Book Review: A Grave for Us All
A Grave for Us All offers a compelling and fully fleshed grimdark fantasy world. Through clever prose, it leans heavily into character development and political intrigue. It expands the world created in book one, The Traitors We Are by Michael Roberti, and is part of a larger series called The Crown & Tide.
"War and revenge had become an epidemic."
Mr. Roberti manages to offer no heroes in his grim tale. Every character he touches is filled with doubt, revenge, and the epic need to survive in a broken kingdom. The author's prose is clean and, given his background in teaching, provides the reader with efficient and professional details but not enough to overwhelm the reader or page reading like an alternative version of some more famous writers fantasy readers know and love. Returning characters of Cael and Emil get their time in this 3rd personal multi-POV epic tale of betrayal and backstabs, and other characters like Erik and Merily grow into fully fleshed and powerful narratives.
"The pain wasn't there, but neither was his arm."
Through my reading of A Grave for Us All, I found it intriguing that Mr. Roberti tied his plot through not only the assertive and easier-to-write characters like Cael, a man betrayed and bent on revenge, but also found the time to dig into lesser yet more interesting characters like Erik, who had fallen from Mr. Roberti's version of knighthood. His writing and story development maturing is evident throughout, yet he maintains his own voice, a mixture of darkness and quality prose with a splash of punk-metal vibes that seeps through.
"That's excellent news! Execute them and put their heads on spikes. I will be damned if this ever happens again."
The story is a slow political buildup with a fit or two of action until the last half of the book when war and betrayal twist in turn through every POV that Mr. Roberti presents. He manages to guide the reader through the book easier than I have seen other traditional epic fantasy writers do and keeps the pages turning as the story unfolds. Mr. Roberti manages to wrench different forms of magic into his world that doesn't overwhelm the gritty world he has created, the Crown and Tide Series, and provides a sense of awe and fear in characters that witness magic when it occurs.
Mr. Roberti deals with themes of love and relationships, PTSD, family struggles, revenge, and politics. One of the more interesting themes in the book was fatherhood through the eyes of a nobleman and how that pressure twisted and corrupted bonds between not only husband and wife but also the people he attempts to govern.
"The thing about life as it related to history was the complex ways it changed."
A Grave for Us All book cover has a bluish hue, and the covers created by the author all have the same tone and art structure throughout the series. They are simplistic and striking and easy to pick up through digital surfing and when placed on a bookshelf. A Grave for Us All, book two in the Crown and Tide series, that I read was a paperback, just over 480 pages long, and it contains maps, a character guide, and a brief summary of what occurred in the first book.
Mr. Roberti is part of Willow Wraith Press, a collection of authors, reviewers, podcasters, and content creators. As of this writing, this is Mr. Roberti's third novel. I found it engaging and quick, a darkly epic read. Other reviewers and readers have called his writing Grim-Dark lite, which fits his novels well. A Grave for Us All is worth digging through the dirt to see who the bodies are inside the graves of the Crown and Tide series.
Michael Roberti
A Grave for Use All
The Crown and Tides Series, Book Two.
Paperback 480+ pages
