THE TRIALS OF EMPIRE by Richard Swan (BOOK REVIEW)
Please note this review will contain spoilers for the first two books in the trilogy.
“The time for high-minded ideals is gone. We have dark deeds ahead of us. If you have not the stomach for it, leave now.”
This is the book where our characters and the Empire of the Wolf fall apart.
After the catastrophic ending of The Tyranny of Faith the Magistrium has been disbanded, Sova law and order has gone into disarray and our Konrad Vonvalt no longer holds the authority he once had. Anarchy, riots and chaos reign, demons are roaming freely and the use of arcana is more dangerous than ever. A war brews on both fronts—through the Empire and the afterlife. At its head is the zealot Bartholomew Claver, now fuelled with immense powers and aided by a malevolent demonic entity, he has twisted his Templars and is running amok. Our Vonvalt and Helena are now having to travel in the shadows and seek alliances from the last remaining loyalists and the Kasar, a seemingly savage race of wolfmen who may just have the strength and numbers to change the tide of this war. But at what cost will they offer their help?
The Trials of Empire by Richard Swan superbly blends law, morality and necromancy to deliver a spine-chilling conclusion. What a book, what an ending.
In the first half of this novel there is a fair bit of traversing across the Empire as we travel to familiar places we have already seen throughout the trilogy and some new ones. Swan effectively shows us here just how far Claver’s malevolence has spread and how much of the Empire has fallen into chaos. One of my favourite scenes was with the Kasar in Spiritsraad and The City of Sleep as the narrative here is packed full of fantasy elements, tension and peril. The Kasar are a race of wolfmen whom we saw a glimpse of in The Tyranny of Faith, yet in this book we see them in full force. I always love the addition of non-human races in fantasy and so the Kasar instantly captured my interest. Vonvalt and Helena are both ignorant of the Kasar’s way of life, their customs, language, culture and their hierarchy, so when they actually approach them they realise they are out of their depth. Bringing further strife, our characters also have to access another dimension, that of Izmyesta, which in turns brings about many more demons. Here in particular I loved that Swan portrays many more interesting concepts of the arcana to add further depth to his worldbuilding.
With additional characters such as Lady Frost and her shamans and the powers they wield, we learn an abundance of truths about the prominent figures in the afterlife, their history and their aims. I have to say, seeing Sir Radomir, a character I love by the way, react to all the necromancy used was absolutely hilarious. Yet it is Helena’s character who plays much more of a significant role for the events occurring in the afterlife and because of this her account of the events shows us she pretty much has a nervous breakdown throughout. I have consistently found myself adoring Helena throughout and this novel is where I felt for her the most, I was just thankful she had Heinrich, a very good war shepherd, as a comforting presence by her side. Helena is far from the idealistic, naive apprentice she was in the first book but thankfully her sense of morality did not waver too far onto the darker path and she was still able to make Vonvalt accountable for his deeds.
“Everybody kept saying that I was forged from steel, that I had a brilliant mind and an iron comportment, that my upbringing and tutelage had all conspired to make me mentally strong.
But I was not. Who could endure these things? No human being was designed to deal with such constant horror and insanity. I was not becoming inured to it; it was destroying me from the inside out.”
An aspect that sets the Empire of the Wolf trilogy apart is in its inclusion of philosophy. Throughout each book the morality of our characters are always scrutinised—as the plot thickens and Claver and his Templar’s corruption and schemes come to fruition, the more morally grey Vonvalt and his deeds become. In this book Vonvalt strays so far from the man he was that he almost loses himself entirely. Yet as a reader, I couldn’t find myself completely blaming him, watching the Empire you had fought so hard to protect all your life crumble before you must inevitably cause you to use desperate measures to save it. Helena often debates and reflects upon whether they could stop Claver without resorting to bloodshed, violence and even using the arcana. Do their wrongs ever make a right? It is a fair point but then Swan also makes us question how far law and order is the just way to deal with evil. This was honestly one of my favourite parts of his writing. There doesn’t seem an easy answer to this even by the end, but it was fascinating to see both sides of the argument.
“There is peace, and there is justice, and these are not the same thing. And whilst the Empire has brought peace, where is the justice for those who died to bring it about?”
“Now you equate justice and vengeance.”
“Sometimes they are one and the same.”
The Trials of Empire is a book of epic proportions and ends the trilogy on a satisfactory high note. Our characters may have lost much but new paths await them, the world is changed entirely, for better or worse remains to be seen, but there is a strong sense of hope and that is enough.
I will definitely be watching out for future books by Richard Swan.
Review copy provided by Nazia at Orbit Books in exchange for an honest review. Thank you for the copy!
The Trials of Empire is available now, you can order your copy on Bookshop.org