

Then I was drifting off and bored.

Finally, I was colossally disappointed and let down by an ending that was the novel equivalent of the trend of movies that all ended with a big blue light in the sky.

I am genuinely gutted and disgusted. It's not even the events, though they aren't great, but so much of the unchecked rationale, reactions, and reasoning for the actions taken that have left me feeling disappointed and sick.

I absolutely adored the first book. The second was a bit of a repetitive nothing burger, but the character stuff was good. This end of the trilogy threw character stuff away for a relentless series of events building to a ridiculous and 'epic' conclusion that lacked anything that made these books good.

I really didn't think this trilogy was going to Red Rising me, but dammit if Ben Galley hasn't absolutely Pierce Browned me.

Moira Quirk and Samuel Roukin's performances continue to be perfection. I honestly don't think I would have actually made it through without them. Nothing to do with them, but the audio quality and sound mixing really wasn't great for the audiobook, or, rather, it was fine for the most part, but the way parts were stitched together has wildly different sound and quality, so when bits has been redone or whatever really stood out in a bad way.… (more)