King's Fall
Ard's Oath, Book 6
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King's Fall
Narrated by:
Christopher Boucher, Jessica Threet
Buy Now for $27.99
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Narrated by:
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Christopher Boucher
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Jessica Threet
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By:
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Bruce Sentar
About this listen
Ard and his companions are being hunted by King Martin, who has gone completely scorched earth on his own kingdom in an effort to root them out. The lovable mage finds a quiet spot in the uninhabitable wilds of Garrish to train his soul magic—only nothing ever goes quite according to Ard’s plan.
Driven out by King Martin’s escalating mania, Ard must now go through the king to reach the goddess behind it all.
©2025 Bruce Sentar (P)2025 Bruce Sentarthe some of the best work
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Book 5 and this book basically throw that out as if it never existed. They've been mostly travelling by wagon or sitting and waiting for over a month. He's even had his anchors pointing out that it's a good time to experiment. There is no good reason why he hasn't felt out all of his magic combinations other than that it's more dramatic for him to do it in near a climactic fight.
Then on the flipside, he gets a sudden powerup, can create bluesteel out of base earth... and doesn't give it a 2nd thought? Isn't surprised? Doesn't consider how crazy it is that he can just conjure the kingdoms most valuable and tightly guarded resource at will? Doesn't consider how he could outfit himself, his team, his house, and their allied houses, with pure bluesteel weapons and armour? Doesn't consider that maybe if he pumped soul magic into his anchors bluesteel he could turn it into something even better despite having an example of that? And nobody else points it out to him?
On top of that, there are multiple times throughout this book where Ard could easily share potentially important knowledge with people he claims to trust and he either straight up does not, only does so when pressed, or does so in a way that makes him sound insane actively ruining his own credibility. And times where the opposite applies; he's aware someone has knowledge that would be important to him, and he decides not to press them just because he couldn't be bothered. It feels like whether or not anyone gets vital information depends on his whims rather that on common sense, which is completely contradictory to his desire to protect the people he cares about. Like yeah, Ard enjoys a good joke, but when it's at the cost of making a war council see him as a lunatic and thus not trust a word out of his mouth, the joke goes from stale to asinine.
Then you have how in book 3 and 4, Ard+Cyam could make not just a horse but an entire carriage out of shadow. But now that there's a pressing need to travel fast he can get Cyam to be made of light, but not make a carriage of light to carry everyone? How Ard knew that Camilla wanted him dominated or dead, that the King was out to get him after her death, but now needs to have it explained to him like a child that yes the King is still out to get him and his family? It's just unbelievably inconsistent. What Ard is or isn't capable of, how smart or dumb he is, fits what the plot needs rather than what makes sense based on prior events.
Like, I'm not saying I wish he was completely a rational protagonist because Bruce doesn't write that way, but in this case it's not just completely irrational but completely out of character to the point that it breaks immersion. It's frustrating because I mostly like Ard and really like his anchors, I really like the world, I really like the overall thrust of the story. But how it actually gets there? How the small events play out? It feels very forced when it really don't need to be. It feels like so much hinges on Ard getting in his own way, making a lot of the problems much bigger than they should be, instead of y'know just letting Ard be competent and scaling the difficulty to match that. This wasn't a problem in the earlier books. It just feels so contrived.
Once again, this is a 3/5 story being carried by 6/5 narration.
Breaks immersion
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ditzy
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