The Emperor's Blades

by Brian Staveley
478 pgs  (Chronicle of the Unhewn Throne series #1)

The Emperor’s Blades is the first book in an epic fantasy series that I’ve been meaning to read ever since my wife recommended it to me several months ago. It begins with the murder of the Emperor of the Annurian Empire, which leaves the Unhewn Throne temporarily vacant. His eldest son, Kaden, will become the next Emperor, but Kaden has been on the far side of the kingdom, at a remote Shin monastery for the last eight years and it will be weeks before word can reach him of his father’s death. Kaden has been training with the Shin monks since he was a small boy, trying to learn how to achieve a state of mental emptiness, strip away all his emotions, and enter the vaniate.

Kaden’s younger brother Valyn was likewise sent away at a young age. But Valyn was sent to train with the Kettral, the empire’s elite military forces that get their name from the giant warhawks they ride into battle--birds with a 70-foot wingspan.  Kaden and Valyn have an older sister Adare, who was not sent away as a youth, but instead, remained close to their father and became the Minister of Finances in her his court.

Separated for years and by great distances, the three siblings each learn that their whole family line is being targeted by the forces that murdered their father.

The book alternates between the three siblings’ points of view and Staveley does an excellent job of writing compelling stories for each of them. But I felt a little shortchanged with Adare’s storyline. She doesn’t get nearly as many chapters as either Kaden or Valyn do, and since the few that she did get seemed to be the most important ones to the overall story, I wasn’t sure why they were so few and far between. I’m assuming this was intentional and that Staveley will balance things out in the next book. 

★ ★ ★ ★ ☆