Theft of Swords, Vol. 1(Riyria Revelations) [Paperback]

Michael J. Sullivan (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: November 23, 2011 | Series: Riyria Revelations (Book 1)

They killed the king. They pinned it on two men. They chose poorly.
There's no ancient evil to defeat or orphan destined for greatness, just unlikely heroes and classic adventure. Royce Melborn, a skilled thief, and his mercenary partner, Hadrian Blackwater, are running for their lives when they're framed for the death of the king. Trapped in a conspiracy that goes beyond the overthrow of a tiny kingdom, their only hope is unraveling an ancient mystery before it's too late.

When author Michael J. Sullivan self-published the first books of his Riyria Revelations, they rapidly became ebook bestsellers. Now, Orbit is pleased to present the complete series for the first time in bookstores everywhere.

BOOKS IN THE RIYRIA REVELATIONS

• Theft of Swords (contains: The Crown Conspiracy & Avempartha)
• Rise of Empire   (contains: Nyphron Rising & The Emerald Storm)
• Heir of Novron   (contains: Wintertide & Percepliquis)

BOOKS IN THE RIYRIA CHRONICLES

• The Crown Tower (coming Aug 2013)
• The Rose and the Thorn (coming Sep 2013)

Editorial Reviews

Review

"In the space of two years, Michael Sullivan has moved from a small press debut author who was featured in one of my first "Indie Spotlight Reviews" to a "name" in the fantasy field." -- Fantasy Book Critic

Praise for the Riyria Revelations:

"Mr. Sullivan continues to impress. In Royce and Hadrian he has created some of the best characters the genre has seen in some time, and in Avempartha he shows that he knows what to do with them. These books should be in every bookstore and I really hope that they are someday." --- Speculative Fiction Junkie

"A whirlwind of twists, earth-shattering surprises and deadly betrayal." --- Literary Magic

"Hair-raising escapes, flashy sword fights, and faithful friendship complete the formula for good old-fashioned escapist fun."

(Publishers Weekly 2011)

"This epic fantasy showcases the arrival of a master storyteller." (Library Journal 2011)

From the Author

I've always enjoyed television series that had a continuing story arc told through individual episodes. My favorites were Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Babylon 5. Having mysteries unfold a bit at a time kept me engrossed and I couldn't wait to see where the creators were going to take me. This was a major goal of mine when writing The Riyria Revelations and I hope you will enjoy your journey.

The tale had actually banged around in my head for over fifteen years in one form or another. I kept adding characters and plot lines until I had, at least to me, a compelling story with likeable characters. Because of the complexity of the plot in the overarching story, it was imperative that I wrote all of the books before releasing the first one. While I don't recommend this technique to other writers, it allowed me the opportunity to weave threads in previous books as I fully developed later ones.

While I'm on that subject, one of the most rewarding aspects of this series is the numerous "Easter eggs" that I've hidden along the way. There are small things that, upon first reading, you'll not consider as having any significance. For those that re-read the series, where all the pieces have been put into place, hopefully you'll see incidents or dialog in a whole new light. In retrospect, these clues should appear obvious, and if I've done my job properly they will remain buried until the proper time. In this respect, I hope the book will be a lot like the movie The Sixth Sense.

The Riyria Revelations, especially in the beginning, is little more than fun, fast-paced fantasy. As the series progresses, I think you'll see more depth both in the world of Elan and the characters. This was a purposeful decision and a dangerous one. It means that by design the first book is the weakest of the set, but enables me to end it with a resounding bang. This technique may mean that some will stop after reading the first book, assuming I have little talent. They may not feel "connected" to the characters because there was not enough for them to latch onto. All I can say is that I feel the reward of incremental discovery outweighed my alternatives. If after completing the entire story, you feel I lack ability, at least I'll know you came to the conclusion having all the facts on which to judge me.

The last thing I'd like to say about this series is that I wrote it for pure enjoyment--both for you and myself. First and foremost it was meant to entertain. My goal was to write a book that I would like to read, to be with friends that I wanted to spend time with and go on an adventure filled with surprises and some heartfelt moments. While I wrote the books for adults, I kept it free of foul language, sex, and graphic violence so that it could be enjoyed by people of all ages.This series is reminiscent of the fantasies I read as a youth and wasn't meant as any kind of commentary on current trends in modern fantasy. Yes, it incorporates archetypes and familiar themes, but hopefully they are used in a way that will make them feel fresh. What I was striving for was to create a series that felt as familiar and comfortable as your favorite pair of shoes. Hopefully there are people out there with similar tastes, and if you are one of them, I predict you'll enjoy the journey very much.

Michael

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Paperback: 704 pages
• Publisher: Orbit; 1 edition (November 23, 2011)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0316187747
• ISBN-13: 978-0316187749
• Product Dimensions: 5.5 x 2 x 8.2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.4 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (285 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #17,551 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

After finding a manual typewriter in the basement of a friend's house, Michael inserted a blank piece of paper and typed: It was a dark and stormy night and a shot rang out. He was just eight years old at the time. But the desire to fill the blank page and see what doors the typewriter keys would unlock wouldn't let him go. For ten years Michael developed his craft by studying authors such as Stephen King, Ernest Hemingway, and John Steinbeck...just to name a few. During that time he wrote twelve novels, and after finding no traction in publishing, he quit and vowed never to write creatively again.

Michael discovered that never is a very long time, and he ended his hiatus from writing after a decade. The itch returned when he decided to create a series of books for his then thirteen-year-old daughter, who was struggling in school due to dyslexia.

Michael is one of the few authors who have successfully published through all three routes: small press, self, and big six. He has been named to io9's Most Successful Self-Published Sci-Fi and Fantasy Authors list as well as making #6 on EMG's 25 Self Published Authors to Watch. As of January 2013, he has sold more than 250,000 books, been translated to 14 languages, and has had books appear on more than 65 "best of" or "most anticipated" lists including:

* 2013 Audie Award Finalist for Theft of Swords
* Fantasy Book Review's top 6 (non-hyped) Anticipated Reads of 2013
* Fantasy Faction's Top 10 Anticipated Reads of 2013
* goodreads Choice Award Nominees for Fantasy in 2010 and 2012
* Audible's 2012 5-star The Best of Everything List
* Library Journal's 2011 Best Books for Fantasy/Sci-Fi
* Barnes & Noble Blog's Best Fantasy Releases of 2011
* Fantasy Book Critic's #1 Indie Fantasy for 2010

Today, Michael continues to fill blank pages and has several projects under development: Antithesis (modern fantasy) and The First Empire Series (traditional fantasy).

THE RIYRIA REVELATIONS (Omnibus Editions)
* Theft of Swords: contains The Crown Tower & Avempartha
* Rise of Empire: contains Nyphron Rising & The Emerald Storm
* Heir of Novron: contains Wintertide & Percepliquis

THE RIYRIA CHRONICLES
* The Crown Tower: coming Aug 6, 2013
* The Rose and the Thorn: coming Sep 17, 2013

STANDALONE NOVELS
* Hollow World: coming Jan 20, 2014
* Antithesis: release date to be determined
* Burden to the Earth: release date to b determined

ORIGINAL BOOKS OF THE RIYRIA REVELATIONS (out of print)
* The Crown Conspiracy
* Avempartha
* Nyphron Rising
* The Emerald Storm
* Wintertide
* Percepliquis

SHORT STORIES
* The Viscount and the Witch (Riyria Chronicles #1.5)
* Greener Grass (time-travel science fiction)

ANTHOLOGIES
* Triumph Over Tragedy (Traditions)
* The End - Visions of Apocalypse (Burning Alexandria)
* The Fantasy Faction Anthology (Autumn Mists) Mar 2013
* Unfettered (The Jester) May 2013

AWARDS & ACCOLADES
The Crown Tower (coming Aug 2013)
* 2013 Fantasy Book Review's Six (non-hyped) Most Anticipated Books
* 2013 Fantasy Faction's Top 10 Most Anticipated Books
* 2013 Ranting Dragon's 50 Fantasy and Sci-Fi Novels to Look Forward
* 2013 BestFantasyBooks.com's Most Anticipated Fantasy Reads
* 2013 Angels of Retribution's Most Anticipated Releases
* 2013 A Fantasy Reader's Eager Meter Nominee
* 2013 Draumr Kopa Fantasy Book Blog Waiting on Wednesday

The Riyria Revelations
* 2013 Rule The Waves Top 10 Tuesdays
* 2012 Confessions of an Avid Reader Top 12 (#2)
* 2009 Dark Wolf Fantasy Reviews Top 10 Books

Heir of Novon / Wintertide & Percepliquis
* 2012 SFWorld's Top 10 Favorite Books (Percepliquis)
* 2012 goodreads Choice Award Nominee (Percepliquis)
* 2012 Audible's August Customer Favorites (Heir of Novron)
* 2012 Bookworm Blues Top 10 (#4) (Percepliquis)
* 2012 Founding Field's Best Books (Percepliquis)
* 2012 Angels of Retribution's Best of the Best Part 1 (Heir of Novron)
* 2012 Patrick's Book Awards (#10) (Heir of Novron)
* 2012 Bane of King's Best Novels of First Half of 2012 (Percepliquis)
* 2012 GoddessCarlie Top 5: #2 (Heir of Novron)
* 2012 MathiasCavanaugh Top 10 Books (#4) (Heir of Novron)
* 2012 Angels of Retribution's Reading Award for February ( Percepliquis)
* 2012 Fantasy Book Critic's Top 5 Anticipated Releases for Q1 (Heir of Novron)
* 2012 Civilian Reader's 6 Most Anticipated Reads for January (Heir of Novron)
* 2012 Staffer's Review's Books I Most Want to Read in Early 2012 (Heir of Novron)
* 2010 Fantasy Book Critic #1 Indie Fantasy (Wintertide)
* 2010 Fantasy Book Critic Top 25 Novels (Wintertide)
* 2010 Fantasy Book Critic: Cindy's Anticipated Reads List (Wintertide)
* 2010 Fantasy Book Critic Top Independent Novels (Wintertide)
* 2010 Fantasy Book Critic Top 5 Novels of Second Half of 2010 (Wintertide)

Rise of Empire / Nyphron Rising & The Emerald Storm
* 2012 Mathias Cavanaugh Top 10 Books (#3) (Rise of Empire)
* 2012 Timothy C. Ward Top 10 Reads (#8) (Rise of Empire)
* 2012 Patrick's Book Awards (#9) (Rise of Empire)
* 2011 Civilian Reader's 6 Most Anticipated Reads for Dec (Rise of Empire)
* 2010 goodreads Choice Award Nominee for Fantasy (The Emerald Storm)
* 2010 Fantasy Book Critic #1 Indie Fantasy (The Emerald Storm)
* 2010 Fantasy Book Critic Top 25 Novels for (The Emerald Storm)
* 2010 Fantasy Book Critic: Cindy's Anticipated Reads List (The Emerald Storm)
* 2010 Fantasy Book Critic Top Independent Novels (The Emerald Storm)
* 2010 Fantasy Book Critic Top 12 Novels as of First Quarter (The Emerald Storm)
* 2010 Foreword Magazine Book of the Year Finalist (Nyphron Rising)

Theft of Swords / The Crown Conspiracy Avempartha
* 2013 Audie Award Finalist (Theft of Swords)
* 2012 Audible's 5-star The Best of Everything (Theft of Swords)
* 2012 Audible's Best of 2012 Editor's Picks (Theft of Swords)
* 2012 Audible's 5-star Sci-fi & Fantasy (Theft of Swords)
* 2012 WordTipping Top 3 Favorite Reads (Theft of Swords)
* 2012 Angels of Retribution's Best of the Best Part 2 (Theft of Swords - audio)
* 2012 MathiasCavanaugh Top 10 Books (#7) (Theft of Swords)
* 2012 BattleHymns Books of the Year: Honorable Mention (Theft of Swords)
* 2012 AudioBookaneers Favorite Listens, Runner up (Theft of Swords)
* 2012 Patrick's Book Awards (#10) (Theft of Swords)
* 2011 Library Journal's Best Books for Fantasy/Sci-Fi (Theft of Swords)
* 2011 Civilian Reader's 5 Most Anticipated Reads for Nov (Theft of Swords)
* 2011 Black Gate Noteworthy Fantasy Debuts (Theft of Swords)
* 2011 Library Journal's Fantasy/Sci-Fi Debut For September (Theft of Swords)
* 2011 Dribble of Ink's Favorite Novels (Theft of Swords)
* 2011 Drying Ink's Best Epic Fantasy (Theft of Swords)
* 2011 Graeme's Fantasy Book Review Favourite (Theft of Swords)
* 2011 Only the Best Science Fiction and Fantasy's Top 10 (#2) (Theft of Swords)
* 2011 Best Fantasy Releases by Barnes and Noble Blog (Theft of Swords)
* 2011 Lost Entwive's Top Ten Underrated Books (The Crown Conspiracy)
* 2010 Iceberg Ink Award Best Read (Avempartha)
* 2010 Foreword Magazine Book of the Year Finalist (Avempartha)
* 2010 Only the Best Science Fiction & Fantasy Top 10 Read (The Crown Conspiracy)
* 2010 Bookworm Blues Overall Best Reads of 2010 (Avempartha)
* 2009 Winner of Book Spot Central's Fantasy Tournament of Books (Avempartha)
* 2009 Speculative Fiction Junkie's Top 5 Close Contender(The Crown Conspiracy)
* 2009 National Indie Book Award Finalist (The Crown Conspiracy)
* 2008 ReaderViews Annual Literary Award Finalist (The Crown Conspiracy)
* 2007 Foreword Magazine Book of the Year Finalist (The Crown Conspiracy)

CONTACT INFORMATION
Riyria Blog: www.riyria.com
Hollow World Blog: www.hollowworldnovel.wordpress.com
First Empire Series Blog: www.firstempireseries.com
Twitter: @author_sullivan
Facebook: www.facebook.com/riyria & www.facebook.com/michael.james.sullivan

Amazon Author Rankbeta 

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#11 in Books > Literature & Fiction > Genre Fiction > Action & Adventure

#24 in Books > Science Fiction & Fantasy > Fantasy

#37 in Books > Science Fiction & Fantasy

#59 in Books > Literature & Fiction > Genre Fiction

#69 in Kindle eBooks > Literature & Fiction > Action & Adventure

#11 in Books > Literature & Fiction > Genre Fiction > Action & Adventure

#24 in Books > Science Fiction & Fantasy > Fantasy

#37 in Books > Science Fiction & Fantasy

#59 in Books > Literature & Fiction > Genre Fiction

#69 in Kindle eBooks > Literature & Fiction > Action & Adventure

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

161 of 185 people found the following review helpful

3.0 out of 5 stars Fun, but lacks depth. November 20, 2011

By A. Whitehead TOP 1000 REVIEWER

Format:Paperback

Hadrian and Royce are partners in crime, a mercenary and thief who make a living working for the various nobles who rule over the lands of Avryn but spend most of their time feuding with one another. One particular job ends with Hadrian and Royce being arrested and charged with regicide. Determined to prove their innocence and take revenge on those who framed them, they set out on a quest that could change the fate of Avryn and the whole world.

Michael J. Sullivan's Riyria Revelations series is already a proven success, with both small press and self-published editions of the books selling well. Orbit have picked up the series and recast the original six books as three omnibuses, bringing them to a wider audience. Whilst this laudably rewards the author's success, it also raises the stakes: standing out from the crowd in self-publishing is one thing, but how does Sullivan's work stack up compared to the current fantasy heavyweights?

The answer is...okay, actually. Sullivan's ambition with this series was to create a series that in a way beat against the current trend for adult, edgy, violent and explicit fantasy novels in favour of something more straightforward or 'classic'. Something that evoked the spirit of say Eddings or Brooks without being as dire. Sullivan lists Harry Potter as an inspiration, particularly the way it welded together accessibility and a classic structure with darker elements (such as major character deaths), and that's certainly a reasonable ambition.

Theft of Swords (which combines the first two novels in the series, The Crown Conspiracy and Avempartha) is a fast-paced, straightforward read with a fast-moving plot and easy-to-read writing. Sullivan's risk in aping the simpler form of fantasy fiction is that he might skirt towards blandness, and this is certainly a problem in the book. He has a fairly blank prose style which is effortless to read, but also somewhat forgettable. His skills with characterisation are somewhat stronger, but still not as great as might be wished. Particularly odd is that his central characters of Hadrian and Royce are not very well-developed at all, and many of the secondary characters are more interesting and better-drawn. The central duo do get a bit more fleshed out towards the end of the second half of the book and we also get a possible reason for why Sullivan had to hold back on certain revelations about them, but it is a bit of a challenge to read a book where the two heroes are so (apparently) shallow.

Other issues can be found in the worldbuilding, particularly the existence of apparently substantial kingdoms with walled cities in them that are only about 20 miles wide. Sullivan aims for some consistency here - a couple of hundred soldiers forms a large army in this world, presumably because populations are correspondingly tiny - but it's still a bit odd. On the racial front, things are fairly traditional: dwarves are geniuses for stonecarving whilst elves are long-lived, pointy-eared types. The only dwarf we meet is a grubby villain, whilst the elves are (in this first book anyway) kept firmly off-screen and are the enemies of humanity, but these are minor (and not particularly unprecedented) twists to the established formula. Naturally, the main storyline also revolves around prophecies, chosen ones whose arrival will signify the end of the world and so on, and it won't take a genius to guess who the chosen one is going to be.

The principle problem with the book is its very predictability. At first, reading an epic fantasy without blood spraying over people's faces every five seconds or two mandatory graphic (and usually badly-written) sex scenes per book is a refreshing change of pace, and feels like a valid direction to take at this time. However, the book's embracing of classic tropes without doing much (or, at times, anything) to subvert or challenge them eventually gets dull. Brandon Sanderson, for example, is also writing classic epic fantasy but remembers to put in plenty of interesting twists: a post-magic-apocalypse setting, a Wild West angle and, of course, lots of original magic systems. These flourishes are absent from Sullivan's debut work.

Theft of Swords (***) is an easy, relaxing read but also one that lacks depth or originality. It's fun enough to warrant reading on (and the series rep has it improving massively as it continues), but I do wonder if publishing these stories as 650-page omnibuses rather than their original 320-page, bite-sized chunks was a mistake. A fun popcorn read, but ultimately not much more.

54 of 65 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars Great Story! November 10, 2011

By James R. Barnes

Format:Paperback

This is definitely at the top of my list of favorite books. I loved this story, and very much look forward to the next in the series. It seems as if lately everyone is trying to write darker, brooding books, and there is nothing wrong with that, but I was happy find something a little more like the stories that got me into reading when I was younger. A great story with characters you want to get to know and a well executed plot that keeps you engaged. It was definitely well thought out and well written. It is a rich world with great characters (good and bad) and stories without being too complex to follow. Great for all ages.

27 of 32 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars Greatly Written November 10, 2011

By mohawkguy28

Format:Paperback

Theft of Swords is one of the best written stories that I have read. The book captivated my interest from the first chapter. Michael Sullivan has created characters that I have come to love and despise (depending on who they were). Most times I caught myself laughing or biting my nails. My family must have thought that I was crazy because I have never really done any of that while reading, out loud anyway. I was so completely caught up in the story, that I did finished it before I was even ready. I look forward to re-reading this book and the two more to come. Only a few books have captivated me like this one and I have to say, "Move over Stephen King. I have found my new favorite author."