Traitor's Blade: the swashbuckling start of the Greatcoats Quartet

Sebastien de Castell

Feb 2014 · Hachette UK

About this ebook

The Three Musketeers meets Joe Abercrombie via Mark Lawrence: 'Guaranteed to increase household swashbuckling by 100%,' says Library Journal

The Greatcoats are travelling magistrates bringing justice to all . . . or at least they were, before they watched the Dukes impale their King's head on a spike. Now the land's heroes are reviled as traitors, their Greatcoats in tatters.

Facio, Kest and Brasti have been reduced to working as mercenaries, but when they find their employer dead - and are forced to watch as the killer plants evidence framing them for the murder - they realise things are about to get even worse.

For the royal conspiracy that began with overthrowing an idealistic young king is spreading to Rijou, the most corrupt city in the land, and the life of a young girl hangs in the balance.

When every noble is a tyrant and every knight is a thug, the only thing you can really trust is a traitor's blade.

Ratings and reviews

A few times I stopped reading for a few days, not something I usually do. It's a good story and well written, but slacked at times, nothing blatant, but somehow it lost my interest. The main character is quite engaging, the bad ones dip a little deeper into evil than I'm totally happy with. The last third totally grabbed me though, and I'll be buying the next one. Fingers crossed it's going to be a slightly more even read.

Great book. Combat scenes are fantastic, character's have a lot of depth and it has an amazing flow to it. Recommended.

a nice novel to read

About the author

Sebastien de Castell had just finished a degree in Archaeology when he started work on his first dig. Four hours later he realised how much he actually hated archaeology and left to pursue a very focused career as a musician, ombudsman, interaction designer, fight choreographer, teacher, project manager, actor and product strategist. His only defence against the charge of unbridled dilettantism is that he genuinely likes doing these things and that, in one way or another, each of these fields plays a role in his writing. He sternly resists the accusation of being a Renaissance Man in the hopes that more people will label him that way. Sebastien's acclaimed swashbuckling fantasy series The Greatcoats was shortlisted for the Goodreads Choice Award for Best Fantasy. the Gemmell Morningstar Award for Best Debut, the Prix Imaginales for Best Foreign Work and the John W. Campbell Award for Best New Writer. His YA fantasy series Spellslinger was nominated for the Carnegie Medal and is published in more than a dozen languages. Sebastien lives in Vancouver, Canada with his lovely wife and two belligerent cats.