Name: Traitor's Blade
ISBN: 9781848663794

Sebastien de Castell

Falcio is the first Cantor of the Greatcoats. Trained in the fighting arts and the laws of Tristia, the Greatcoats are travelling Magisters upholding King's Law. They are heroes. Or at least they were, until they stood aside while the Dukes took the kingdom, and impaled their King's head on a spike. Now Tristia is on the verge of collapse and the barbarians are sniffing at the borders. The Dukes bring chaos to the land, while the Greatcoats are scattered far and wide, reviled as traitors, their legendary coats in tatters. All they have left are the promises they made to King Paelis, to carry out one final mission. But if they have any hope of fulfilling the King's dream, the divided Greatcoats must reunite, or they will also have to stand aside as they watch their world burn...

Traitor's Blade

Lucy Richards 

Bloody loved it! Fantastic! Definitley a must read. Can't wait to read the others in the series ♥️

Janice Hopper

I have a serious weakness for competent heroes who are passionate about Justice and Right. It doesn't hurt if they're wise-cracking types.

That's pretty much the appeal of this book for me. The author does this type of character VERY well, and I. Am. HERE. For. It.

The plot involves 
3 super-competent warriors 
who are members of a disbanded elite corps 
which was loyal to the idealist previous king 
who was killed by the dukes he was trying to reform.

They're escorting a scion of a duke to be crowned queen. But there are Complications.

Honestly, I'm not too worried about the plot here. There is one. It's a little convoluted. And there's a section where a couple of characters go through extended sessions of torture (i.e., DAYS of being tortured) and come out and are... mostly just fine. For plot purposes, they had to be. But thinking about trauma and PTSD, not to mention the physical effects, made me raise an eyebrow for a while.

I've already got Greatcoats 2 keyed up to read.

Celeste Richardson

Full review now posted!
Original review can be found at Booknest.

After a rocky start, I ended up enjoying this book. Traitor’s Blade was way overhyped, and I almost let that hype ruin it for me. Thankfully, life got in the way of my reading for a week or two. When I finally had time to pick this up again, it was with more tempered expectations. And it improved dramatically for me! 

Traitor’s Blade was billed as The Three Musketeers in a grim fantasy setting, and that’s exactly what I got in the very beginning of the book and in the last hundred or so pages. But the middle of the book was hard for me. When our three Greatcoats were separated for a large part of the story, I had a hard time maintaining interest and not getting bogged down. The Three Musketeers is about about camaraderie and humor in the face of bleak circumstances, and when Kest and Brasti were forced to part ways with Falcio, that camaraderie and humor fell by the wayside. Thankfully our Greatcoats do get together again, and the last hundred pages of the book were by far the strongest. And, from what I’ve heard, each book gets consecutively better as the series progresses. So there’s a lot to look forward to from the Greatcoats.

Even though I struggled through this in places, I had to give it 4 stars. This was a debut, but the writing felt incredibly polished for a first novel, which impressed me. Also, even though I wasn’t a fan of splitting up our Greatcoats, Falcio’s time in Rijou served a purpose. Here, de Castell did a great amount of his world building, as well as introducing us to important characters and giving us time to get to know them. But as much as I enjoyed these new characters and Kest and Brasti, this book is truly Falcio’s story. And it’s a pretty darn tragic one.

“Poets and minstrels see the whole picture, but people like me live their whole lives inside one or two cleverly worded lines and never know what them mean.”

I love Falcio, and I desperately wish he could have a few moments’ peace. He’s an incredibly broken hero, but a hero he certainly is. He gives everything he has, and then finds a way to give more. He has lost everything, and still he serves. How can anyone not respect that level of dedication?

All things considered, this was a solidly good book. And the rest of the series is supposed to be even better. It's definitely worth picking up!

“You don’t have to be the victim of someone else’s story.
You can be a Greatcoat.”

A buddy read with my darlings: Mary, Petrik, Sarah, Tweebs, and Aria.

Helene Skjørvold

4.75⭐️

This book started off really slow and I was unsure if I would like it or not. The plot was an easy guess, but I loved De Castell's take on it. The way he made me fall for the characters without me even knowing was amazing! Throughout the middle part I had a feeling I would not care for the characters at all, but at some point it all turned. When one of my favourite characters was in danger I found myself sobbing.
The ending had me crying my eyes out! I realized at the very end of the book, how the characters had a connection with me that I was unaware about.

Sarah Escorsa

● Everybody Loves this One Oh Bloody Hell I am Doomed but Hey Eon Recommended it So it Can't Be that Bad of Course it Can't Buddy Read (ELtOOBHIaDbHERisiCBtBoCiCBR™) with the BBB Cult ●



☠ DNF at 53%. Yeah yeah yeah, shame on me and all that crap.

Forgive me  Father Eon, for I have sinned. Yes, I have failed to grasp the utter greatness and general brilliance of one of your favourite books. Yes, I have once again read a book wrong. I am the lowliest, unworthiest of shrimps. I am so terribly sorry for having offended all the wonderful people who worship/cherish/love/whatever this masterpiece (view spoiler)[(aka Those of the Despicable Book Taste (TotDBT™) (hide spoiler)] by a) not finishing it and b) giving it half its average rating. I am now fully prepared to atone for my most shameful sins. 



I am just so funny sometimes, I crack my little self up. I mean, you do know I'm full of crap and don't mean a single word I said in the previous paragraph, right? Oh, good. So now that we've established I don't give a damn what you Little Barnacles think of my DNFing abilities, let's get on with this Express Super Crappy Non Review (ESCNR™), shall we? Fear not, my Lovely Decapods, for it won't take long. I just have three things to say here:

① Most of the characters are supposed to be in their early 30s but act like a bunch of YA idiots immature teenagers instead. Oh goody.

② The author killed off the only character I actually liked. Bad, bad karma author.

③ The story feels like a Three Musketeers rip-off, with magic thrown in. And boredom. Yeah, lots of boredom thrown in, too. So cool. So fascinating. 

» And the Two-Gif Moral (TGM™) of this ESCNR™ is:
 




Bye now.

Please feel free to insult me in the comments, You of the Despicable Book Taste (YotDBT™).

You're welcome.

Kathleen Boyle

This was a blast! I thoroughly enjoyed this. 

However, I do think the beginning is a little slow and the story does take a while to come into its own. I was left wondering in the first half what on earth anything that was happening had to do with the first chapter. Everything does seem to happen a little bit by coincidence. The whole coincidence thing made it all a little easy. 

There were a couple of scenes that I just don't understand what they were for or what they're leading towards? Especially when I consider one of them quite problematic: in all honesty, I consider what happened rape. I have no idea what the purpose of the scene was. It just confused me. 

The strongest point in this has got to be the characters. I didn't realise how attached I am to them until we got to the end of the book and the climax. They are well fleshed out and are flawed in many different ways. I really enjoyed Falcio's, our main protagonist, inner turmoil and his sometimes questionable decisions. I feel as if all the characters in here are morally grey. They're trying to do the right thing but their methods can be questioned. That's one of the reasons that contributes towards them being really well thought out and complex characters.

Nickie Mohler

The Greatcoats were formed by the King to dispense the King's justice. The King was trying to bring some fairness into a world filled with greed. The Dukes in power felt that they could get away with anything, because they deem themselves more important than everyone else. The idea of The Greatcoats was wonderful. Unfortunately, those in power, and the most greedy hated the idea. Now, with no King, the Greatcoats are considered traitors. The are forced to take crap jobs like guarding caravans. Even though they are Greatcoats no more, they still believe in the King's justice. I really liked this book! The characters are awesome. Quite a few times I recall telling my husband that there are a lot of people that need to die slow deaths in this book. I plan to read the rest of the series.

With swashbuckling action that recall Dumas' Three Musketeers Sebastien de Castell has created a dynamic new fantasy series. In Traitor's Blade a disgraced swordsman struggles to redeem himself by protecting a young girl caught in the web of a royal conspiracy. The King is dead, the Greatcoats have been disbanded, and Falcio Val Mond and his fellow magistrates Kest and Brasti have been reduced to working as bodyguards for a nobleman who refuses to pay them. Things could be worse, of course. Their employer could be lying dead on the floor while they are forced to watch the killer plant evidence framing them for the murder. Oh wait, that's exactly what's happening. Now a royal conspiracy is about to unfold in the most corrupt city in the world. A carefully orchestrated series of murders that began with the overthrow of an idealistic young king will end with the death of an orphaned girl and the ruin of everything that Falcio, Kest, and Brasti have fought for. But if the trio want to foil the conspiracy, save the girl, and reunite the Greatcoats, they'll have to do it with nothing but the tattered coats on their backs and the swords in their hands, because these days every noble is a tyrant, every knight is a thug, and the only thing you can really trust is a traitor's blade.

Christina M Masters

So much love for this book!!! It had the perfect blend of intrigue, adventure, heartache, humor. Very much a Three Musketeers kind of vibe. Highly recommend this one!

Kimberly

This was such a fun read. Read it with the audiobook and it was fantastic! I heart Falcio. This gave me Three Musketeers vibes. I'm looking forward to continuing the series.

Kerri McDonald

Welp, I suppose I have yet another series to read now, haha. I found the blurb for this book interesting, but I wasn't expecting to enjoy it quite as much as I did. I found myself becoming completely invested in the story and the characters. The writing was good, but it was really the characters that captured me. I enjoyed the relationship between our three main Greatcoats and I found myself becoming quite attached to Falcio, lovable idiot that he is ;) And the bad guys! I haven't hated a book character as much as I hated Duchess Patriana in a long time. All in all, I'm excited to get to the next book and see how this story continues!

Rowan Jones

This is a really solid start to a series, and it's given me just enough intrigue to want to continue!

Lisa Beasley

I am in love with this book, these characters, the story, Sebastien's writing and Joe's narration. Everything combined perfectly to make an amazing story! Cannot wait to read the next one!