OK, I finished Traitor's Blade (book 1 of the Greatcoats tetralogy) by Sebastien de Castell.

Unfortunately, I can not recommend this one.

The writing is simple and unobtrusive, so that's not the problem, and there's material here to tell a good story. The Greatcoats, supposedly inspired by Dumas' musketeers, are badass fighters who used to go around protecting common people and upholding the King's law against the abuses of the nobles. Unfortunately, the nobles have won: they have killed the king and disbanded the Greatcoats. Now three of those Greatcoats, persecuted and despised, try to carry out the last mission their king gave them.

So far so good. So what's wrong then? The problem is that, while it often is more or less entertaining, this seems to be set in an alternate universe where things don't quite make sense and characters don't act in a quite logical manner. I feel that a good reading experience is a collaboration between the writer and the reader. I always try to get into the story the writer is telling, go along with its premises and enjoy it. However, there were too many eye-rolling and awkward moments that took me out of this story.

Too vague, I know, so let's try to give a few examples to give you an idea of what I mean. Warning: Mild spoilers ahead (I won't spoil major plot points, but I need to spoil some particular scenes).

The book is rather episodic. There's an overall story arc, but many chapters seemed to be composed of random encounters. And the emphasis is on random. The main characters are employed as caravan guards, for example, and during a single trip the caravan was attacked multiple times. OK, I understand there are bandits, but this was ridiculous. It felt like there were brigands behind every other tree waiting to pounce on any caravan. It's like open warfare. How any trade is done at all is impossible to understand.

Also, the writer tries to make every encounter awesome. For example, at a given moment the main character is attacked by two random assassins. But of course they can't be normal assassins. We get treated to a long internal speech from the main character about how that sect of assassins are invincible and they defeat and kill even greatcoats (which, given how impossibly badass greatcoats are, is no mean feat). They are so deadly that they always kill their prey and sometimes, after they kill their prey, they kill their employer too (no, I'm not making this up). So the internal speech goes on, telling us how those assassins always fight in pairs and they fight perfectly as a team, because each pair has been training together since they were babies. However, we are informed, they always keep their faces covered, so even one member of the pair doesn't know the other member's face or even name. How can that work, when they have been together since babyhood, is not explained. It's just doesn't make any sense. How do they address each other? And how does the main character know this, anyway, since these assassins never get captured? We are then told that the king has spent years studying how his greatcoats could fight them (years? is it the king's job to spend years thinking how his men may fight someone?). You understand that this is a completely random encounter, right? These assassins are not mentioned before and won't be mentioned again afterwards. So, the main character tries the plan the king came up after years of thinking. And the plan is telling them that a greatcoat infiltrated their organization, which is supposedly believable since they don't know each other's face, and telling that supposed undercover greatcoat to kill his partner now. This creates enough suspicion among the undefeatable assassins so they can be defeated. It's always like that in the book: a ridiculous speech gets anyone out of any situation

An example of awkward moment: The main character is often bantering and teasing with the other two greatcoats, which would be nice for a bromance, except that we have bantering like this: The main character tells another greatcoat that he fights like a girl. The other one says something to the effect that this is a ridiculous thing to say, since this is an equal opportunity fiction universe: there were plenty of female greatcoats and the main character trained them himself, so why would he say "hits like a girl" when girls hit as well as boys? The main character says that yes, it is a ridiculous thing to say, but that it's funny for him to say it because it is so ridiculous. And that's it.

Then we have the mission the king gave them, which is so vague that it becomes almost zen. They have to look for some king of jewels, but they don't know where they are, or what they are or what they look like.

At some point some kind of sacred prostitute appears out of nowhere, and after a long speech about why the main character should trust her, they go to bed and have sex, even though the main character is more obsessed with his murdered wife than Batman with the death of his parents. Then next morning he feels as if all his pains and worries have lifted. Then the sacred prostitute asks as her payment for him to forget his problems and difficulties and to go live with her on a random island she happens to own. The character, with much sadness, refuses, and she says that she does not need payment then, since she obviously has not succeeded enough in easing his pain. And that's it. She is never mentioned again, except for one time when the main character feels uncomfortable standing next to another woman, as if he was being unfaithful to the sacred prostitute. It's never explained why he's so impressed with this random one-night affair. It's just so random.

The characters are so badass that it's ridiculous. One is an incredible archer. He never misses. Only time he misses: the archer was in a city square, and he leaves his friend with some enemies. Then he leaves the city. From outside the city, without seeing the square at all, just remembering where it was, he shoots an arrow, and he very narrowly misses the enemies, but still it's so close that it startles them and allows his friend to defeat them... and I was thinking, OK, even accepting this, how do you know that in all the time while you were leaving the city the enemies had not moved?. The other greatcoat is an incredible fencer, so incredible that he defeats the god of fencing, who for no discernible reason at all had allied himself at some point with one random evil villain.

Then we have the popular attitude towards greatcoats. Supposedly they went around defending common people, but since they were disbanded they have been so reviled that everyone hates them. I mean, they hate them actively. Every random person who sees them takes the time to tell them how despicable they are. There's absolutely no good reason for that. I wouldn't expect most normal people to care so much, one way or the other.

Then the villains (every noble) are more than despicable. They are the most villanous thing ever. Every one of them. If they travel, they seem to rape and kill a young woman at every stop in the way. If they have a jongleur in their employ, and the jongleur announces he wants to leave because his feet are eager to walk on new lands, then they have the jongleur's feet cut and substituted by wooden ones. Then the jongleur is courting a woman who the evil noble is interested in, so he has his eyes taken out and presented to her. Then the jongleur speaks well of the greatcoats, so the noble has his tongue cut... And all the time it's like that. They are not just evil, they seem to make ridiculous efforts to be as evil as possible.

So, those are just a few examples, but it's always like that. At some points I did not know whether the writer was serious or this was some kind of parody.

Anyway, it's short and quick to read, and it can be entertaining if all the non sequiturs don't rub you the wrong way. If these things do not bother you then you may enjoy it. I was enjoying it in the beginning, with some reservations, until it became too much. Plenty of people seem to have liked it, and as a serious tale, not as a parody. It just didn't work for me. I finished the book out of curiosity, because at some point I stopped caring. While it is not a standalone and the overall arc is not over, at least it gave some sense of conclusion.

I finished it, but I won't be continuing the series (and likely I will never read anything by this author). As I said, plenty of people enjoyed it, just check the reviews, so it might work for you. ( )

This book tries to be one of those books that you don’t take too seriously, with many invocations of a grand plot but no actual macro story that the main story fits into. As a result it came off as a bit too overdone, and a lot of the overly rapid plot transitions came quite literally out of thin air (including a fair bit of completely unexplained magic). Maybe I’ll read the second one, but I would really recommend the series. ( )

I enjoy high fantasy books more than I think, because I barely read them, but when I do *chefs kiss*. I loved the world building in this story! The characters were awesome, and I love how they play off of each other emotionally. You can feel their friendship coming off the pages! I plan to read the rest of this series, sooner rather than later.

Thanks for the recommend! #coyer ( )

While this was an enjoyable read, I really struggled with lack of character depth, and horrid character consistency. It seems Castell has his mind set on who a character should be when he writes, and as the character develops on his own, he never went back to make sure the character remained consistent. This continues to be a problem in book two. So 3 stars for a great story with some awesome Three Musketeer Easter eggs, but minus two for all the gaping holes and lack of depth. ( )

Didn't like this so much as the Spellslinger series. It's very similar writing style, but whereas that was a fast paced YA, light and always humours, this tries to be more adult with darker themes. However this clashes with the attempted banter and lack of world-building. It's ok in YA, but I prefer more complex fully developed worlds and characters and this never quite got there. ( )