Synopsis
Praise be to Our Lady of Eternal Sorrows, and blessed be the Ascended Martyr.’ Those were the words on lips of the faithful: Blessed be the Ascended Martyr, and woe betide you if you thought otherwise. The word Unbeliever had become a death sentence on the streets in those days.
Gangster, soldier, priest. Governor, knight, and above all, Queen’s Man.
Once, Tomas Piety looked after his men, body and soul, as best he could. Then those who ran his country decided his dark talents would better serve in the corridors of power.
Crushed by the power of the Queen’s Men and with the Skanian menace rising once more on the streets of Ellinburg, Tomas Piety is forced to turn to old friends, old debts and untrustworthy alliances.
Meanwhile in the capital city of Dannsburg, Dieter Vogel is beginning to wonder if the horror he has unleashed in the Martyr’s Disciples might be getting out of control.
With revolution brewing and tragedy and terrorism running rife in the cities, Piety and Vogel must each weigh the cost of a crown.
Review
“Boys in their teen years lie like no other, and mostly to each other. Oh aye, by thirteen everyone’s had a fuck, and by sixteen everyone’s killed a man. Have you bollocks, my son. If farmers ever run short of horsehit to fertilise their crops they should collect what comes out of the mouths of lads in their teen years, and that’s Our Lady’s honest truth.”
As with the first 3 books in the series, I really enjoyed my time with the finale of the series as well. The War for the Rose throne series and its main character Tomas Piety are both very special and I am going to carry them with me for a very long time. I’m a serial sequel non-starter and yet I couldn’t stop from reaching out for the sequels in this series and flying through them. As with the green bone saga, I was chronically addicted. Peter McLean’s writing is top-notch.
This series started out as something similar to Peaky Blinders but has grown into so much more. Coming specifically to book 4, I had enormous expectations based on Priest of Gallows (book 3) and McLeans delivers very well. The fourth and final book of a series with gangster drama and politicking for the highest office in the nation is as expected- very explosive, very real, and very dark. As always with great books, I learn more about me and my taste as I read them. And the first thing that it almost always comes down to is character work. This book and the series have worked so well for me because of how well I’m connecting to Tomas Piety. When Tomas is afraid of Lord Vogel, I’m afraid of Lord Vogel. When Tomas thinks naught of Lord Vogel, I do the same too. The brilliance and the beauty of McLean’s writing is in transferring the feelings of his MC to me, the reader. Book 1 Piety and book 4 Piety are very different. Book 1 Piety was ruthless and competent but book 4 Piety is on another level. He starts out as a soldier returning from war to reclaim his gangster business, becomes a spy and inevitably becomes trapped in political intricacies that require him to learn and grow. It truly has been marvelous watching how much Piety grew. Take a fucking bow from me Peter McLean!
“If you’re going through Hell, walk like you own the place. Walk like the devil.”
Now I do wish we had a few POV chapters from some of the other major characters in the series but that is not to say that their character arcs are lacking in any way. All the setup for the major and side characters pay off really well. I was moved to tears by Piety’s father by law’s letter and he is a character that doesn’t really appear for more than 5-6 chapters in the whole of four books. One more thing to note is that, in a return to the roots fashion we actually go back to Ellinsburg and even the town’s story has a satisfying end. As it is book 4, I can’t talk anything more specific about the plot, magic, or the world building but I will say that it is fast paced, has a lot of satisfying moments, and retains the incredibly readable quality from the previous books- even slow readers (me) will blitz through the pages. Every time I picked up the book, I took out a chunk of 50-100 pages.
“…, I knew, and grief has for ever been the price we pay for love.”
In conclusion, this is a great finale and an excellent series. It is actually underrated and under-read. I implore everyone who has not yet started this series to just take a peek at the first chapter in Priest of Bones. You will be embarked upon a truly great grimdark fantasy series- one that contains a lot of action, a lot of politics, and some of the finest character work there is.
Leave a Reply