Coming to the end to Mark Lawrence's The Broken Empire series, you realise the great strength of the trilogy has lain in Honorous Jorg Ancrath's ability to grow as a character, while still realising that some things just are the way they are. Jorg's character development felt a bit ham-fisted at times in the second book, King of Thorns (as you can see from the review here), but Lawrence has always managed to resist the urge to take our antihero on a traditional redemption arc, to have him grow and change into a completely different person, as so many heroes do. Instead, Jorg learns, he grows as a person, he analyses his own psyche, but the traits that helped set him on the path to murder and mayhem so long ago don't disappear. Jorg is who he is because of the experiences that first formed him and since they never change, his core rightfully stays the same - and it's kind of why you love him.
The plotting in the third and final novel, Emperor of Thorns, is tighter and faster than ever, swinging once again between the book's now and four years earlier. Jorg's past takes us back on our whistle-stop tour of the altered landscape of our world, a game that's even more fun now that readers have a few more pieces of the puzzle. For those who don't remember (or are resolutely determined for reasons unknown to read the third book without reading the other two), the medieval-esque world Jorg strides through is clearly our own after some form of planet-wrecking world war has devastated it and a hodgepodge of humanity and culture has been cobbled together to form a new civilisation. Figuring out the clues left behind by our future along with the simple fun of wondering where in the world he is now provide a nice counterpoint to the main mystery, that of arch-nemesis, the Dead King. Through it all is a welcome return to a faster pace of action more reminiscent of the first book, Prince of Thorns, and an equally welcome lessening of Jorg's internal monologuing.
Once again, Lawrence hasn't made the novel's central mystery a stumper, it can be guessed at quite early, but knowing doesn't decrease the tension or make it any less exciting to watch Jorg hurtle towards a destiny he hasn't a clue he's heading for. Despite the pace, new characters are well fleshed out and old ones are well used, although the decision to bring in another new POV, while it works overall, isn't my favourite one. Book two saw some of the action through the filter of Katherine Ap Scorron, Jorg's step-aunt and object of his deepest desires, in the form of her diary. That was jarring enough in its own way after no such device was used in the first book, but it made a lot of sense and was a valuable counterpoint to Jorg's own POV.
In book three, the second POV is Chella, Jorg's necromancing enemy and a character too close to his own to provide a clear enough contrast. Again, the choice of narrator makes sense for the story, but I missed Katherine's voice and Chella just didn't match up. While her POV delivers important plot points, she herself is not interesting enough to carry her own segment and it interrupts the flow of the times when she does interact with Jorg, which should have been the slick cut-and-thrust of combatants we've seen in their fights before and are instead a somewhat disjointed stumble back-and-forth where neither of their motivations are clear.
However, it's the only bum note in a resounding send-off for Jorg's story. It's easy to wish that things had turned out differently when you come to the end of a tale that's taken more than one book to tell, but in this case, it's not easy at all to think of another ending that would have been as fitting as this one. We can only hope that Lawrence's next foray will be equally entertaining - and that he writes as fast as he can.
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