Emperor of Thorns

Executive Summary: I've thought this series was good, but not great and the final book was no different.Audiobook: James Clamp does another good job here. He does voices for a few characters. He has a good reading voice that's easy to understand with a good pace. I definitely thinks he adds a little something to the book.Full ReviewFrom the start of this series I never really cared about Jorg. That seems to be different from most people as I've seen his unlikeableness cited as the main reason for not liking the series. While I don't dislike him, I can see why people do. My main thing is I don't really care about him. This book was no different.I didn't care about his goals. I didn't really care about the antagonist. To me the most interesting bits were the world building. I want to know more about the creators. I want to learn more about the ghosts in the machines. What happened? What are they planning?I'm hoping the follow-on series digs into that a lot more, because I was sort of disappointed we didn't learn more in this series. I'll probably jump into [b:Prince of Fools 18693743 Prince of Fools (The Red Queen's War, #1) Mark Lawrence https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1385072473s/18693743.jpg 25595312] in the next month or two, as I already own it.Overall I thought this series was fine, but it's easy to see how much Mark Lawrence has grown as a writer when you pick up [b:Red Sister 25895524 Red Sister (Book of the Ancestor, #1) Mark Lawrence https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1481038440s/25895524.jpg 45777900]. I mostly picked this up to kill time for the second book in that series, and I can't wait for it to come out next week.

Were I able to give this book ten stars I would!

I appreciated Lawrence's overview in the beginning of this book. I have never known an author to give a summary of the previous novels to ensure their readers were starting off on the right foot. Now let's talk about Jorg. To see the progress he has made since Prince of Thorns is amazing. He continues to take impossible odds and turn them in his favor in some of the most unpredictable ways. He is smart, brutally honest and fierce when protecting his family. With the amount of crap he went through in his life, I am amazed he turned out to be a man I admired. Yes he was cruel, he broke the rules, but he did what needed to be done no hesitation and i grew to admire him. Lawrence is an extremely talented author to have created such a complex, intriguing character. Now as for the cruelty part...I can always depend on Lawrence to add a healthy dose of disturbing images in his novels. Sometimes I just want dark and gritty which the broken empire never fails to deliver. This one actually turned my stomach a few times. I do have to say though, at some points I couldn't help but laugh with Jorg's witty comebacks as he caused mayhem. I am sad to see Jorg's story arc come to an end. He is a character I will never forget.

A bloody and fantastic end to what has been a bloody and fantastic story of Jorg of Arcranth. And to be frank it is also a fitting end as we come full circle back to the thorns that began it in the first place. A must read series for any fantasy fan especially since it's down a path that I have never seen before. And that's pretty amazing by itself. Hail Mark. A breath of fresh air