The Empire of Ashes

Sorry I've been incredibly slow at reading and reviewing this summer, but I'm going to try to pick up the pace this month. This is my latest review:

The Empire of Ashes by Anthony  Ryan

My rating: 3.5 of 5 stars

Category: Adult
Genre: Fantasy
Content: Strong Language


For hundreds of years, the Ironship Trading Syndicate was fueled by drake blood--and protected by the Blood-blessed, those few who could drink it and wield fearsome powers. But now the very thing that sustained the corporate world threatens to destroy it.

This is the conclusion to The Draconis Memoria trilogy and I liked it quite a bit. I gave the first two books in the trilogy 4 stars each, but this time around I didn't enjoy the reading journey quite as much. I think some of it had to do with pacing. I felt this book was very slow to get to it's conclusion. There were several places that it dragged and I just wanted the story to move on. Another thing was, I really wanted to see more at the end of the book about what happened to certain relationships and how they end up. There were mostly hints about romances, but nothing more. The characters in general could have used a little more work. I think that there being so many characters in the series, it made it harder to really get to know them as well as we could have. Because there were so many, I would forget who a person was now and then, or get them mixed up, but for the most part the author does a good job at juggling them all.

One of the best things about this series as a whole is the magic system and the portrayal of the dragons. Anthony Ryan did a great job with the world building. Another thing I loved about this book in particular were the airships. I guess I have a thing for those. While I enjoyed reading this trilogy, thought it was very well written, and gave the books high ratings, I still do not count it as a favorite. I think the reason is simply that it was not as easy to connect with the characters as I wanted and the story is more plot driven than character driven. I still highly recommend this trilogy to anyone that likes dragons or steampunk inspired fantasy though.

Thanks to Netgalley and Berkley Publishing Group for providing me with a copy of this book.