Mistress of the Empire

Riftwar Cycle: The Empire Trilogy, Book 3

By: Raymond E. Feist, Janny Wurts

Narrated by: Tania Rodrigues

Length: 32 hrs and 2 mins

Publisher's summary

The world on the other side of the rift: Kelewan, a land seething with political intrigue and deadly conspiracies. Following the opulent panoply of Daughter of the Empire and the dazzling pageantry of Servant of the Empire comes the resounding conclusion to the Empire trilogy.

Besieged by spies and rival houses, stalked by a secret and merciless brotherhood of assassins, the brilliant Lady Mara of the Acoma faces the most deadly challenge she has ever known. The fearsome Black Robes see Mara as the ultimate threat to their ancient power. In search of allies who will join her against them, Mara must travel beyond civilization's borders and even into the hives of the alien cho-ja. As those near and dear to her fall victim to many enemies, Mara cries out for vengeance. Drawing on all of her courage and guile, she prepares to fight her greatest battle of all - for her life, her home, and the Empire itself.

©2017 Raymond Feist and Janny Wurts (P)2017 Random House Audio

Critic reviews

"I enjoyed [ Mistress Of The Empire ] enormously...I particularly enjoyed Mara's adventures in the land outside the Empire." (Robert Gellis, author of Masques of Gold and Fires of Winter)

great performance!

excellent end to the mini series. excellent character development. couldn't ask for a better ending.

Great!!

Great way to end the series! I look forward to listening to the remaining books.

Spoken words bring the work alive

I have read the series a number of times
I have waited for Audible to
bring the performance to the US market. One worries that the voice one hears when the work is read will be different but this is dead on

A throughly enjoyable story.

This story is so full of intriguing ups and downs, at times I felt like a yo-yo in the hands of a Master!
For the most part, Tania Rodrigues was very good as the Narrator. She lent her voice and her superb control over it, to enhance the gravitas and the witty repartee, of the by-play between characters, be it the Lords of rival or even allied families, or the interactions between slaves, who were once proud and dignified soldiers and their Officer, who were captured in battle.
With the author’s well written story, conveying the emotions of births and deaths, loves found and loves lost, as well as the bleak future for those in the armies left alive after a defeat and the exhilaration for those who won. This author’s narrative was a Narrator’s dream.
Unfortunately, the Narrator’s superb ability to convey the author’s word pictures of the settings, emotions and story line, couldn’t overcome some very basic flaws she could have avoided.
With a better education or even just a bit of time spent researching unfamiliar words, these calamities could have been avoided. I resent the fact that she obviously couldn’t be bothered to do so.
There were many instances when I was deeply immersed in the story, able to suspend the knowledge that the story was fictional and I even had the beginning of tears in my eyes, (yes, I’m a man, forget what John Wayne said.) when, to my shock and disappointment, the Narrator would mispronounce yet another word. It was a disappointment because most were well known words and even if they were unfamiliar to her, all she had to do was open a dictionary app. Almost all dictionary apps have a little speaker icon, beside the word, to click on and you will hear the exact pronunciation, for every word you’d care to look up.
The last example of her mispronunciations, that really sticks in my mind, is the word “epitome”. The word is pronounced as “e-pit-oh-me” but she made the same mistake Karen Springer, a girl in my 5th grade class did. The Narrator pronounced the word as “epi-tome”
By making a mistake with something as basic as the pronunciation of a word, which is part of the foundation for every Narrator’s skill set, I was going to award the performance with one star. However, with her ability to convey the emotions for all of the ups and downs of this story so well, I had to raise the performance award to three stars.

Awesome book but a LOT of words mispronounced.

I love this book. I've read it a few times and decided I would get this version for road trips. I'm amazed at how many words were mispronounced. I don't mean character names or words in a fictional language that are open to interpretation; I mean normal English words that have definite correct and incorrect pronunciation. it was distracting, became frustrating, ultimately a bit disgruntling.

Excellent trilogy. Finished exquisitely too!

This is a trilogy truly worth reading. the original series was good, but this one was very good.

LISTEN TO ALL PREVIOUS BOOKS FIRST to enjoy this perfect ending. It is worth it.

A beautiful ending. Absolutely literary perfection. I've listened to each book in this series one after the other. If you can weather the entire story across all the books, you will see how everything ties together beautifully.

If you like politics, war, and magic, start from the very first book in the Riftwar Saga. Learn about Pug. Then learn about Mara. Then see Pug and Mara cross paths. That's all you get.

Trust me, as a random review writer, I'm an awesome person who values integrity. I've listened to many amazing audio books of this caliber and I've never been moved to write. so review like this one. Granted, I would've for the previous books, buy I decided I'd wait until the end of this one to do so.

This multi-world saga is truly worth the listen.

Exceptional!

I've read these books when they were first published and the Audible versions do not disappoint! Mara of the Acoma is one of the most intriguing characters I've ever encountered. Her Spy Master Arakasi is a delight and the world building of Kelewan reminds me so much of Clavell's 'Shogun'. This is a worthy trilogy that stands the test of time!

Intrigue, Conspiracy, Espionage and Action!

Very well executed conclusion to a series within a series. Like a rollercoaster of hope and desperation it's a wild ride.

Superb fantasy with a twist

This trilogy started strong and just kept getting better! The feminine perspective and Asiatic society provided enough novelty to be interesting while still being a traditional political high fantasy at it's core. It was really well done and a pleasure to listen to.