Review: Fallen Empire

Fallen Empire by Keith McArdle
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

Now, that was interesting. There's a lot to enjoy in this short(ish) book. It starts off being the story of a badass fighting assassin highlander but quickly becomes something much more epic in scope. What I took for a story about a single flawed hero turned into a stage of several flawed actors.

But when you throw in witchery, possessing demons, giant intelligent spiders, and some mean-ass fighting wolves, what's not to love? Fallen Empire starts out as the tale of Vyder Ironstone, our badass fighting assassin highlander mentioned above. He takes on a quest to save a kidnapped prince from an enemy kingdom but before he can get moving on his quest, he's jumped by some foresters he had previously clashed with in a tavern. He's quite messed up and near death, but his servant Miriam senses he's in trouble and gets him to a healer. This leads them to a old Wiccan woman to fix what the doctor cannot, and opens a whole new can of worms. Sometimes the cure is worse than the disease. Now the kingdom has to deal with this Pandora's Box that has opened, while our "hero" comes to terms with his new gifts/curse and resumes his quest.

Honestly, the pacing did get away from itself a few times. It seemed to stall some in the middle parts. I think the author was trying to get so much rich detail in there that it backfired a little. As he went to open up the scope of the story, there were occasions where the detail slowed the pacing down and ended up distracting rather than enhancing the story. That's my only complaint though, and it's all that keeps my rating from being higher than an "I liked it".

I will say, however, that that in last third of the book, things really clicked into place. It finished strongly, though is quite obviously a setup for more books (I see a trilogy at least). That said, it ended at a decent spot, for now. There's a lot unanswered, of course.

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