Very good and emotional. Daniel Abraham is best when he's portraying the true cost of war

(I read this in The Price of War omnibus.)4.5/5 StarsHeartfelt, original, and magnificent; I’m baffled by how underrated this series is.Usually in a series—doesn’t matter what the genre is—there’s a tendency where I wish some of the characters would just die because they just don’t provide anything to the main storyline; or maybe just utterly boring and infuriating (I’m looking at you, Isana from Codex Alera). This is not the case with this series, I did think that way towards several characters...

...that feeler explodes. Um, not a spoiler to say it's a big ol' war (see book title).This book begins maybe another 10 years later. A rival nation, maybe based on England with its pale skinned people and steam engines, and a general determined to remove andats by wiping out the poets and their libraries. With a ploy that's a little too convenient for my taste, the general blitzkriegs the Summer Cities. War is hell, the locals attempt guerilla warfare, and a finally a love triangle I dig - more

This was brilliant at times. At others, it dragged a little. But even when it was moving slowly, I enjoyed it. I'm really starting to like some of these characters. New ones, and the ones carried over from the earlier books. Abraham writes them so well that love or hate them, they're worth reading about. Or listening, in this case. The audiobook performance of Neil Shah was perfect for this book. At first I wasn't sure at all I liked him, but after a couple of chapters his voice molded to the st...

This was brilliant. Heartbreaking but brilliant. Also vicious. Still brilliant, if you get my meaning. The third book in the Longest Price Quartet is neither about cotton or mining industry nor about betrayals and conspiracies (well, maybe a bit); it is mainly about war and other things even worse than book-burning. The intrigue grows in scale and the spins out of control. War is hell waged to escape the fears of what might happen, magic is a weapon of mass destruction. It is not about individua...

My favourite of the series so far. Abraham is a masterful character writer and it's so satisfying to see small moments from the first book reverberate through the narrative. I'll save my in-depth thoughts for our upcoming discussion, but this series just gets better with each instalment.

I like this series. I really like this series. It's fantasy, but not as you know it. No dragons, no flashy magical pyrotechnics, no annoying youthful protagonists who become puissant practitioners of High Art.Instead we have the mundane, mercantile Empire of Galt facing off against the exotic, Ottoman-esque Khaiem city states with their pet Djinn (known here as 'Andat') and the Poets who both wield then and keep them from destroying the world.The world-building is particularly well thought-out.

This is an easy 5 star rating for me. Abraham weaves a tale of war and heartbreak with signature skill. Finally in book three, we see the female characters stepping to the fore, and as expected, their involvement feels necessary and natural to the evolution of the story. One of the best (and most impressive) parts of the story arc as a whole has been seeing the characters change and mature. What I like most about Abraham's characters has always been their reality - they do not act like perfect a...

It will be difficult to go into any detail about this book without getting into spoilers, It is book 3 out of 4 after all.Needless to say, this entire story creeps up on you and then completely hooks you in. I felt book one was an interesting story, but book 3....wow... I literally could not put it down. A late night reading became a very late night, because I just had to find out the ending. The pressure during the story kept building and building, the pace was brilliant and i got so antsy abou...

I probably say this in all my reviews of Abraham's books but I'm so impressed with his writing. There's nothing wasted in these books; each chapter, each paragraph, each word feels meticulously planned to create the desired affect. His stories truly feel aliveAnd not only that but his characters always feel honest and human. There are no perfect people in this world, who always do the exact right thing at the right moment. There are people who love, who hate, who make mistakes, who attempt to be...

Another phenomenal book in this series and the best so far. I'm still in love with all the eastern culture and how subtly it's projected. The characters are just so real as are their emotions and interactions. The horrors of war are not sugar coated in this book nor are they stylized or heroic. They are a brutal reality. The ending of this book was likewise brutal on a different scale and completely unforeseen. The horror of what they had wrought and the scale of grief it represented was chillin...

Executive Summary: Best one yet. More action than the previous two, but again the emphasis is character driven political conflicts.Audio book: Neil Shah continues to be a good, but not great narrator. It makes audio a viable option, but far from a must listen. Full Review I continue to be impressed with Mr. Abraham. Each book continues to improve on the previous one.This one has more action than the previous ones, but again the main focus is on the politics of the Khaiem, and raises the stakes...

This book was absolutely incredible. Video discussion will be coming at some point soon :)

Holy. Crap.Full review: https://youtu.be/qYcEtddjZgA

27/25 (108%) 5 stars.THIS IS AN INCREDIBLE MASTERPIECE THAT WAS EVERYTHING I'D HOPED FOR AND SO MUCH MORE. LOOOOOOOOOVE IT. READ THIS SERIES, GODDDAMIT. JUST READ IT ALREADY.----Dialogue 5Setting 5Characters 6Writing Style 5Plot 6

That did not end the way I thought it would, and I think that's a good thing. In many ways, I think this has been the most relatable book of the series - for the most part, the characters feel extremely real and the world remains utterly vibrant. I was thankful for the Galt POV this time around, but at the same time I continue to find their motivations very obscure. (To offer advice in hindsight, I think Abraham should have been including them from the very beginning.) It would appear, though, t...

A lot of the time you read fantasy the book ends up being some world-traveling epic. Lots of the second half of the Wheel of Time series, for instance, seemed to be making a checklist of all of the assorted nations that the action had not been to yet, and going to those places. Lots of politics, lots of tertiary characters, sad yarns spun. It's automatically epic if a half-sketched world is threatened, right?Some wars are fought between good and evil. Some wars are just fought because two sides,...

Holy shit.Holy SHIT.Next book please.

I had trouble motivating myself to pick this up each reading session. I think I'm all Abrahammed out at the moment. The central and cool concept of the Andat was all done in the first book and it hasn't really developed much further from there. The Khaiem and the system of succession by attrition was explored in the second book and that was interestingThis book the Galts play there master stroke and there is war as the title suggests. It should be the best book so far - but it just didn't grab m...

My first favorite book of 2018 and the book that would add this quartet to the rank of my FAVORITE SERIES OF ALL TIME.Man, let me start out by saying that EVERYONE should read this book! But Lema, you didn't give the full 5 stars to the first two? (You can see here the reviews for Book 1 and Book 2)Well I was an IGNORANT FOOL BACK THEN! ok not really, it's just that this book is everything and it's totally worth it to read the first two just to get to this one (true they can be a bit slow, but