Thrones of Ash

Kingdoms of Sand, Book 3

By: Daniel Arenson

Narrated by: Kevin Kenerly

Length: 10 hrs and 3 mins

Publisher's summary

The Empire burns.

The old emperor is dead. His daughter, the sadistic Porcia Octavius, has won a bloodthirsty battle for the crown. But she will not rest easy on her throne.

Already her brother sails to foreign lands, seeking to build an army and dethrone her. In a southern savanna province, a young queen rises up against the Empire. In northern misty forests, barbarian tribes gather for war. In Zohar, the eastern desert, the hero Epher Sela joins a rebellion against the vicious empress. Meanwhile, past desert and mountains at the edge of the world, an ancient evil awakens, threatening to undo all that humanity has built.

Legionnaires, rebels, and priests clash, vying to rule crumbling kingdoms. Yet when victors emerge from the inferno, will they find only thrones of ash?

©2017 Daniel Arenson (P)2017 Blackstone Audio, Inc.

so good

it has it all. you must read the whole series. he leaves you wanting more

Flawed story but 1st 2 books are free. i

Pros: Narrator does a good job, story has potential, interesting world building, dark vulgar adult story
Cons: characters make stupid choices and doesn't seem to understand how to learn from mistakes, character growth is stunted by repeating behaviors and contradicting actions, writer over use of reminding the readers about a characters past and lion descriptions overly used. although I do like the imagery of the evil empire with a eagle as it's sigil I find it frustrating that when writing a fantasy story the author still decide to put the colored skin people in chains. will finish the series but returning all books

all ladies are smart ,strong,sympathetic and beaut

to bad the first book was not so blatant about how much more powerful women are.....

Now I remember...

There is a decent story line in this series somewhere. It is hidden by the constant whining of the main characters, boo hoo I killed so and so, I had sex with my sister, and their sudden remembrance that they are the lion of the desert or they are an eagle. Take out all the copy and paste of the whining and remembrance, and you lose half the book. It's no wonder that Bronson Pinchot stopped reading after the third book. Never again will I get a Daniel Arenson book. This is not the first time that half of the book was whine, whine, whine, then remember, remember, remember!!

I don't see it reaching it's potential anymore

for the first two books I gave three stars because while. I had a lot of issues with the writing, there was a lot of potential in the concept and setting. This one opened strong but by the middle I was considering skipping whole chapters because certain characters just aren't contributing anything to the plot, nor are those same characters interesting. and unfortunately, those characters take up a large portion of this book.
A WORD OF ADVICE TO THE AUTHOR IF YOU READ THESE: Check out the book, Telling Writing and you'll see huge improvements in your writing. We don't need a battle scene to halt and tell us that "it's a day of war, a day of death" etc. we know this through the battle itself, moments like these are incredibly redundant, as are these descriptive lists you like using, usually including things we've heard 50 times already. Trust your readers, you don't have to beat them over the head with the same description every single time a character shows up.
As for the narrator, it's the same, he's great at voice work but still mispronounces words and still puts question marks randomly in sentences. I docked a star this time because when you're 3 books in, I feel that some of these issues should have been fixed by now.