In the final book in this series we have our hero Sten up against the Emperor himself. The Emperor has gone all nasty and it is up to Sten to use all his skills and allies to pick away at the Emperor and his forces.
As part of the closure of this series we are given the background to the Emperor and the fuel source he controls which was interesting and put many things into context.
Fast moving and entertaining and a good conclusion to the series, my only ongoing irritation with the Sten books is the way the author 'writes' the Scottish accent of one of the lead characters. It's difficult to read and detracts from the pace of the story.

Very like the ongoing saga of HH ( Honor Harrington ) by David Weber, this was a great series all the way along. It must be difficult coming up with bigger and better things for a character that feels fully developed, but I do wish they had found something!

Unlike the other reviewer, I found the accent of one of the main characters a *fantastic* touch. Yes, it takes a while to get used to it, but this characters seems more alive / real to me because of it. It was easy to "see" this character in my mind. So I appreciated the extra work that must have gone into creating the accent.

Overall the entire series is a wonderful, fun read. Not to say it's lighthearted, but it is a breath of fresh air. Much like the David Gemmel books. The characters are easy to get attached to, and the story has a depth that can be expanded upon at a later date, if the author / publisher / fans feel like keeping this universe going.

The author(s) decided that the premise which underlay all the previous books in the series was invalid and tried to convince the reader to that end. Imho they failed. BADLY. They failed to convice me that the prior premise was wrong and their accounting of the designtergration of the society was lame. Ignore this book and read the rest of series instead.

This is the exciting -- and fitting -- end to the series. Yes, the authors are playing a bit of an ideological trick, but it really makes sense in the end, and I kicked myself for falling right into it.

I've reread this series several times, and it never fails to please. Each book has its own feel, but each is still part of the greater whole. Now if only they'd get them back into print, I could recommend them to more of my friends.

I accidently picked up the first book of the series and by the end of the week I had purchased and read the next five novels. Empire's End, the lastest and hopefully not the last continues in the tradition of its exciting predecessors. It needs to be in everyone science fiction collection.

If you look for a 5 star piece of fantasy , look for G.R.R.Martin , S.Donaldson , T.Williams , D.Eddings , J,Wurts or R.Jordan .

If you want to read a 100th variation of Connan the Barbarian (or Forgotten Realms for that matter) with VERY bad witches and a VERY nice hero , you can try this book .

Well I grabbed it in a hurry on an airport , wanted to throw it away after 2 chapters but had still a long flight ...

So it is my duty to warn every fantasy amateur who'd happen to come here : forget Cole .

The 3 tome of the Tales of the Timuras are very good. And each of them show an other aspect of all the actors in this adventure, making this saga attractive enough to make me wait for a 4th book!

Only bad point would be the difference of book cover between the book 1-2 and the book 3 (Did the writer change his editing company! ) Same format I do agree but I like some order in my bookshell.

Buy them!

Safar Timura, a character modeled on Omar Khayyam, continues his desperate journey in this next volume of the Tales of the Timuras. In attempting to lead his uprooted people to a haven safe from the vengeance-mad Protarus, Safar finds himself rushing towards the volcanic destruction and personal doom he has anticipated in vision. Several excellent new characters are introduced in this volume, including a wonderfully conniving evil queen and her brutal ruler son, who provide even more complications as the hero tries to save not only his people, but ultimately the world. An unexpected ally also joins the group in the quest to stop the rapidly spiralling destruction and bring to consciousness the gods that have abandoned the world. A rousing tale of courage against odds, of desire versus duty, of ambition and corruption - adventure on a grand scale, along with the wonderful characters and interactions we have come to expect from Cole. Adrenalin-rousing episodes lead towards the awe-ful finale at Hadinland, where Safar plays out the final confrontation with fiery forces of evil and a resolution with Protarus. As an aside, I would recommend the British version of this book, which has additional scenes that do not appear in the slightly shorter American edition. An exciting, recommended series.

"The Warrior's Tale" is one of those extremely rare sequels that outdoes the original. For longtime fantasy fans, it's a real breath of fresh air. The narrator and main character, Rali Anterro of the Maranon Guard, is a lot more likeable than Amalric from "The Far Kingdoms", since she has a real personality and some actually feelings, as well as more interesting relationships with other people. Perhaps more importantly, the plot has some real unpredictability to it, with the heroes facing a number of different villains and dangerous situations, and sometimes having to use more than just random luck to survive. Also, the authors include at least a little bit of humor, something that was sorely absent in "The Far Kingdoms", and in general they simply manage to give the story more life this time around.

This book tells the tale of Rali, captain of the Maranonon (or something like that) guards, who is sent on a mission to wipe out an evil wizard. On the way, she and her soldiers (all female) have a series of pretty entertaining adventures. Rali is a pretty solid character, and the action is pretty much nonstop. Nothing brilliant about this book, but I would say it's probably above average fantasy stuff, which kept me reading till the end. It starts off with a war and keeps going. Lots of demons, gore soaked swords, nubile maidens, and pyrotechnic wizardry. As a warning I might point out, it has a good deal of same-sex relationships going on, which some readers might find distracting (and some might find titillating). All in all, it ain't highbrow lit-ra-ture, but it's fun to read.

I rate this book with 5 stars in the category of adventure. This tale is filled with magic, aventure, sword fighting and all that good stuff. It's your basic book on good vs. evil. The city Orissa is in grave danger... the Archon has evil powers that could destroy the whole city! So one of Orissa's guard is sent to follow the Archon and to kill him. Oh and did I happen to mention that this guard is made up of all women? That's right! Who else goes on the quest? Well there is an old powerful wizard who decides to go and some pirates who are more after the gold and loot than destroying evil.

Much do they know that there is more than the Archon and his evil that they will have to face. They travel in boats and see more of the world than anyone in Orissa. They face betrayal, evil, depression, lack of food, and at the end there is a twist.

Romily is their only hope... their last hope. She will have to face things that go beyond all... the death of her beloved friends, she has no support except her Guard; her family does not accept her for who she is and.... she will have to forge into the magic she's always refused and denied in order to save herself and her companions.

This is a great Sci-fi novel that mixes in a lot of action, and great plot and an even better backround. The story follows the actions of Sten, a great secret operations soilder of the future and his actions after the fall of the huge empire that had run for thousands of years, with its ruler the emporo, being assinated. In the following power grab, Sten finds himself back in action. There is plenty of supense in this book, and I was drawn into the story and found myself reading chapter after chapter, saying just one more page. Nothing short of a great book.

this book rocked. it had sweet action, it was very realistic, and the characters all had such depth. one of the best books ive ever read. u better read it. also read the timura series. they rock too. peace out ya'all.

"The Far Kingdoms" is one of the most pretentious fantasy novels that I've ever read, by which I mean that the authors apparently think that they've written something that's deep and meaningful and will have a big effect on the lives of their readers. In reality, this novel is completely forgettable. The plot deals with Amalric Antero, a spoiled rich kid who becomes a spoiled rich adult and joins with a soldier, Janos Greycloak, in several voyages. They hope to find the legendary Far Kingdoms, a land of wealth and happiness that supposedly lies a long distance to the East. Antero is one of the least likeable characters that I've ever seen in a fantasy novel. His men die, and he has no emotional reaction at all. His wife and child die, and he only mourns for a couple hours before taking off on another trip. He seems to drift through the book without caring about what he's doing or what happens to other people. In the end, I found that I didn't care whether or not Antero and Janos ever reached The Far Kingdoms.

In addition, it seems that not much thought was put into the plotting and writing of this novel. The pace is very uneven. Sometimes the authors dwell for pages on minute details, while other times they skip over months of action in just a few sentences. The first fifty pages are totally irrelevant to the rest of the book; I think that they were written just to include some rather insipid sexual content. After that, the plot falls into and endlessly repeating pattern. The main characters travel somewhere, get into a desperate situation, get rescued miraculously, travel somewhere else, get into another desperate situation, get rescued again, etc... Many of the scenes border on the absurd, such as an encounter with apparently intelligent tigers and monkeys in the middle of the desert, and by the time that a thirty-foot-long ghost ferret showed up to eat the bad guys, I was ready to throw this book into the garbage can. In short, don't waste your time with this pile of nonsense. If you want a short fantasy novel that's both creative and well-written, try "The High House", by James Stoddard.

The book gets quickly to the plot and sticks to it. A young man must go on a journey to discover a trade route so he picks to try to discover the far kingdoms. He has a few problems along the way and if he gets there (which you will have to find out for yourself)he might haave a disaster and a love to get him thruogh it.

Great book. I picked it up for 50 cents at a used book sale, and while I did put it down from time to time (school and all) overall it was excellent. Creative, well-written, and it has a good blend of humor that many fantasy novels seem to lack. It's a good book to just sit down and read, rather than ponder. My kudos to the authors.

I have to say that I have been looking for this book for more than 1 year and I haven't seen it anywhere. This leads to the fact that I cannot review it. If the publisher is reading this, I would advise him to start reprinting it because it makes no sense for me buy the other books in the series if I cannot read in a chronological manner. After reading the first 2 books of the series, I must say that the Sten series is among the best. Unfortunately I don't know where the business sense of the publisher has gone.

He's come from a hellish man-made planet/factory to become one of the Eternal Emperor's most trusted men. He's crushed rebellions, and is now part of the Emperor's personal bodyguards. This book is a turning point in the Sten saga, eclipsed only by his actions in Empires End, book 8 in the series. A MUST READ OR DIE! to any Sten fan.

I did like the Far Kingdoms. It was written very well, and whereas in other books the heroes go of to get some gold from some dragon, these ones just got off to discover new countries. The second part was still readable, but this part is one of the books I didn't finish. I got up to about the half, but the whole plot was demons popping up on every corner, and the protagonists exorcising them. Perhaps this plot changed, but I simply was to bored to read on