EMPIRE ASUNDER

Three soldiers navigate a war-torn continent in this omnibus edition of the first three novels in Brandt’s high fantasy series.

The Emperor of the Twelve Kingdoms has decided to step down, leaving a power vacuum as the dozen kings beneath him vie to replace him as the overlord of the massive empire. Prince Nico’s father, King Hermann of Akenberg, is perhaps the most ambitious of all. He sends Nico—who has always cared more about his swordsmanship than politics—on a diplomatic trip to Asturia, a neighboring kingdom, only to betray that kingdom during Nico’s mission, assuming the foreign king will kill his son. Meanwhile, Private Yohan serves as a grunt in the Vilnian army, assigned to guard a remote mountain watchtower. After a surprise attack that kills most of the garrison, Yohan escapes with his wounded commander, Jenaleve—the beautiful eldest daughter of the king of Vilnia. In the hinterlands of the far-northern kingdom of Falkenreach, the housethrall, Jak, lives to serve the village clerk—but when an army of evil creatures destroys his village, he must step up to lead rather than follow. As these three men from varied backgrounds find their lives upended by the empire’s collapse into civil war, they are forced to either rise to the occasion or lose themselves—and their kingdoms—to an unspeakable evil. Brandt writes in sturdy yet flexible prose that captures the drama of his high fantasy tale, particularly the terror of armies swarming over the horizon: “Then he saw it, coming from above directly toward the village. Not an it—them. Shadows in the impenetrable darkness. What had seemed one enormous amorphous thing now resolved into hundreds, if not thousands, of man-sized shapes.” It takes a while for the three strands of the narrative to come together, but the world Brandt creates is rich enough to ensure the reader is happy to spend time in any part of it. The tropes may be familiar, but they are executed with aplomb. Fans of George R. R. Martin and his imitators will enjoy this brutal saga.

An immersive, war-torn fantasy adventure.