I received a review copy of this book for free in exchange for an honest review. Many thanks to Rebekah and Jesse Teller!
Crown is the last book in The Manhunters, one of the first grimdark series I’ve read, and certainly the first one I’ve completed. It follows Rayph Ivoryfist, a thousands of years old wizard who formed the group The Manhunters. The Manhunters are tasked with wiping out the evil fiends who escaped from prison years before.
The book starts off years after the second one and here, The Manhunters have grown to become quite the accomplished group. They’ve taken down plenty of villains and they’ve become powerful enough for some to consider him a threat to the king himself. Here, Rayph really grows a lot as a character as he is forced to make hard decisions and face the harsh consequences.
As usual, aside from the usual cast of characters, we meet new characters. In this case, the new characters are Roth and Tate, members of the Callden Collective with some parental issues. They’re young but powerful. While it’s very apparent that they possess formidable power, I also appreciate that I can still sense how young they are in their actions, despite all the blustering and adventures that they go through over the course of the novel.
As I mentioned, Rayph grows a lot here. He meets new people and sadly, loses friends- not in the lost their friendship way, but in the lost-them-as-in-they-re-dead way. He reacts to this loss in a manner which I think is realistic for his character and situation and it also helps him grow. He sheds off a lot of his arrogance in this book and we see a man who has become a lot humbled by his journey and the things he had done along the way.
One of the things that I really appreciated as I read the series was the fact that although Rayph was very powerful, partly due to his innate ability, and partly- as I suspect, because of his age, he is decidedly not the most powerful. He has here an enemy who he couldn’t kill and was incredibly difficult to beat. I also appreciated the fact that Rayph does not shy away from showing emotion. He cries, he expresses his sadness, and his grief, and even his happiness.
I also found the ending satisfying for The Manhunters and I’m glad to see how it all ended. While their journey may be over, I do still want to see more stories set in the world. Overall, I’m pretty satisfied by this series and I think that as introductory series to grimdark fantasy goes, this is a good one to start with.
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