Reviews with content warning for Torture - Traitor's Blade

Reviews tagging 'Torture'

Traitor's Blade by Sebastien de Castell

13 reviews

kaydee_reads's review against another edition

adventurous dark emotional funny mysterious sad tense medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Plot
Strong character development? It's complicated
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? No

4.0

Such a slow start, it was initially a struggle to get into… but then once they got to the main city where the majority of the plot takes place, it took off like a race horse and I was completely hooked. Loved the camaraderie and although the “mystery” was quite obvious, it’s written in a way that the reader is in on the joke - the main character can’t figure it out because he’s too busy being noble, but literally everyone else (including the reader) knows, and that was fun. I love overly-noble heroes who everyone else pokes fun at… but also can’t help but love and follow. Falcio is a great example of this. I’d give the first half of the book a 3, the second a 5, so splitting the difference and going with 4.

The only scene I hated was

the sex scene. Falcio is almost out of his mind after being tortured, and says no, stop, several times, and she keeps going, saying she isn’t afraid of him… that’s not how consent works, my dude. You’re clearly supposed to be intrigued by her, and find the scene healing/romantic, that she convinced him her sexual healing would… heal him? But it just feels coercive and sort of gross, especially when she tied him to the bed without consent, after the poor man had JUST been chained up and tortured for days! I hope, if she sticks around in future books, she gets more of a personality (and a conscience) than “sexy woman heals you with sex for your own good, regardless of how you feel about it”. The author clearly does know how to write good female characters, so she’s sort of a weird cliche anomaly.

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kjcm's review against another edition

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adventurous dark fast-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

3.5

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carwen's review against another edition

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adventurous challenging dark funny mysterious sad tense medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? It's complicated
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.75

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anaoliveira's review against another edition

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adventurous funny fast-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.0

This was so much fun and I was not expecting to get Star Wars vibes from it, I don't know if it's because I recently finished Obi-Wan Kenobi but Falcio and the girl are totally Obi-Wan/Leia vibes!

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justineboots's review against another edition

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adventurous dark funny tense medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? It's complicated
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

5.0

Okay! New favourite! I need to binge the rest of this series. This was just so much fun.

The main characters are well-formed and complex - the plot is intriguing and the questions the book raises are very meaningful.

I will say that the last 10-20% of the book kinda dropped the ball with one too many plot twists/plot revelations. Personally one of them could have been done without and made the story more… mysterious?

That being said I super enjoyed it. I’ll definitely be picking up the next books. I really want to see where the story takes us next.

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natcat's review against another edition

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adventurous funny medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? It's complicated
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

3.5

This book is something of an odd duck, but I did enjoy it. The comparisons to The Three Musketeers are apt, particularly in the fairly tongue-in-cheek tone of the writing and the decisions of the main character to solve all his problems with the maximum amount of drama possible (Falco isn’t a lot like d’Artagnan, but in this respect he is very similar!).

The flashbacks were a little confusing in that it wasn’t always clear when things were happening, but I did enjoy how they slowly unfolded the story of Falco and of the King and his Greatcoats. The secondary characters varied from too thinly characterized (oddly, Falco’s two companions/friends suffered most from this, I thought) to very entertaining (most of the less important secondary characters were actually very well-drawn in their brief page time).

I mostly enjoyed the series of adventures that Falco found himself in (aside from the slightly odd little interlude with Ethalia which didn't seem to have much of a point and raised far too many questions about consent for something that didn't go anywhere), but the last 10% or so of the book contained a lot of revelations that didn't really get a chance to settle, and felt weirdly paced in comparison to the rest of the book and very much like it was only interested in setting up the sequel, which I am definitely going to read!

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ok7a's review against another edition

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adventurous dark mysterious medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? N/A
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.75

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sarah_ann_roth's review against another edition

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adventurous dark hopeful medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? No

4.0

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shadereads's review against another edition

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adventurous dark fast-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? No
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

2.5

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stannisstan's review against another edition

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adventurous dark funny fast-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Plot
Loveable characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

3.5

This is a very fast-paced and readable book. The rapport between the three ~~Musketeers~~ Greatcoats is delightful and fun to read. But there are definitely problems with the book.

Readers who point out that the middle section is basically lifted straight from The Purge are basically correct. I like the part where Falcio confronts Lorenzo about the New Greatcoats, because it demonstrates clearly what kind of person Falcio is that he cares more about the reputation of the Greatcoats than his own physical safety and that of his charge. However, I question the wisdom of having this ~~Purge~~ Ganath Kalila occupy so much narrative space. I don't necessarily have a problem with de Castell putting his own spin on The Purge, but that section of novel went on for too long. I don't think he did anything interesting enough with the concept to warrant the amount of ink devoted to Falcio and Aline's adventures during the Blood Week. Falcio is most entertaining when he is with his friends, and for him to be separated from them for most of the novel while he runs around Rijou is kind of a puzzling narrative choice.

Then there is de Castell's treatment of rape. Yeah, it just isn't good. He immediately fridges Falcio's wife right off the bat, so Falcio's man pain can fuel his quest for justice. And then there's the

Ethalia interlude. I think I understand what de Castell is trying to go for here. He is trying to show Falcio's resolve and commitment to King Paelis' higher ideals of justice and to Aline personally, to the detriment of his own personal happiness. And he does so by employing the old trope where the noble knight (or hero) resists the easy temptation of a seductress, thereby demonstrating the nobility of his spirit and his devotion to a higher purpose. However, the way the scene is written ... it's rape, even if that isn’t what de Castell intended. Whereas in old poetry, a scene like this can be delineated in a couple of lines, often with some ambiguity, de Castell has to narrate the entire exchange in prose with some amount of detail in the first person. Because the book is written in the first person. And the effect is very different. Even if Falcio’s narration doesn’t frame the encounter as rape, a straight blow-by-blow summary of events clearly puts this scene under the rape category. He says “No,” and she ties him down. He’s not fully conscious, and she chooses to keep going. It’s not ambiguous. And given the rape of his wife, his feelings of powerless at the time, and Falcio’s general preoccupation with the rights and freedoms of commoners, it’s kind of a glaring inconsistency in his character that his own bodily autonomy or lack thereof isn’t something that’s remarked upon in the text in connection to this scene. Instead Falcio adopts Ethalia’s framing, where she is simply trying to heal him, and he is closing his heart off to happiness (and emotional healing) when he rejects her. 😬

There are many instances of Kick the Dog in this book, but de Castell actually goes so far as to use animal torture to show how evil his villain is. It's kind of on-the-nose and maybe a bit gratuitous. I'm not entirely sure how I feel. Since de Castell is trying to create his version of a swashbuckling Three Musketeers tale, it stands to reason that he would lean on all the classic tropes of the genre. Given the project of the book, I feel like his reliance on tropes (and there are many!) is justified. It's just some land better than others?

The numerous fight scenes are also perhaps overly descriptive for my tastes. De Castell obviously puts his experience as a stunt fight choreographer to good use. However, I'm one of those readers that has trouble visualizing action scenes, so detailed descriptions of where one duelist has positioned his rapier vis-à-vis his opponent's body, and where each body part is positioned at what angle just don't mean much to me.

All that being said, the basic concept for the series is solid. And there were many parts of the book that I enjoyed. The flashbacks to Falcio’s past with Paelis are interesting. The reveal about

Trin’s true identity

is great! And Falcio seems poised to undergo some interesting changes as a character.

Overall, my experience has been mixed. Some really solid sections, and some really … Yikes! moments.

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