When I first heard Michael was planning this series, as a fan of the Riyria Revelations and Riyria Chronicles I didn’t have high hopes, if I’m being honest. Prequels are hard. The Riyria Chronicles are one thing - everything about Hadrian and Royce works perfectly for a bunch of standalone adventures, which is precisely what the Chronicles are. But going back to the founding of the Empire, the war between Humans and Elves at the time of Novron Nyphron? That seemed like more of a challenge. As the series went on, it was a great read (with a few moments that would make Guy Gavriel Kay himself go “...damn, that’s upsetting”) but I still held my concerns that it wouldn’t match up with the world we know from Riyria. Especially as what we learned about the war and the gods diverged more and more from what was presented as fact in Riyria. I expected changes and exaggerations, but the things we learned seemed to be fundamentally incompatible.
Those concerns are baseless. Michael pulled it off.
As a conclusion to the series, this builds very nicely on the events of Age of Death. As a rule Michael’s writing embraces tropes rather than subverts them, which can lead to his books being kinda predictable, but the way things went was not at all what I expected, and totally fit.
I will also say that I’ve officially forgiven Michael for everything he’s done to Suri over the course of the prior books in the series.
My main complaint in Age of Empyre is more or less the same as it has been through the entire series - much of the writing and language feels jarringly 21st century American.
Last point I want to touch on is a word on Deus ex Machina. Malcolm has been an important character, if a rather mysterious one, even if it’s pretty obvious that he’s Nimbus aka Kile from Riyria. He’s always been manipulating things, and that doesn’t change at all in this book. It feels like everything he’s doing should be Deus ex Machina, but somehow it … doesn’t? I don’t know. It might be just he’s a little too far behind the scenes, but it works.
This does have a very good sequel hook for the series that Michael is working on now, set around the time of the fall of the Empire (1000 years pre-Riyria, 2000 years post-Legends). There are questions left unanswered, and I want those answers.
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