Grave Empire
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4.5 • 13 Ratings
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- $9.99
Publisher Description
From critically acclaimed author Richard Swan, Grave Empire begins the epic tale of an empire on the verge of industrial revolution, where sorcery and arcane practices are outlawed – and where an ancient prophecy threatens the coming end of days.
Blood once turned the wheels of empire. Now it is money.
A new age of exploration and innovation has dawned, and the Empire of the Wolf stands to take its place as the foremost power in the known world. Glory and riches await.
But dark days are coming. A mysterious plague has broken out in the pagan kingdoms to the north, while in the south, the Empire’s proxy war in the lands of the wolfmen is weeks away from total collapse.
Worse still is the message brought to the Empress by two heretic monks, who claim to have lost contact with the spirits of the afterlife. The monks believe this is the start of an ancient prophecy heralding the end of days—the Great Silence.
It falls to Renata Rainer, a low-ranking ambassador to an enigmatic and vicious race of mermen, to seek answers from those who still practice the arcane arts. But with the road south beset by war and the Empire on the brink of supernatural catastrophe, soon there may not be a world left to save...
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Swan launches the Great Silence trilogy, set 200 years after the Empire of the Wolf series, with this dazzling and immersive epic fantasy. After Peter Kleist's father buys him a Sovan Army commission, the callow officer confronts more than he bargained for at the so-called "fort at the end of the world," located near the Sovan Empire's front with its enemies, Casimir and Sanque. In addition to those adversaries, the Sovans stationed there are at risk from some possibly supernatural creatures, responsible for the grisly massacre of several soldiers. As Kleist struggles to survive, Sovan diplomat Renata Rainer joins an expedition investigating an unsettling claim made by two monks from a sect that regularly converses with the dead. They claim that the spirits have gone quiet, which may herald the Great Silence, a prophesied apocalyptic event. The pages fly as Swan alternates between the two plotlines, building the stakes of each sky-high. The worldbuilding is lush, enhanced by Swan's rich descriptive prose, and the characters are complex. Readers won't need to be familiar with the earlier series to be drawn in—and this promising start will leave them eager for more.
Customer Reviews
Feels timely
An existential horror threatens society. Will people come together to oppose it in time?
The text snippets at the start of each chapter feel oddly prescient given our political moment.
Fantastic!
Brilliant. I thought the first trilogy was amazing, but this has gone above and beyond. Had me enthralled the entire read I couldn’t put it down. So excited for the next one.