The speech of the King is the most hilarious attitude of a king I've read, so condescending, swearing, and funny. Also, the story and work is good, especially if you've made it to book 3

YAY! Damn, I like these books. You practically need a map of Europe and Asia to keep up (and I really hope an industrious geek out there is constructing a time-lapse map to help establish who is where when), but I like all of the groups involved. It's interesting and the fights are well-written and I've discovered that I'm attached enough to the characters that when one looks to be in danger I actually panic a bit. Because they will kill people. People you like, even.But that's why I'm nervous!

Wooboy this is a long book! Don't read this one if you haven't read the rest, it's not stand alone. Okay, this is the third book in a complicated series in an alternate history universe during the Mongolian invasion of Eastern Europe. Filled with Christian Knights, Mongols, Popes (more than one) Kings, Khans, feral children, you name it.Technically, I think this is a very good book, a testament to the computer age that so many writers could get together and write without entanglement and seeming...

I enjoyed the series. Although Book 2 & 3 were my favourite. Reading Book 1 familiarised you with the characters.Quite different from the Neal Stephenson novels I have read before, but it's a collaborative series. Set in the time of Genghas, the crusades and Rome being the center of the Christian faith. Church politics, Frederick the Great, Binders ( witches according to the church), Gladiators and a underlying storyline of a group of Crusaders and their affiliates who set out to kill the Khan,

Audiobook from Brilliance AudioNarrated by Luke DanielsLength: 22 hours, 11 minutesNote: I received this audiobook as a complete package with a prequel, Seer: A Prequel to the Mongoliad, included. This review only covers The Mongoliad: Book Three, as I reviewed Seer: A Prequel to the Mongoliad separately.Because the books in this trilogy (The Foreworld Saga) are not stand-alone, I strongly recommend reading the reviews for The Mongoliad: Book One and The Mongoliad: Book Two as well. Because it i...

Meh. The first book set me up with pretty high hopes for this series, which weren't sustained by the second book, but I held out hope that there would be some interesting plot twists and developments in the final book to sustain the story. It was not to be.There are no real twists in the main plot, and it plods along to the inevitable final showdown between the Knights and the Khan. Lots of people die and the book ends. I found that story line annoying enough on its own, but my frustration was a...

Anyone interested in the historical Mongolian empire should avoid this bilge. Anyone interested in good writing should also beat a hasty retreat. The Mongoliad is as true to the era of Ogodei Khan as Conan the Barbarian is to the age of Attila The Hun.It's hideously bloated and poorly written, like a parody that someone forgot to make funny. The first two sentences give a taste of the laughable dialogue - "The Shield-Brethren buried Finn on the hill where they had set up camp. 'It is not as gran...

This is the concluding book of the Mongoliad trilogy, and it earned the 5 stars because the parts I enjoyed far outweighed the parts I did not. So you should know going forward that the book is not perfect. In particular, the ending left a lot on the table (hopefully for more books, but I'm not seeing much online to indicate that that will be the case). Part three continues the 5 main storylines, and now that the trilogy is over, one can really see how the manner these were initially released (i...

The third part and final pay-off for the Mongoliad trilogy. Stephenson and friend's grand experiment in collaborative fiction draws to its epic conclusion. And Epic is a good word for it, weighing in at a staggering seventy chapters, this isn't a a quick read. Luckily, for the Kindle edition at least, the first 8% is actually the excellent Mark Teppo short story Seer (which I've cheekily reviewed separately) – Teppo is definitely an author that I'll be looking out for post-Mongoliad.As is de rig...

With so many strands and so many authors, it's incredible this is such an even read. Though inevitably there are a couple of bits I liked less, and some of the pope-choosing goes on a bit (just like real life, eh, readers????!!!!), the book hauled me through 800-odd pages impressively. Lots more fights - I want an edition with a button built in which plays a sample of clashing swords when you press it. A fun trilogy.

I bought and read the first two books in this series as soon as they came out. And even though I thought the second book started to sag in the middle, the third one more than makes up for it.Book One set the stage. Book Two moved all the pieces into position. Book Three is the payoff. Finally.Basically there are three plotlines running through the book: (1) a simple priest is wounded during a defeat by the Mongols, and staggers home to Rome sick and feverish. There, he is miraculously cured. At

Well this series certainly picked up. I wonder which of the numerous listed authors actually pulled it together. Very satisfying endings to many threads, which causes consternation in my innermost modernist self, but makes my primitive story-listening self happy.

Definitely my favorite of the three books.

I blame Cormack McCarthy for not finishing his novels as a sign that they are part of life. Now, this incredibly long trilogy that is team written ends with a whimper not a bang. Yes, we come to the end of some strands but we are left with few of the romantic strands connected or even a nod toward them. The authors take an incredible time in reviewing the swordcraft of the warriors in the book. That makes for intolerable pauses in writing and an absence of character or plot invention. OK, I paid...

This book really dragged. They introduced a new storyline that was wholly irrelevant to the original mission of the first two books. I also do not understand why the supernatural was suddenly given immense importance when it was nearly absent in the previous books.At halfway I was so ready to be doen with this book, but had already sunk so much time into the series that I could not jettison it.

I'm somewhat disappointed with how the story resolves in the end - where the authors trying to setup for a future book 4 or did the story get muddied by having too many cooks in the kitchen? I wanted something to happen with the grail cup and the spirit banner and they both fizzled out. I'm thinking book 4 is got to happen.

I should have quit while I was behind. If only this motley band of authors cared as much about characters or plot as they do about accurately choreographed melee combat. One of their goals was to encourage fanfic and other fan-created content for their world. At least the readers that pursue these won't have to endure a stark drop in quality.

I didn't figure there was another 800 pages in this story. Some of it is boring read, the fight sequences improving it overall. Predictably unpredictable ending, maybe getting ready for Book 4?

This book was a great cap to the long trilogy (although - put together I think it's not longer than a Brandon Sanderson Stormlight Archive book). While the first third of the book continues to build things up, we've met just about everyone by the time we've arrived here and so the last 2/3 of the book is a wild ride. It feels like the tension just keeps building until you're on a giant roller coaster ride to the bottom once the climax proper begins. I can't really talk about too many specifics i...

The best way to describe the plot overall is in the words of one grant reviewer for NSF (National Science Foundation) who was from Montana:"It's like tracking a deer across the mountains and valleys and forests and in the end realizing that you've been following a cow."This is especially true for the Roman story. It is not even clear why it is in the book. The whole writing of the book seems uneven, like a sequences of short stories from "Fantasy from Poland" collection from mid-1990s. The "gran...