Five Broken Blades

I don’t mind when a story is so clear you know making its point that there is going to be a second book to it, that it is not just a one-off story. But what I don’t like, is when that is done in the last 50 pages of the book, where you are not sure leading up to the ending if there is more story or if this is just going to end.

Five Broken Blades is such a great story of this band of misfits being forced to join together to do something that is seemed to be impossible, kill the King. The reason for this is that the king wears a special crown that makes him immortal.

Great set up, right? The characters are all equally loveable and mysterious as they are annoying, which is great because you want some annoyances in this setting with people who do not trust others coming together. You see throughout the story the relationships grow stronger, and their bonds become deeper as they cast aside their differences in order to complete this mission for the good of their country.

There is even a great moment of betrayal which for this story is so classic, but it works soo well for this because you are questioning who it will be for the entire book since they are all untrusting of each other to some extent.

The crazy part is, I really enjoyed this book, like I gave it 4/5 stars on Goodreads for it because it was so well done, the pacing was great, I enjoyed that it was from each character’s point of view, and it switched between them quickly so you could see everyone’s thoughts in the same moment. But the last 50 pages is what really frustrated me with this book.

It almost felt like the author had a hard limit for how long the book was going to be. Like they were at 350 pages and had to wrap everything up by 400 pages. Which that can work for some books, there is nothing wrong with trying to capture that cliff hanger moment and end the book with a suspenseful drop, but for how much detail and story we got leading up to the end, this felt rushed. I would have loved to have the moment breathed a little bit longer, to have the twist revealed and have that surprise feeling last longer than it did so we could truly appreciate it.

It reminded me more like an ending to a movie that has a sequel coming out than a book. Where the movie wraps up very quickly and at the end announces what the general plot point for the next movie will be and then ends. Like think of the end of the second Pirates of the Caribbean movie, when the end of the movie is Jack dies, they go to see Tia Dalma and then Barbosa shows up back from the dead to go get Jack. Then it ends. That happens in the last like 10-15 minutes of the movie. That is what the ending to this book felt like, but rushed.

With all that being said, the book is still very good, the lack of breath the ending gets is really my only issue with it. Other than that it is a brilliant book and I will be reading the next one to see what happens. I am hoping that there's not another hard page count on that one and the issues I have with the ending are fixed.

Let me know what you think? Do you agree with me on the ending?