Synopsis:
A drug addict who hunts sorcerers down by tracking their magick, the most renowned swordsman no one has ever heard of, and a thieving magick-wielding woman hellbent on revenge collide during a last ditch effort to stop an insane superhuman serial killer from making himself a god.
The Render Tracers always say magick users deserve to burn. Aren couldn’t agree more, Keluwen would beg to differ, and Corrin couldn’t care less either way.
In a world where most people use swords for protection, Aren uses tools that let him see what no one else can see, and he takes advantage of loopholes that can undo magick in order to stop the deadliest people in the world. He is a Render Tracer, relentlessly pursuing rogue sorcerers who bend the laws of physics to steal, assault, and kill. But his next hunt will lead him to question his entire life, plunging him into a world where he can’t trust anyone, not even his own eyes.
When Keluwen finally escaped her fourthparents’ home and set out on her own to become a thief, she never thought she would one day be killing her own kind. She honed her magick on the streets, haunted by her past, hunted by Render Tracers, and feared by a society that hates what she is. Now she joins a crew of outcast magicians on a path of vengeance as they race to stop an insane sorcerer who has unlocked the source of all magick and is trying to use it to make himself a god.
Corrin is a sword fighter first, a drinker second, and a…well, there must be something else he is good at. He’ll think of it if you give him enough time. He is a rogue for hire, and he has no special powers of any kind. The most magick he has ever done is piss into the wind without getting any on himself. He is terrible at staying out of trouble, and someone always seems to be chasing him. When he gets caught up in a multi-kingdom manhunt, he finds himself having to care about other people for a change, and he’s not happy about it.
They are about to collide on the trail of a man who is impossible to catch, who is on the verge of plunging the world into ruin, and who can turn loyal people into traitors in a single conversation. They must struggle against their own obsessions, their fears, ancient prophecies, and each other. They will each have to balance the people they love against their missions, and struggle to avoid becoming the very thing they are trying to stop.
Review:
I did it, frens, cheer for me, I finally finished We Break Immortals by Thomas Howard Riley, a book with a near immortal page count of 1104 (on my kindle). And it only took me two weeks! Winning.
So yes, this book is a chonker and there is lots going on in this doorstopper. But it all boils down to a band of unlikely companions are hunting down a magick user who wants to become immortal. That’s it. I did it in one sentence, THR, not sure why you needed 1104 pages…
On a slightly more serious note, there are three main points of view: Aren, Keluwen, and Corrin. Aren is a Render Tracer, essentially a Blade Runner, but instead of hunting down androids to kill them, he hunts down magick users to kill them. Aren is a smart man, one who has read every damn book in this world it seems. He uses some interesting tools we learn all about in his quest to hunt down users. He’s also a drug user, so there is some interesting stuff that occurs there… And he’s never lost a trace. Keluwen also hunts magick users but she IS a magic user, so there is some fun paradoxes at work in this world. She’s brash, headstrong, and in one of the most stable marriages I’ve read in fantasy books in a long time. Her arc is definitely one to watch. Then there is the sword-swinging lush, Corrin the Magnificent (self-proclaimed title). Corrin swings his swords, names his knives, and drinks/carouses/fornicates aplenty. He ALWAYS has a weapon at hand.
On top of those three, there are oodles of named characters, so many that you kinda forget about a couple of them until they get all red-shirted in some epic scenes. That said, there are a number of characters that stand out for various reasons. Reidos has excellent banter with Corrin, it’s just a pretty funny friendship. Redeiver the Rover is quite mysterious and I never knew if he could be trusted or not. And the villain’s henchmen (who I can’t remember if he even had a name) who had a mustache and jinglebells on his boots, now he was awesome!
So despite my percentage ticker at the bottom of my kindle taking forever to go up no matter how many pages I read in a sitting, the pace is fairly consistent to strong. Sure there are a lot of scenes where the many groups of characters are traveling and conversing about history or positing theories or making bantery jokes or plotting on how to catch the wannabe immortal, things move along in this story. They travel the breadth of these lands and there are constant set pieces that up the ante. The bad guy is kinda a badass and is always steps ahead, so the plans go awry often, leaving dead bodies of friends and magick traces in its wake. There are plenty of action scenes to counter the dialogue/worldbuilding heavy scenes (of which there are many because THR decided to create literally gobs of historical things Aren knows about and discusses then throws mystical treasure hunts on top). There are also some excellent shocks and reveals. Some hard-hitting deaths these characters deal with. And the climax fight is some one hundred pages with so many points of view changes you could swing a sword at and be sure to draw blood. But it’s epically epic.
This is the fourth book by Thomas Howard Riley I’ve read and while each of them takes place in the same world, they are all so very different. We Break Immortals being twice as long as the other three combined is a feat unto itself and technically this ends on a cliffhanger setting up book two. I can only imagine where this series goes, but this book ends solidly as a standalone.
For epic fantasy fans with a diverse cast nearly bursting at the seams, We Break Immortals is a must read. It’s got the tropes we all love in epic fantasy, plus loads of death and blood tossed with a plethora of witty comments. Definitely check this one out.
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