A Shattered Empire Made Me Believe in Epic Fantasy Again

Is Mitchell Hogan Santa Claus? I’m starting to think he might be, and not just because I’ve never seen them in the same room: A Shattered Empire, the final entry in the Sorcery Ascendant Sequence, feels like a gift made just for me—capping an eye-opening epic fantasy trilogy that made me believe in…well, something.
When I started this series with A Crucible of Souls, I thought my days of burrowing into massive fantasy epics may have been well behind me (juggling backbreaking trilogies is a young man’s game, if you ask me). But Hogan caught me off guard the moment he introduced the densely constructed Mahruse Empire, its elaborate history of forbidden sorcery, and a young hero, Caladan, thrust unwittingly into a world-altering adventure. Blood of Innocents went deeper and darker, pushing his gaggle of characters—good, evil, and in-between—further into the fray. A Shattered Empire again dials up the intensity and action on the way to a shattering conclusion, proving me wrong in the bargain—it turns out you can go back to epic fantasy, at least when you’re being carried along in such capable hands.

The Sorcery Ascendant reads like one big adventure split into three sprawling volumes, so it goes without saying that it is required reading for fans of the first two and decidedly not the place to start for newcomers.. Hogan picks up the action in the wake of book two’s violent edge-of-the-seat climax, with hordes of jukari and vormag (think orcs, but much more dangerous and bloodthirsty—plus they can use sorcery) bringing hell down upon on a fierce band of battle-hardened warlocks and Anasomian warriors. With heavy duty resources on his side, the self-described God-Emperor—the trilogy’s “big bad”—cements his role as a seemingly insurmountable opponent. It’s the sort of conflict that makes for madcap action, and Hogan piles on encounter after encounter as cataclysmic events build to a final showdown that genuinely earns the “epic” qualifier.

A lot has changed for Hogan’s reluctant hero Caladan over the run of the series. He began book one an orphan, cast out from his island home at the Monastery of the Seven Paths and forced to make his way in the rough-edged city of Anasoma, slowly discovering his hidden gifts in the long-forbidden practice of sorcery. Now, Caladan has matured and hardened, growing to meet the stakes of the building conflict. He’s more powerful than ever, which means he may even be able to handle his role as the potential tipping point in a war that will determine the fate of the world. Pretty heavy stuff for a kid to handle.
With this action-packed final installment, Hogan has completed a truly Tolkien-ian task. He grabs ahold of a mass of complicated story threads (a humongous power struggle involving, among other things: shrewd politics, fierce warriors, bloodthirsty monsters, deadly mercenaries, secretive warlocks, and world-shattering sorcery) and deftly ties them together, bring the series to a chaotic, but entirely satisfying, close.
What a ride, Mr. Hogan. What a ride…