The Court of Broken Knives

By: Anna Smith Spark

Narrated by: Colin Mace, Meriel Rosenkranz

Length: 16 hrs and 36 mins

Publisher's summary

Perfect for fans of Mark Lawrence and R Scott Bakker, The Court of Broken Knives is the explosive debut by one of grimdark fantasy's most exciting new voices.

It is the richest empire the world has ever known, and it is also doomed - but only one man can see it.

Haunted by prophetic dreams, Orhan has hired a company of soldiers to cross the desert to reach the capital city. Once they enter the palace, they have one mission: Kill the emperor, then all those who remain. Only from the ashes can a new empire be built.

The company is a group of good, ordinary soldiers for whom this is a mission like any other. But the strange boy Marith who walks among them is no ordinary soldier. Though he is young, ambitious, and impossibly charming, something dark hides in Marith's past - and in his blood.

Dive into this new fantasy series for listeners looking for epic battle scenes, gritty heroes, and blood-soaked revenge.

©2017 Anna Smith Spark (P)2017 Hachette Audio

Dark yet satisfying.

My only suggestion would be that the male performer slow down his reading a bit in some areas, sometimes it was like he was racing through the story.

Bleak, Despairing, Sad but truthfully Beautiful.

Ancient bloodlines, Villainous Heroes, Mages, Dragons, maudlin backdrops...check. Grimdark in it's truest form, great read.

What an unexpected adventure

An unexpected adventure that took hold of my thoughts and wouldn’t let go. Must read.

It’s...fine.

The story itself is intriguing, but the motivation of the protagonist/antagonist is confusing at best and annoying at worst. Still, the prose is very well written and there are some interesting characters.

The narrator/direction was lacking in almost every way. From inconsistent volume to indiscernible characters, it was an absolute slog to get through.

Not sure I’ll continue the series on audible. Might buy the actual book, though.

Sword and Sorcery at Its Best

Sword and sorcery, demons, dragons, assassins, blood sacrifice, all the usual trappings, but told in a realistic, natural way that makes it all seem normal. I fell into the story quickly, easily, able to suspend disbelief.

Unusually, the male narrator does a good job with women's voices, not making them simpering or nasally, just softer, not easy with his natural bass baritone. The only reason I didn't give it five stars was because when he was not voicing a character, he tended to talk low, and I had to adjust the volume.

There are short flashbacks, brief retellings of legends, the main narration in third person, and short first person parts from a separate character by a different narrator, all woven together into a beautiful brocade of a tale.

good story, technical problems with performance

Story was good. Anna Smith Spark is very descriptive of the world, can get tedious at times. Fits the Grimdark genre well, main character is an anti-hero you'll love and hate. Overall good sword and sorcery tale, will be looking at other offerings from Spark.

There is an issue with the narrator's recording, it's very quiet. I had to crank up the volume to hear him and when he yelled or it switched to the female narrator it almost blew my speakers out. Otherwise I enjoyed the performance of both narrators.

For fans of lyrical grimdark

Spark’s prose really sings with this narration. Both brutal and beautiful, I was engaged throughout this story. Not for the faint of heart but can’t recommend this book enough for fans of grimdark and amazing prose. Marith is so well-realized, such a detestable yet relatable character for anyone who has struggled with addiction or depression. Tobias is good hearted at his core but hardened in a world that demands it from him. Orhan is a measured, straight forward cynic in a rotting city. Thalia…I expect we’ll see more character development for her in future installments. Can’t wait to continue the series!

1 Star

When deciding what book to pick I was reading the reviews and there was a 1 star review. It said it was irredeemably dark and to me that is a 5 star review. This book is great if you like dark fantasy and a interesting world! Highly recommend

Awesome

Loved the performance of the narrators. Some slow spots, but overall a true grimdark experience. Have to go to book 2, like now.

Beautiful prose, beautifully narrated.

This book is so well written. The imagery. Ermagherd, the imageryyyyy. The setting just came to life in my head as I listened. So gritty and real. I’m not sure anything I can tell you about it is going to do it justice. The prose is absolutely beautiful, but wooooow does it describe a grim world.

This was one of those audiobooks that I turned on, and then just did not turn off until it was done. It’s about 16 and a half hours long, so, I started it in the morning and just… listened. Listened through dinner. Listened throughout the evening. Listened while getting ready for bed. Just sat there sometimes, with (I can only assume) a stupid AF look on my face while just listening. Always listening. It’s one of those.

We start off following a mercenary band who are on their way to Sorlost, which is something like the biggest, most important city in this world. It’s where the emperor lives, and these mercenaries have been hired to assassinate him. We see things from the POV of the mercenary band’s leader sometimes, and from the newest recruit at other times. Right off the bat, they’re attacked in the desert by a dragon. Yep, this book has dragons. Badass AF dragons with boiling acid for blood. Marith, the pretty boy who can just sort of use a sword slays this dragon… and that’s not even the most surprising thing about him. Oh no. No, no, no. There are quite a lot of surprising things about him, as we find out.

This book gets daaaark. Anna Smith Spark is known as the Queen of Grimdark for a very good reason, ladies and gents. This book, on more than one occasion, had me just blinking and uttering a soft ‘daaaamn‘ to nobody in particular. This happened most especially around a lot of Marith’s escapades. I’ve read a lot of dark stories but this one definitely sways to the darker side of things, while not being completely grim. Thalia, for example, seems to generally enjoy her life as the high priestess, at least at the beginning of the story, despite having to do some messed up things. Necessary things, to her. She has never known otherwise. Sometimes you have to do necessary things, even if they are unpleasant. Orhan, the politician and King’s advisor, is also leading a pretty great life, laying around in bed with his bf and eating lavish food while plotting an assassination on the side.

The characters, while not as richly described as the world they live in are still well described enough that I could visualize them. Beautiful, pale Marith with the dark hair, and Thalia with the lovely bronze skin. The horrible things that tend to happen at the hands of these beautiful characters- baby killing, eye gouging, limb removal, et cetera- are all described in a way that still made me grimace at the very idea of them, but weren’t described to the point of visually seeing it happen, if that makes sense. This, to me, is a really solid example of good writing. Making me cringe at very unpleasant events without making me sick to my stomach at the same time. Giving me horrible characters who do horrible things without making me want to immediately desist listening to their story, instead making me want to not stop listening to it… That takes skill.

This book has two narrators. Most of this book is told from the third person, from the point of view of four characters. Sometimes though, we see one of those characters, Thalia, in the first person. The use of more than one narrator here to achieve this in audio was kind of amazing. Colin Mace does the bulk of the narration here and he nails it so hard. Never heard him narrate before, but I can tell you that I’d definitely like to listen to him again. He put so much emotion into his narration of the story, and made each and every character unique. Really just quite amazingly done. Meriel Rosenkranz narrates the first person POV bits from Thalia, and she did great too. She gives Thalia a really great accent, and tells the high priestess’ story wonderfully. Loved the narration.

Guys, it was fantastic. Very worth a listen!