Grave Empire - Book Review

It's no secret that I loved Richard Swan's first series The Empire of the Wolf, so I was incredibly excited when I found out that he was taking us back to Sova roughly 200 years after Helena and Sir Konrad Vonvalt's adventures.

In the United States this book was marketed as something of a swashbuckling adventure, which I think does the book a great disservice and I went into with some inaccurate expectations as a result. Nevertheless, I loved this book and I'm here to tell you all about it. (And set the record straight.)

In this review I'm going to touch on the characters, the world building, the plot and then my closing thoughts.

*Minor Spoilers Ahead

Look at this epic cover art!

CHARACTERS
The Empire of the Wolf series is told solely through Helena's point of view. This book jumps around between three different characters. In Empire of the Wolf we were assured that Helena at least made it through the series as the story was told by her in retrospect. That is not the case in this series and Swan is not afraid to unalive characters, even if you love them. RIP Bressinger. T_T

Each of these characters has a unique voice and personality. They feel like very distinct people, having been well crafted by our writer. Our main cast is as follows: Renata Rainer is a young diplomat to the elusive and aggressive Stygio (a race of magical mer-folk); Captain Peter Kleist is an officer who ends up being stationed at the far north-western frontier of Sova; and Count Lamprecht von Oldenburg who is studying the now forbidden arcane arts.

I don’t know if it’s just me, but I feel like in several of the books I’ve read in the last year or two all the protagonists tend to feel similar to me from one book to the next. They end up running together and don’t feel like distinct and individual characters. That is absolutely not the case in Swan’s writing.

Renata is a young woman who studied the Stygio at university and now works as a diplomat in Sova to the mer-folk, despite never having met one in real life. She and her mentor Mr. Didacus Maruska are situated in the cramped basement of the diplomatic building and largely forgotten until the arrival of two brothers from a sect of monks who practice the forbidden art of the seance arrive to beseech the new Empress for help in contacting the Stygio to understand if The Great Silence (or the end of days) really is beginning. Renata is a strong, intelligent, capable heroine who takes the chance to practice her diplomacy and help stave off what could potentially be the apocalypse.

Peter Kleist is an officer who ends up being sent to the edges of Sovan territory as his military station. At first, I really didn't like this character, but as we went through the novel I found him relatable and refreshing. I think all of us who read fantasy envision ourselves as the hero, seizing adventure and saving the world. Kleist just wants to go home. I think it is a bit harsh to call him a coward, but I found myself thinking that about him as I was reading his parts. That being said, I think he responds how many of us would respond if we were in similar situations. He does act with bravery, but often more out of fear of embarrassment and humiliation than an actual desire to save the day. He has real freezes and bouts of panic in situations where that would be completely reasonable, like his first time going into battle. We don't often get to see this sort of vulnerable side to our protagonists, especially not a male protagonist. As such, I think this character was refreshing and well done. Swan weaves some particularly bittersweet moments of loneliness and tenderness through this character, especially in his letters to his father. At one point we find out his father has been deceased for years now, but Peter misses him terribly and continues to write to him even though he has passed away, which explains his efforts to seek guidance from other fatherly figures in his surroundings. It's a little heartbreaking.

I don't have much to say about Count Lamprecht von Oldenburg. This is a character I despised and I am eager for his demise. Swan really knows how to write a villain and Oldenburg is no exception. Unfortunately, like most villains, I think he's going to do a great deal of damage and cause a lot of problems before he is delt with. I appreciated how he had reasons for all his decisions and was not just a mustache twirling villain out to do evil for the sake of doing evil. His character is a great example of how a villain can be the hero of his own story. And also be a literal psychopath.

All three of the perspectives are unique and each character feels distinct and individual. It was exceptional character work.

THE WORLDBUILDING
You do not need to have read The Empire of the Wolf to be able to read this book, but if you have this first book in The Great Silence is littered with small references to the events of the first series, which I thought was wonderful. We can see how the world has progressed from the medieval setting of Empire of the Wolf to something a little closer to a Victorian era. I don't know if Blackpowder or Flintlock fantasy is a genre or not, but I think this falls along those lines. It's not quite steam punk, but it almost gives me those same sorts of vibes as industrialization and the march of progress change not just the literal landscape of Sova, but the political, social, and economic landscapes as well.

Swan builds the world naturally through the lens of his character's viewpoints and by layering scenes. Early in the book Renata is meeting her sister for lunch. He describes the sites, the sounds, the smells, and also the blackboard with stock numbers and the exchange of information going on in the background. I won't do justice explaining it, but I love that Swan's worldbuilding feels like a whole world exists despite the character's presence in it, not for the sake of it. You get the sense that all of this would be going on whether or not Renata met her sister for lunch in this particular establishment or not and I love that. This just lends such a sense of depth to his world and I think he does a marvelous job at capturing this at times.

We revisit a lot of the same locations from the first book and it is really neat to see how things have changed in the last two centuries. I feel like in Empire of the Wolf we spent a lot more time in the northern lands and this time, at least for this book, we are primarily in the south, getting to explore these areas in a little more depth. Having maps was incredibly helpful for tracking the progress of our characters across the landscape.

PLOTTING, PACING, & SWASHBUCKLING
As you delve into this book you can tell that this is primarily a set up for the rest of the series. This first book feels a bit like a gathering thunderhead. We jump into the action pretty early, so when I say it feels like a slow start I don't mean to say that it's boring, just that we are laying the foundation for a lot more to come. This did not bother me at all and instead got me pretty excited about the events yet to come in the next few books.

There is a good bit of action throughout, but things definitely pick up towards the end. Because the stakes are so high and time is of the utmost importance, similarly to Empire of the Wolf, our characters travel weeks to get to a specific city, only to spend ~24 hours there and need to be on there way again. I find this a little bit frustrating at times and I think it makes parts of the story feel rushed, even though this is the reality of logistics of travel during this time period. There were some parts of it that feel very much like a call back to book 2 in Empire of the Wolf in this particular case.

It is interesting to see the ripples of the after effects of the events of the last book as well as how the recommendations Helena and Vonvalt have affected Sova years afterwards. As magic and necromancy are inextricably entwinned in this world, you cannot have one without the other. Due to nearly avoiding complete destruction of the world in the Empire of the Wolf series Sova banned any and all magic and necromantic practices to prevent the same thing from happening again. Punishable by death, study of magic is forbidden except for the engineers who keep some of the great buildings in Sova standing by studying and keeping up the ancient magics that keep them stable. This puts Sova well behind the curve and woefully unprepared to deal with this paranormal cataclysm that is now occurring, which makes you feel anxious and worried.

As I mentioned earlier, something about how this book was marketed made me feel like it was going to be a bit of a Swashbuckling, Pirate adventure. This was not that, which I will admit left me feeling a little bit bummed out. Most of this installment takes place on land. However, I do feel like there is the potential for some nautical adventures in future installments of this series since we do eventually get to meet the mer-folk and they are pretty interesting. Similar to the Kasar which are the wolf-human hybrids, the Stygio are a mix of fish and human. They are not your typical beautiful, mermaids, which I really appreciated, but something a little more Lovecraftian in nature which is a fun change of pace. We get to spend some time with them at the end of the book, but I admit that I am eager see how they can come into play in the next book(s). As of this first book, it feels more like a paranormal crisis taking place on top of revolutionary war instead of a swashbuckling high seas adventure.

SUMMARY
In summary, I was surprised by this book because in some ways this book was not what I had expected. However, it still had everything that I've come to expect from a novel by Ricard Swan: beautiful prose, elegant world building, high stakes, a mysterious supernatural dimension filled with unknowable beings of immense power, dangerous magic, nefarious villains, intelligent and capable heroines, and more in a world that is uniquely his.

While I will freely admit I miss Helena, Vonvalt, and crew, I am pleased with the new cast of characters and I can't wait to read the next book in the series.

I give it 4.5 lobsters out of 5 - 🦞🦞🦞🦞🦐