Devin Madson

The Grave at Storm's End

Sade A

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I want you to know, i started this series intending to love the heck out of it.
BUT,

THE VENGEANCE TRILOGY FAILS TO LIVE UP TO THE HYPE.

I am a firm believer in the fact that fantasy books like this don't have lot of word count to dilly dally. This isn't Malazan, LoTR, Stormlight Archive, Wheel of Time or Chronicles of The Black Company where you have the luxury of creating not only truly epic worlds from scratch but also the truly beautiful luxury of not coming right out and saying where the plot is going.
More often than not with these epic fantasies, there's all these strings that come together in the end. My point is, because of the scope of those books, writers that fall in there have the luxury of a truck load of word count and time in putting everything together. This book and the series as a whole did not have that luxury. 
I would have appreciated if right from Book 1 Madson had got all her ducks in a row. 
Are you going for political intrigue? Are you exploring empaths? 
What exactly are you trying to get across?

Right from book 1, this book is plagued with so many contrived plots that i personally felt makes the series struggle to put the story down in a seamless fashion. 

Some of the major problems with this series was the under utilisation of major characters. I'm talking of Kin and especially Endyomin. When you start this series, you're led to believe that Endyomin has such a significant role to play that without him, the whole plot would spontaneously combust. As you read, you realise that honestly, this series could be carried without him. 
As for Kin, at the beginning he comes in as a sort of supporting character you don't exactly need to worry about, gradually his character is given a voice and starts to play an active role in shaping the plot -at least, that's what the plot tries to convince you is happening- but then you begin to see how wasted Kin's character is & who is ultimately just there to push Hana as a shinning beacon emerging from the shrouds of all 'wrongs' done to her. 
I wish Kin was a more complicated character. I felt like someone who had risen to that pinnacle would be more shrewd, more calculating. I mean holding the empire wasn't beans. How did he come undone just like that?

Also Katashi. Now that was another damn good character and i hate the way he was wasted. 
(view spoiler)[That guy was smart, had been outsmarting Kin for years and all of a sudden he loses his head like that and becomes some sort of "power hungry, can no longer think of the long term person" really? All because of a girl who was so fickle? Also all of a sudden his power is killing him? say what now? Look if you really didn't want him to end up on the throne, you could have at least sent off his character in a blase of glory. This was just cheap. So how often do you need to use your power to burn out that fast? Like what ratio of power do you need to use? If you use it once a week, twice? Like how does it work? Kimiko was using her powers willy nilly why the heck weren't we told if you use your powers too much you'd end up dead? Like i said, just cheap. KATASHI DESERVED BETTER.

This ultimately leads to my struggle with the whole empathy thing. it was really hard to understand why people knew next to nothing about empaths. Were empaths relatively new in their world? Did they use to have empaths and then they died out? If this was the case surely they would have had some sort of history. Everyone was just blank? You mean noone, knew what empaths can/could do? Why were Malice and Darius able to give people powers but not themselves? How did they choose which powers to give them? It's all so vague. (hide spoiler)]

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I keep talking about how authors need to come correct with the female characters and honestly see this Hana character, throw her away. Like throw the whole character away. Madson doesn't give Hana's character a whole lot of tools to work with, and simply want's you to root for her for no other reason than she's a woman while consistently -i can't stress this enough- showing her as someone who was not smart and so gaddamn fickle with her emotions... 

Also, you see this thing authors' do where they trash a love interest just so readers can be okay with the female characters' skipping to another love interest without consequences? They need to dead that rubbish. Because it's so unfair and i absolutely hate the way, authors' make it easy for the female character to do a 360 like that WITHOUT CONSEQUENCES!!! (view spoiler)[Like how did it add to the plot to make Kin responsible for the assassination?-I'd like to point out again, that this author did this character a real disservice- except to paint his character black and make people sympathise with Hana especially when she decided to carry on with that Hade guy. That was just cheap. 

I wish i could go in to all that was just plain wrong with this book. 
The unnecessary crudeness, the whole i'm a god thing, we are god thing, characters coming out of the wood works, Kin basically getting written off, Endymion getting "fixed"- i was like oookaayyy (hide spoiler)]

Honestly this shouldn't have been a book where you could clearly rope peoples' actions into black and white boxes without going "damn!! i kinda see where this dude is coming from". 
I wish the author had put more effort into fleshing out her characters and why were women just referred to as whores willy nilly like that? so puzzling.

I wish the back bone of this book was rooted in political intrigue and not the the empathy thing because i felt it made the whole plot even more disjointed than it should have been. 
It really didn't do this series any favours.
Best part of this book was the Errant game. Really thought it was going to pick up from there but i thought wrong.

All in all, a really disappointing read. ⭐⭐ but that Errant game scene was cool as fuck so points for that.

Vengeance has come. Katashi Otako walks with the Vices, burning everything in his path. Now the spirit of Vengeance, he will stop at nothing to destroy Emperor Kin and take the Crimson Throne. As the flames of vengeance engulf Kisia, Hana will have to fight for the right to defend her empire. A ruler must do what is necessary, but no choice is easy when the enemy is the man she once loved and the guardian she once trusted. When gods fight, empires fall. The Vengeance trilogy The Blood of Whisperers The Gods of Vice The Grave at Storm's End Praise for Devin Madson: 'Complex and immersive . . doesn't let go until the final electrifying pages' Fantasy Book Review 'A visceral, intriguing, intense and emotionally charged ride' Grimdark Magazine 'Intricate, compelling and vividly imagined' Anna Stephens, author of Godblind More books by Devin Madson: The Reborn Empire We Ride the Storm We Lie with Death We Cry for Blood

The Vengeance Trilogy, Book Three

Tom Turner

This is a complicated book to review. It was a very good and somewhat satisfying ending to the series. A However, it definitely felt like it needed refinement. There were a number of things I felt were left unclear. I also felt some of the core relationships were forced and the characters didn't take have the chemistry the text told us they had. I had felt this In the previous book, I just assumed it would be sorted by the end of this one. There was a lot of potential in this book, and I can imagine with a few tweaks this series could have been one of my favourite. I don't mean this disparagingly, but I think you can tell this was originally a said published work. I have got the first three books of Madison's follow up (but as I'm aware unrelated) series, and I'll be very interested to see her development as an author.

The Grave at Storm's End

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