Reviews with content warning for Torture - Traitor's Blade

Reviews tagging 'Torture'

Traitor's Blade by Sebastien de Castell

15 reviews

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.

Content Warnings

emilybennett's review against another edition

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adventurous dark funny mysterious fast-paced

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

4.0

Traitor's Blade follows a group of Greatcoats, people who enforced the King’s Law, after the King has been murdered by the Dukes, and who are now treated as traitors. Throughout this book they are attempting to fulfill the King’s last wishes of them, to find his Chariotes (whilst having no idea what his Chariotes actually are).

If you haven't read Sebastien De Castell's other series 'Spellslinger', you may want to skip ahead to -"However, this book is not character-driven,"-, not because there'll be spoilers, but because I'm going to be comparing the two quite a bit. Reading this book, I kept thinking of how similar it is to Spellslinger, not in the plot but in everything else, and just seemed to be more adult and dark. It had the same writing style and humour as Spellslinger, but I found that I didn't like it so much in this story, most likely because, as a teenager I am the intended audience for Spellslinger, so the humour is more aimed at people my age, whereas Traitor's Blade is an adult book, with more adult humour to match (it also probably has something to do with the lack of a Reichis-like character). I experienced a similar disconnect between the two as I didn't like the characters in Traitor's Blade as much as I liked those in Spellslinger. I think this is definitely due to the fact that I didn't feel I could really relate to them as much, which is an incredibly important aspect of my enjoyment of a book. Something that confused me about this however is the fact that I still related to characters in the other adult fantasies I have read, but those all included multiple POVs, of which I often preferred the younger characters', whereas Traitor's Blade has only one perspective, Falcio's, and he's an older, more pessimistic character, who I had a lot of difficulties connecting with.

However, this book is not character-driven, which means that the struggle to relate to the characters didn't overly impact my enjoyment. This book is very fast-paced, and so much happened, especially considering the fact that this book is less than 400 pages long. It was a very quick read and I felt like I was flying through, however it wasn't an easy read, because there were a lot of things going on in this book that were very upsetting and quite frankly just grim. I would definitely recommend checking out the content warnings for this, a list of which can be found here.

I did really enjoy this book, despite some of the above, and I'm looking forward to continuing with the series, although I have heard that some of the scenes in the next book are even worse than those in this. I would recommend this book to someone looking for a fast-paced fantasy, but would warn them to read the content warnings first and to be wary of the particular writing style.

Content Warnings

fireopal's review against another edition

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adventurous dark emotional hopeful

5.0

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ollieshark's review against another edition

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adventurous dark funny mysterious tense medium-paced

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

4.0

**this book contains rape, dismemberment, character death, suicide by bombing, sexism, self harm, torture, and mentions of animal abuse. if you are sensitive to any of these themes, this may not be an enjoyable read for you.**

*this review contains spoilers.*

falcio is kvothe and i'm disgruntled about it. aside from that, tho, i quite enjoyed traitor's blade.

there are several tropes i despise present in this novel, the most glaring of which is that the main character falcio is not motivated to do anything unless a woman is involved. his wife had to be violated and killed before falcio was incited to become a greatcoat, a woman murdering falcio's current employer is the inciting incident, a young girl by the name of his wife is what prompts the longest arc of the novel (in which falcio is alone in rijou and surrounded by enemies, trying to protect the girl), and the final, main antagonist who has set everything into motion is revealed to be a woman. i hate that. stop it, sebastian.

some sections of prose were infuriatingly mansplainy. a lot of those parts could have been completely cut out, as some of it was purely "weeelllll, i COULD do this, these are all my options, but i'm gonna do something else instead" or explaining how each offensive or defensive maneuver is broken down. i don't particularly care about each and every move falcio makes in a fight scene, just put the pointy end in the other guy and get on with it. if falcio pops out a "not all men" in any of the future books i will personally put all my reviews of this series down to the lowest ratings possible. he's already done it with "not all greatcoats."

there are times when i wanted to beat kvothe--I MEAN FALCIO'S head in. i can't tell if de castell wrote him to be cocky or just plain dumb, to be always jumping into fights or situations meant for (or better suited to) other people, such as kest's fight at the end of the novel. does he have an inflated ego or is he literally just convinced he Has To Be The One? his tone is condescending at times and at others too idealistic, and coming from a manly man with a tragic past like falcio, it just rubs me the wrong way. how did falcio end up leading the greatcoats?

but the humor was great and the banter between falcio, kest, and brasti was great. i also really loved all the women more than falcio, valiana, trin, the tailor, and aline. i even liked patriana and monster more than i liked falcio and was sad when monster didn't bite his head off. i was really pleased that aline actually yelled at falcio and talked back to him instead of being a defenseless little thirteen year old the whole time.

despite all my gripes with some of the choices de castell made regarding falcio and character motivations, i enjoyed traitor's blade enough that i want to continue the series in the future. it's probably the humor and relationships falcio has with kest and brasti that makes me want to keep reading. will i ever get around to it? maybe, but not before i've forgotten everything in this novel. but it'll happen one day.

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