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The Court of Broken Knives  By  cover art

The Court of Broken Knives

By: Anna Smith Spark
Narrated by: Colin Mace, Meriel Rosenkranz
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Publisher's summary

Perfect for fans of Mark Lawrence and R Scott Bakker, The Court of Broken Knives is the explosive debut by one of grimdark fantasy's most exciting new voices.

It is the richest empire the world has ever known, and it is also doomed - but only one man can see it.

Haunted by prophetic dreams, Orhan has hired a company of soldiers to cross the desert to reach the capital city. Once they enter the palace, they have one mission: Kill the emperor, then all those who remain. Only from the ashes can a new empire be built.

The company is a group of good, ordinary soldiers for whom this is a mission like any other. But the strange boy Marith who walks among them is no ordinary soldier. Though he is young, ambitious, and impossibly charming, something dark hides in Marith's past - and in his blood.

Dive into this new fantasy series for listeners looking for epic battle scenes, gritty heroes, and blood-soaked revenge.

©2017 Anna Smith Spark (P)2017 Hachette Audio

What listeners say about The Court of Broken Knives

Average customer ratings
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  • 4 out of 5 stars
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  • Overall
    5 out of 5 stars
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    5 out of 5 stars
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    5 out of 5 stars

Beautiful prose, beautifully narrated.

This book is so well written. The imagery. Ermagherd, the imageryyyyy. The setting just came to life in my head as I listened. So gritty and real. I’m not sure anything I can tell you about it is going to do it justice. The prose is absolutely beautiful, but wooooow does it describe a grim world.

This was one of those audiobooks that I turned on, and then just did not turn off until it was done. It’s about 16 and a half hours long, so, I started it in the morning and just… listened. Listened through dinner. Listened throughout the evening. Listened while getting ready for bed. Just sat there sometimes, with (I can only assume) a stupid AF look on my face while just listening. Always listening. It’s one of those.

We start off following a mercenary band who are on their way to Sorlost, which is something like the biggest, most important city in this world. It’s where the emperor lives, and these mercenaries have been hired to assassinate him. We see things from the POV of the mercenary band’s leader sometimes, and from the newest recruit at other times. Right off the bat, they’re attacked in the desert by a dragon. Yep, this book has dragons. Badass AF dragons with boiling acid for blood. Marith, the pretty boy who can just sort of use a sword slays this dragon… and that’s not even the most surprising thing about him. Oh no. No, no, no. There are quite a lot of surprising things about him, as we find out.

This book gets daaaark. Anna Smith Spark is known as the Queen of Grimdark for a very good reason, ladies and gents. This book, on more than one occasion, had me just blinking and uttering a soft ‘daaaamn‘ to nobody in particular. This happened most especially around a lot of Marith’s escapades. I’ve read a lot of dark stories but this one definitely sways to the darker side of things, while not being completely grim. Thalia, for example, seems to generally enjoy her life as the high priestess, at least at the beginning of the story, despite having to do some messed up things. Necessary things, to her. She has never known otherwise. Sometimes you have to do necessary things, even if they are unpleasant. Orhan, the politician and King’s advisor, is also leading a pretty great life, laying around in bed with his bf and eating lavish food while plotting an assassination on the side.

The characters, while not as richly described as the world they live in are still well described enough that I could visualize them. Beautiful, pale Marith with the dark hair, and Thalia with the lovely bronze skin. The horrible things that tend to happen at the hands of these beautiful characters- baby killing, eye gouging, limb removal, et cetera- are all described in a way that still made me grimace at the very idea of them, but weren’t described to the point of visually seeing it happen, if that makes sense. This, to me, is a really solid example of good writing. Making me cringe at very unpleasant events without making me sick to my stomach at the same time. Giving me horrible characters who do horrible things without making me want to immediately desist listening to their story, instead making me want to not stop listening to it… That takes skill.

This book has two narrators. Most of this book is told from the third person, from the point of view of four characters. Sometimes though, we see one of those characters, Thalia, in the first person. The use of more than one narrator here to achieve this in audio was kind of amazing. Colin Mace does the bulk of the narration here and he nails it so hard. Never heard him narrate before, but I can tell you that I’d definitely like to listen to him again. He put so much emotion into his narration of the story, and made each and every character unique. Really just quite amazingly done. Meriel Rosenkranz narrates the first person POV bits from Thalia, and she did great too. She gives Thalia a really great accent, and tells the high priestess’ story wonderfully. Loved the narration.

Guys, it was fantastic. Very worth a listen!

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10 people found this helpful

  • Overall
    5 out of 5 stars
  • Performance
    4 out of 5 stars
  • Story
    5 out of 5 stars

Sword and Sorcery at Its Best

Sword and sorcery, demons, dragons, assassins, blood sacrifice, all the usual trappings, but told in a realistic, natural way that makes it all seem normal. I fell into the story quickly, easily, able to suspend disbelief.

Unusually, the male narrator does a good job with women's voices, not making them simpering or nasally, just softer, not easy with his natural bass baritone. The only reason I didn't give it five stars was because when he was not voicing a character, he tended to talk low, and I had to adjust the volume.

There are short flashbacks, brief retellings of legends, the main narration in third person, and short first person parts from a separate character by a different narrator, all woven together into a beautiful brocade of a tale.

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7 people found this helpful

  • Overall
    3 out of 5 stars
  • Performance
    2 out of 5 stars
  • Story
    3 out of 5 stars

It’s...fine.

The story itself is intriguing, but the motivation of the protagonist/antagonist is confusing at best and annoying at worst. Still, the prose is very well written and there are some interesting characters.

The narrator/direction was lacking in almost every way. From inconsistent volume to indiscernible characters, it was an absolute slog to get through.

Not sure I’ll continue the series on audible. Might buy the actual book, though.

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6 people found this helpful

  • Overall
    1 out of 5 stars
  • Performance
    4 out of 5 stars
  • Story
    1 out of 5 stars

Unredeemingly dark.

Unexplained and unrealistic pychopathology of the murderous protagonist makes it impossible to recommnd this skillfully written bloodbath of a novel. No arc of character development is apparent, and I see no reason to wait for a follow-up volume in hopes of encountering such. The author is talented however.

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3 people found this helpful

  • Overall
    4 out of 5 stars
  • Performance
    4 out of 5 stars
  • Story
    4 out of 5 stars

good story, technical problems with performance

Story was good. Anna Smith Spark is very descriptive of the world, can get tedious at times. Fits the Grimdark genre well, main character is an anti-hero you'll love and hate. Overall good sword and sorcery tale, will be looking at other offerings from Spark.

There is an issue with the narrator's recording, it's very quiet. I had to crank up the volume to hear him and when he yelled or it switched to the female narrator it almost blew my speakers out. Otherwise I enjoyed the performance of both narrators.

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2 people found this helpful

  • Overall
    1 out of 5 stars
  • Performance
    1 out of 5 stars
  • Story
    1 out of 5 stars
  • R
  • 08-06-22

odd cadence

it's less a story the a poem. be prepared to hear the same words over and over for no reason. The rhythm of it threw me off.

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1 person found this helpful

  • Overall
    4 out of 5 stars
  • Performance
    5 out of 5 stars
  • Story
    4 out of 5 stars

Bleak, Despairing, Sad but truthfully Beautiful.

Ancient bloodlines, Villainous Heroes, Mages, Dragons, maudlin backdrops...check. Grimdark in it's truest form, great read.

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1 person found this helpful

  • Overall
    5 out of 5 stars
  • Performance
    3 out of 5 stars
  • Story
    5 out of 5 stars

perfect grimdark

great book, violent and dark in the best way. much higher quality writing than most fantasy or grimdark novels. only issue is the narrators voice is often too quiet, sometimes too subtle. had to go back and relisten to much of the first 1/4 several times to catch the flow of the story because the narrator’s voice kept losing me.

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  • Overall
    1 out of 5 stars
  • Performance
    3 out of 5 stars
  • Story
    1 out of 5 stars

read twice no idea what this is about

I listen to this two full times plus had to keep rewinding and I found the whole story so confusing I have no idea what it's even about. maybe it's just not for me but I will not be continuing anymore from this series or author.

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  • Overall
    5 out of 5 stars
  • Performance
    5 out of 5 stars
  • Story
    5 out of 5 stars

Dark yet satisfying.

My only suggestion would be that the male performer slow down his reading a bit in some areas, sometimes it was like he was racing through the story.

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