Tyrant: Force of Kings

Tyrant, Book 6

By: Christian Cameron

Narrated by: Peter Noble

The triumphant final volume in the epic series - a series of monumental battles, fascinating history and action-packed adventure.

The vast and deadly conflict between Alexander the Great's former generals as they battle for control of his empire has reached a tense stalemate. No one seems able to strike the decisive blow.

But with everything in the balance, a secret emerges: hidden in the remote mountains is a young man who could change everything: Herakles, the son of Alexander.

Whoever aspires to Alexander's mantle must now control his one legitimate heir - or destroy him - and a war being played across the known world is set for its final, bloody conclusion. As the rival armies converge on the village of Ipsus, twin monarchs Satyrus and Melitta know that they too must gamble their own lives and the survival of their Black Sea kingdom on the outcome....

PLEASE NOTE: When you purchase this title, the accompanying PDF will be available in your Audible Library along with the audio.

©2014 Christian Cameron (P)2021 Orion Publishing Group

best series ever!

we need more books and series by Christian Cameron and Peter noble is fantastic on narration

Cameron writes and Noble talks. Perfect

This Tyrant series has been a wonderful experience for me. I’ll be very honest I had to listen at least twice as I had trouble keeping track of so many characters. Each time I did I enjoyed them more. When Peter Noble is reading it’s always good no matter how many times you listen. A great story and a wonderful performance. The aftermath of Alexander the Great was a mess this series helped me better understand what turmoil Alexander left behind not selecting an heir. I understand this is historical fiction a story wrapped in an historical timeline. Having never had an deep interest in that timeframe I shouldn’t be satisfied with my knowledge base of the history. Well that is yet to be decided by me at this point. I’m old and spent many years studying a few centuries of the late Roman Republic through Claudius and a bit. Goldsworthy’s non-fiction I enjoyed however, his last 3 novels were simply a joy. So at 73 I think I’ll spend more time being entertained and less time studying. I love historical fiction which has real historical noteworthy people brought to life by the imagination of a talented writer.

Great conclusion. This has been a great series

On track to read every book by this author. Really enjoyed this sixth book in the series.

Excellent Series

Excellent series from beginning to end. Another great author. Bernard Cromwell and now Christian Cameron.

A Kind of Meh Ending to a good series

Not that I haven't enjoyed listening to the twins arc, but the entire story just seems kinda... off. The story was okay, I really liked the focus on stratocles becoming an ally to the twins, instead of the assassin he's been since the beginning, and I think it really fits his arc well. Other than that, I don't really have anything good to say.

The first really big problem is the story and the finale, the battle of Ipsus. A lot of the book was centered around the Kassandra and Lysimachus gathering their forces and trying to meet up with Seleucus to destroy Antigonus once and for all, so a lot of the buildup is just them marching across Anatolia. When you finally get to the finale, it was pretty flatly delivered and done almost within the last hour and a half. It also doesn't really present any suspense, or present a danger to the main characters, except of course those who die off out of frame.

The love relationship between satyrus and Merium seems really forced, because it goes the entire book and you don't really get an actual conclusion till the very end.

The second major problem is that Cameron took the multiple perspective approach and applied it way too much in this book. I think you get the different perspectives of at least 22 different characters throughout the book, their parts either being major side plots to tie into the story later, to establish the key players in the last battle, or just to do some negligible. Its very jarring and annoying, because a lot of these parts aren't particularly long, so for like 5 or 10 minutes, you'll be with stratocles, then with satyrus, then to Melita, then to Merium, and so on. They're particularly annoying when they're sprinkled in the last battle; like if you extended the battle from being 1 hour to 2 hours, and followed all of the characters in detail to their own perspectives, then it would be a lot better. But it's like I said before in destroyer of cities, if Cameron doesn't have something for the character to do, it just seems like padding.

Overall, I didn't hate this book, it was just hard to keep up with what's going on, and it makes the actions of all the characters less important and it seems to me that Cameron wanted to get Ipsus as the last part of the story, reuniting all of the old characters plus all of the new ones together for one last hoorah, but ultimately it just falls flat.