Traitor's Blade

Greatcoats Series, Book 1

By: Sebastien de Castell

Narrated by: Joe Jameson

Length: 12 hrs and 50 mins

Publisher's summary

With swashbuckling action that recalls Dumas's Three Musketeers, Sebastien de Castell has created a dynamic new fantasy series. In Traitor's Blade, a disgraced swordsman struggles to redeem himself by protecting a young girl caught in the web of a royal conspiracy.

The King is dead, the Greatcoats have been disbanded, and Falcio Val Mond and his fellow magistrates Kest and Brasti have been reduced to working as bodyguards for a nobleman who refuses to pay them. Things could be worse, of course. Their employer could be lying dead on the floor while they are forced to watch the killer plant evidence framing them for the murder. Oh wait, that's exactly what's happening.

Now a royal conspiracy is about to unfold in the most corrupt city in the world. A carefully orchestrated series of murders that began with the overthrow of an idealistic young king will end with the death of an orphaned girl and the ruin of everything that Falcio, Kest, and Brasti have fought for. But if the trio want to foil the conspiracy, save the girl, and reunite the Greatcoats, they'll have to do it with nothing but the tattered coats on their backs and the swords in their hands, because these days every noble is a tyrant, every knight is a thug, and the only thing you can really trust is a traitor's blade.

©2014 Sebastien de Castell (P)2017 Tantor

The King!

The backstories were my favorite part, especially when they involved the king. He always exceeded my expectations of a character in his position/ role. I would love to read a whole novel about the back story, but I'm not sure if it would work.
besides that, the narrator was awesome and I think I would have regreted reading this book myself instead of listening to the audiobook. the characters came alive through the his voice.
I look forward to listening to the sequal.

Usual Sword and Sourcery Book

Band of outlaws with morals, despicable evil nobility playing petty games, a helpless little girl with inner strength, a witch playing the long game, hero tortured but escapes etc. etc. yawn.

Frequent Deus Ex Machina bogged down the plot.

This is an incredibly easy book to read and I really appreciated the sentence structure and the way this book flowed. This first person point of view story telling really made this book super easy to consume that reading it felt incredibly smooth.

With such smooth writing though, I was getting overwhelmed with the lack of focus on the main plots. I felt like the plot changed constantly, like a side quest would happen to distract from the overarching story and then a side quest within the side quest would distract from the side quest which further distracts from the main story and the original side quest. It's incredibly annoying wanting to hear more about a set story line for the focus to keep shifting so rapidly that i was getting kind of tired where it was going.

I really enjoyed the characters and love the time and attention spent differentiating them all from eachother and a steady amount of world building to further help support the characters.

As much as i liked the characters I was getting tired of how much plot armor and the use of Deus Ex Machina to get out of situations. Right when something maybe risky would happen some stupid new thing would get introduced to help save the plot and get more and more ridiculous and hard to believe in the more their used. These deus ex just come out of nowhere too and feel cheap like a rapier that is spring loaded, coat fists and magic meth candy. I kept feeling no risk to these characters because these cheap tools would keep popping them out of danger.

I had a good time despite getting sick of the unfocused plot and all these deus ex machinas bogging down the book, it just would have been so much better if these cheap tricks to create story wernt used so often. Lacking focus is fine because it can create cool side plots but some of these side plots felt so throwaway and added nothing that I sometimes questioned why these were even included.

I Wish This Could Be An HBO Series

The story line of this audiobook is excellent. If HBO could make this a series, it would give Game of Thrones a run for its money.

I bought this by chance and am very glad I did, i have since downloaded the 2nd of the series.

Sebastien de Castell tells an excellent story and Joe Jameson does a great job with his narration bringing it to life.

Well worth the credit.

What a wonderful story.

This one surprised me. Purchased as a daily deal and it was really very good. The characters are great. I also found myself really digging the lore as well. Looking forward to the next book.

Couldn’t put it down!

An absolutely fabulous adventure fantasy. The narrator, Joe Jameson is perfect. I loved the whole series.

Enjoyed it. but magic was pointless

i really enjoyed this book, i especially enjoyed the character interactions/banter, and how it was described from the main character Falcio's perspective. the many fight scenes were described great as i could imagine seeing the fights, the story had decent twists, and kept me interested though out the book. i also really enjoyed the Narrator Joe Jameson and felt he was a good fit. My two biggest complaints would be the magic system , and the fact that it maybe needed another 2-3 hrs to properly setup the backstory and antagonists better. although there was talk of magic early on in the book it seemed to be more like magic potions, very rare and none of the main characters had much interaction with it. Unfortunately the end of the book used it more liberally and honestly took away from the story a bit as certain characters seemed to magically know where and when things would happen, without any real reason as to why (magic, the Devine , a really good guess ?).

Worth a listen

I really like this world build, the characters have great motives and character build. I really enjoy the fight scenes and how the main character solves problems. Definitely give this a try if you like fantasy.

great book

Story was great. Narrator was ok. He didn't have enough voices. Hard to tell who was who sometimes.

Fantastic from start to finish

This is a fantastic book series that fills you with all of the emotions while listening.