Line #41 Literature/TheRiyriaRevelations


1	->''"There's no orphan destined to save the world, nor ultimate evil to be slain... just two guys in the wrong place at the wrong time trying to survive."''
2
3	''The Riyria Revelations'' is a six-book HighFantasy series by [[http://riyria.blogspot.com/ Michael J. Sullivan.]] Hadrian and Royce are a pair of good-natured thieves living a life of reasonable success in a continent full of FantasticRacism, corrupt nobility, and manipulative clergy. When a deal to steal a sword goes disastrously wrong, Hadrian and Royce find themselves as part of a series of elaborate capers which plunge them ever deeper in unravelling a 900-year-conspiracy involving ancient gods and emperors.
4
5	A prequel series, ''Literature/LegendsOfTheFirstEmpire'', which takes place thousands of years prior to the current setting has also been released. The follow-up ''Literature/RiseAndFall'' Trilogy bridges the 3,000 year gap between ''Legends'' and ''Revelations''
6
7	[[folder: Books in the Series]] Five e-books were been published:
8	* ''The Crown Conspiracy''
9	* ''Avempartha''
10	* ''Nyphron Rising''
11	* ''The Emerald Storm''
12	* ''Wintertide''
13
14	The final book—''Percepliquis''—was originally scheduled for an April 2011 release. However, publishing rights were acquired by Orbit Books in early 2011. The entire series was re-edited and re-published as three two-book volumes; a standalone version of ''Percepliquis'' was released simultaneously with the final volume. The Orbit editions' titles are:
15
16	* ''Theft of Swords'' (November 2011)
17	* ''Rise of Empire'' (December 2011)
18	* ''Heir of Novron'' (January 2011)
19
20	Two prequel books were published in 2013:
21
22	* ''The Crown Tower'' (August 2013)
23	* ''The Rose and the Thorn'' (September 2013)
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25	A third prequel was published thanks to an independent Kickstarter campaign in 2015:
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27	* ''The Death of Dulgath'' (September 2015)
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29	A fourth prequel was first published in 2017:
30
31	* ''The Disappearance of Winter's Daughter'' (December 2017)[[/folder]]
32
33	----
34	!!This series provides examples of:
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36	* AdiposeRex: Both King Roswort of Glamrendor and King Vincent of Maranon are described as severely obese.
37	* AffablyEvil: Saldur is polite, cultured, and fatherly- as long as you do what he wants. Interfere with his plans, though, and he ''will'' show his temper. Becomes FauxAffablyEvil when he [[spoiler: says he's going to have Arista repeatedly raped unless she reveals who her co-conspirators were in trying to free Degan Gaunt.]]
38	* AlwaysChaoticEvil: Goblins are considered to be this; their showing in the novels largely bears it out (though admittedly, we only see them at war or raiding, never at home).
39	** [[spoiler: Disconfirmed in ''Esrahaddon'' by three goblins who take in the Ezra after he is exiled from his village for unconsciously using magic to defend himself at age 7, an act so cruel that one of the goblins can scarcely believe it happened.]]
40	* AncestralWeapon: Hadrian possesses one of these.
41	* AncientConspiracy : [[spoiler:The Nyphron church's nine hundred year plot to take over the human kingdoms and found the New Empire]]
42	* AndManGrewProud: The Novron empire reigned for centuries, giving humanity advanced knowledge of magic, decent sanitation and cities with buildings that were six stories tall. Esrahaddon, a FishOutOfTemporalWater who is the only known human survivor from this era, laments just how far humanity has fallen since then.
43	* TheAtoner: Per legend, the god Erebus/Kile/[[spoiler:Nimbus]].
44	* BadHabits: Arista uses the Art to disguise herself as Arch Bishop Saldur in his Nyphron Church robes as part of her plan to break Degan Gaunt out of the dungeon at the Imperial Palace in Aquesta.
45	* BasedOnAGreatBigLie: Pretty much the entirety of [[spoiler: Empress Modina]]'s reign.
46	* BavarianFireDrill: [[spoiler: Hadrian]] makes a pretty good attempt to take command of the [[spoiler: Nationalist Army]], ordering around various soldiers until he is outed.
47	* BigGood: Esrahaddon and [[spoiler: he's not really.]] [[spoiler: Empress Modina]] also plays this straight.
48	* BerserkButton: Don't ever hurt or insult Gwen when Royce is around. [[spoiler: If you ''kill'' her, Maribor help you. Subverted, ironically, by her actual murderer as Arcadius dies due to reasons unrelated to his role in murdering her.]]
49	* BigBad: The Patriarch [[spoiler: aka Mawyndule, the Exiled Prince of the Elves.]]
50	* {{BFS}}: Hadrian's longsword. It's by no means the largest of [=BFSes=], but when it gets drawn, things are gonna get messy.
51	* BrickJoke: Early on, Hadrian mentions to Arista how there seemed to be a stone under his bed every time he sleeps outside. He figures out the reason a couple arcs later.
52	* BodyHorror: [[spoiler: Arista]] kills several men who had kidnapped her and were planning to rape her by making their blood boil. She's horrified by this and attempts to get the spell to stop once they're safely incapacitated, but isn't skilled enough to halt it. When Hadrian and Royce catch up with her, they tell not to sweat it too much.
53	* BoomerangBigot: [[spoiler: Sentinel Thranic]], who delights in torturing Mir prisoners and attempts to arrest [[spoiler: Royce]] for his elven heritage, turns out to be a Mir himself.
54	* TheCape: Sir Breckton, full stop. By the end of the story, Hadrian is more or less this as well.
55	* TheChessMaster: There's a pretty stiff competition between [[spoiler:Mawyndule]] and [[spoiler:Esrahaddon]], but all competitors fall absolutely short in front of the incredible [[MagnificentBastard magnificentbastardness]] of [[spoiler: Arcadius]]. Subverted as all of his efforts result in [[spoiler: the Heir of Novron ruling over the elves instead of the Empire.]]
56	* ChurchMilitant: The Seret knights are the Nyphron Church's [[spoiler:(and eventually, New Empire's)]] enforcers-''cum''-inquisition, beholden only to the Patriarch and Sentinels.
57	* ChronicBackstabbingDisorder: [[spoiler: Magnus the Dwarf, partly due to his obsession with Royce's dagger,]] manages to betray the protagonists' trust almost every time he appears [[spoiler: until being re-given life by Arista and deciding to turn a new stone.]]
58	* CorruptChurch: The Church of Novron. [[spoiler: Of course, it's led by- and was largely created in its present form by- the BigBad]].
59	* CrystalDragonJesus: The Church of Novron is basically the worst elements of the Medieval Catholic Church filtered through a hefty dose of Dan Brown.
60	* TheCynic: Royce thinks the worst of people and is usually right.
61	* DeathByIrony: [[spoiler: Saldur, who typically silences people by burning them and their families alive, dies in a flaming building.]]
62	* DeathSeeker: [[spoiler: Royce]] becomes one temporarily after [[spoiler: Gwen's death]]
63	* DiscOneFinalBoss: Percy Braga. Archibald. [[spoiler: Merrick]].
64	* DragonWithAnAgenda: Saldur and Ethelred, CoDragons to the Patriarch, are primarily concerned with rebuilding the Nyphron Empire. [[spoiler: The Patriarch himself just wants the human kingdoms weakened so he can take them over after seizing the elven throne]].
65	* TheDreaded: Royce to the Black Diamonds. He was once a member of their guild until one of his guildmates got him sent to Manzant, a HellHolePrison where inmates mine salt in horrible conditions until they die. Royce eventually got his freedom and the first thing he does is wage an absolutely vicious and bloody one-man war against his old guild, which he pretty much won after about a year's worth of killing them (that time period was named the "Year of Fear"). Now the Black Diamonds regard Royce with nothing short of abject terror. How feared is he, you ask? In one instance, a guild member who didn't recognize Royce played a con on him and Hadrien and stole their horses and everything on them. Royce wasn't fooled one bit and was just playing ignorant in the hopes of teaching Hadrien that few people share his sense of altruism. To that end, he left a note in one of the saddlebags saying that if his and Hadrien's horses weren't returned posthaste, then he was going very unhappy. The guild promptly returned the horses and supplies, even giving them a fresh shod and groom, and left a note of their own which essentially said, "this dumb guild member didn't know who you were, we're very sorry, please don't kill us."
66	* DroppedABridgeOnHim: Luis Guy, KnightTemplar, major villain, and all-around evil badass, gets offed unceremoniously in the first chapter of the last book.
67	* DualWielding: When Hadrian's not using his longsword.
68	* DwindlingParty: [[spoiler: Sentinel Thranic's party sent to retrieve the Horn of Gylindora are eventually completely wiped out.]]
69	* EarnYourHappyEnding: [[spoiler: Gwen is dead, half of the human kingdoms have been flattened including Melengar, and countless knowledge from the Old Empire is gone forever. However, the Empire has been restored with elves and dwarves are now equal citizens with humans. Arista and Hadrian are married with both wizards as well as the Teshlor coming back. Royce is king of the elves with his daughter as princess.]]
70	* EnslavedElves: Elves (or at least, those with Elf-blood) are at the bottom of the ladder in most human kingdoms. Dwarves have it a bit better, but not by much. About the only nonhuman race that humans ''haven't'' tried to enslave are goblins, who are honestly just too mean for that to work in the first place, and the full-blooded elves, who are so far above humans in terms of physical strength, dexterity and magical power that no normal human has a prayer against them.
71	* EternalEngine: The dwarven island-city in ''Rise of an Empire'' has huge mechanical gates and lava-powered steam mechanisms that can set off a global catastrophe if the volcano isn't able to release pressure from time to time. [[spoiler: Hadrian and Royce prevent an explosion that would devastated all of Delgos but cannot save the city itself.]]
72	* EvilCounterpart: Luis Guy to Hadrian, Merrick to Royce, [[spoiler: Mawyndule to Esrahaddon]].
73	* EvilSorcerer: [[spoiler: Mawyndule]], as well as any of the ''oberdaza'', the goblins' mystical/shamanic caste.
74	* FantasyWorldMap: [[http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_GsF6XkE-qiY/TUrt00NMuoI/AAAAAAAAAZo/e-Wy1_FPhfo/s1600/World%2BMapStart.jpg Fairly]] [[http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_GsF6XkE-qiY/TUruAVTWHRI/AAAAAAAAAZw/f3-g_OVwRMc/s1600/Offical%2BPSD_2010.jpg bog]] [[http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_GsF6XkE-qiY/TUruuKkvrnI/AAAAAAAAAaA/5DdccQRxMNQ/s1600/Offical%2BPSD_2010Nations.jpg standard]]
75	* FauxAffablyEvil: [[spoiler: Mawyndule]] is a genocidal psychotic elf ManipulativeBastard who has destroyed entire swaths of knowledge as well as kingdoms in the name of FantasticRacism.
76	* FinalSolution: [[spoiler: Mawyndule]] plans to eliminate all half-breed elves then humans then dwarves.
77	* {{Foreshadowing}}: Arista returns to her personal room above the tower after an argument, feeling light-headed and swaying. [[spoiler: It's a bit more literal than it seems.]]
78	* GodOfEvil: Uberlin is considered one of these, though he never actually shows up to ''do'' anything particularly evil.
79	* GodWasMyCopilot: [[spoiler: Nimbus]] is incredibly heavily implied at the end to be [[spoiler: Kile]].
80	* HalfHumanHybrid: Practically all "elves" living in human lands are actually hybrids, [[spoiler:including Royce.]] The Tenkin are thought by some to be Human-Ba Ran Ghazel hybrids, but [[spoiler:are actually fully human Calisians who adopted much of their invaders' culture- cross-breeding between human and goblins is explicitly stated as biologically impossible.]]
81	* HandicappedBadass: Esrahaddon is a wizard with no hands.
82	* HeelFaceTurn: [[spoiler: Magnus has one of these due to a BecauseYouWereNiceToMe in the final book.]]
83	* HeroicBSOD: [[spoiler: Thrace/Modina]] falls into one after [[spoiler: her father dies and her village is essentially destroyed]]. Amilia helps pull her out of it.
84	* HeroicSacrifice: [[spoiler: Royce tries to pull one of these on the Emperors' Tomb, but in the end it becomes unnecessary]]
85	* [[HiredGuns Hired Sword:]] Hadrian.
86	* ImAHumanitarian: The Ghazel will eat just about anyone and anything, but have a special fondness for sentient beings.
87	* ImplausibleFencingPowers: Teshlor. The Pickering and Killdare families each uncovered a Teshlor discipline, which made them the foremost swordsmen in Elan. [[spoiler:Hadrian, who was trained in the full range of Teshlor skills and techniques, is simply undefeatable in single combat, barring tricks.]]
88	* InTheBack: How [[spoiler: Mawyndule]] is unceremoniously offed.
89	* JeanneDArchetype: Deliberately invoked with [[spoiler: Thrace/Modina]]- the church capitalizes on the idea of the beautiful peasant girl who killed a terrible monster and saved the land in order to get a biddable Empress [[spoiler: they think]].
90	* {{Jerkass}}: Degan Gaunt.
91	* HungryJungle: Most of Calais is covered in a dense canopy filled with tigers, savage sea goblins and parasitic worms that provide BodyHorror to unlucky travellers.
92	* KarmicDeath: [[spoiler: Ethelred and Saldur get extremely satisfying ones.]]
93	* KilledOffForReal: [[spoiler: Theron Wood, Gwen, Count Pickering, Alric, Merrick, Ethelred, Saldur, Arcadius, Esrahaddon, Emergy, Hlfred, Luis Guy, and just about everyone that served aboard the Emerald Storm eventually aside from Royce and Hadrian]]
94	* KnightOfCerebus: In-universe; the stories involving goblins are explicitly said to always be very dark and never end happily.
95	* KnightTemplar: Sentinels, as well as most seret knights.
96	* LostTechnology: Esrahaddon tells the protagonists that the Novron Empire, in addition to advanced magic, had many feats of technology that can't be replicated with current knowledge, such as six-story buildings and basic sanitation.
97	* ManipulativeBastard: Esrahaddon has this reputation. [[spoiler: With good reason.]]
98	** [[spoiler: Mawyndule a.k.a the Patriarch potentially tops them all.]]
99	* MasterSwordsman: As a [[spoiler:fully-trained Teshlor, Hadrian definitely counts.]]
100	* MeaningfulRename: Thrace Wood to [[spoiler: Empress Modina]].
101	* MissKitty: Gwen. Her efforts to become this is the secondary plot of the ''The Crown Tower''.
102	* MuggingTheMonster: The ''Theft of Swords'' opens on bandits trying to mug Royce and Hadrian. They wind up giving them pointers on the ''proper'' way to mug someone instead.
103	** In ''The Crown Conspiracy'' a press gang tries to, well, press Hadrian into service aboard a ship. It goes about as well for the gang as you might expect.
104	* NiceJobBreakingItHero: ''The Rose and the Thorn'' tells the story of how Royce and Hadrian inadvertently helped a conspiracy to murder the royal family. They end up killing the people who could have stopped the assassination attempt and it's only through sheer luck and the heroism of another character that the king and his children survived. In addition, Royce's poorly thought out actions almost get Gwen and her girls executed. Things work out in the short term but in the long run the bad guys escape punishment and are thus able to try again in ''The Crown Conspiracy''.
105	* NiceJobFixingItVillain: Saldur unintentionally sows the seeds of his own downfall simply by [[spoiler: appointing Amilia as the Empress' tutor. Amilia brings Modina out of her catatonia with kindness and compassion. Later she moves Modina to a different bedchamber, unknowingly placing her right below Saldur's office window, allowing Modina to listen in on Saldur's secret meetings and slowly conceive a plan to remove him from the equation, immediately turning the Empire from the heroes' greatest enemy to their greatest ally.]] Honestly, the heroes should be thanking him.
106	* OddCouple: The central premise of the series. A cynical thief and a cheerful optimist swordsman go on adventures.
107	* OhCrap: Merrick suffers a big one of these [[spoiler: when Gwen is killed as part of his prisoner exchange plan.]]
108	* OurDwarvesAreAllTheSame: Yep; though only one dwarf, Magnus, is a main character, he and his people fit the standard pretty well.
109	* OurDragonsAreDifferent: Gilarabrywns are winged fire-breathing Elven weapons of war. They're also magical conjurations.
110	** Esrahaddon states that what humanity thinks of as dragons ''did'' exist during the time of the Novron empire. He dismisses the possibility that the village was attacked by one, however, because it that had been the case there would have been no village left. He also states that, contrary to folklore, dragons did not hoard treasure because the only things that they valued were memories, knowledge and other immaterial possessions.
111	* OurElvesAreDifferent: Full-blooded elves are nigh-immortal, masters of magic, and incredibly badass- but they're also xenophobic and want little to do with humans [[spoiler: until they invade in the last book]]. When most people in this world think of elves, they think of ''mir'', mixes of human and elf blood who are at the bottom of the social hierarchy.
112	* OurGoblinsAreDifferent: The Ba Ran Ghazel.
113	* ParanoiaGambit: [[spoiler: An absolutely magnificent one, courtesy of Merrick Marius.]]
114	* ThePollyanna: Hadrian. [[{{Franchise/Discworld}} To almost Carrot-like levels.]] It gets to the point he stops enjoying thievery because it hurts people.
115	* ThePowerOfLove: A large dynamic of the Amilia/Modina relationship.
116	* PuppetKing: Modina is a Puppet Empress; this works fine when she's essentially catatonic after her battle with the Gilarabrywn, but [[spoiler: when she comes back to herself, she takes the Empire in her own right. ''Awesomely''.]]
117	* RebelliousPrincess: Arista.
118	* RagsToRiches: Amilia goes directly from scullery maid to [[spoiler:Empress Modina's]] personal tutor, secretary, and confidant.
119	** Also, [[spoiler: Modina]] herself, who started out as being [[spoiler: peasant girl Thrace Wood]] until she killed an invincible monster and got hailed as the Heir of Novron. [[spoiler: Rather cruelly deconstructed, as initially she's little better than a prisoner and puppet for Saldur and Ethelred. Amilia helps her find herself again]].
120	* RagsToRoyalty: Thanks to [[spoiler:Deacon Tomas spreading word of Thrace's little stunt]], the Church didn't have much choice but to recognize her as [[spoiler:Empress. That she was [[HeroicBSOD all but comatose]] and the Church was expressly looking for a puppet definitely helped]].
121	* RagtagBunchOfMisfits: A wizardess, a dwarf, a pirate captain, a giant, a swordsman, a half-elf thief, a monk, a king, a count, and a good-for-nothing rebel leader comprise Modina's expedition to retrieve the Horn of Gylindora.
122	* RapeIsASpecialKindOfEvil: Erebus, the chief deity of the gods, was kicked out of the heavens due to raping his daughter while drunk. He begged her forgiveness and is now on the quest she gave him to redeem himself.
123	* RegentForLife: [[spoiler:Saldur]] from ''Nyphron Rising'' through [[spoiler:''Wintertide.'']]
124	* TheReveal: [[spoiler: Novron wasn't actually a demigod but a pure blooded elven warlord. The reason the Church is, ostensibly, trying to eliminate all of his descendants.]]
125	* RoyalBrat: Around the beginning of ''The Crown Conspiracy,'' nineteen-year old Alric is... not exactly the picture of maturity.
126	* RoyalsWhoActuallyDoSomething: Alric counts, but Arista and [[spoiler: Thrace/Modina]] blow anyone and everyone else out of the water.
127	* RunningGag: In the [[spoiler: Imperial Palace]], several important people -- including [[spoiler: the empress, her secretary, a princess, a Teshlor knight, and a monk]] -- visit the scullery kitchen for their meals, much to the amusement of the head cook.
128	* SequelHook: [[spoiler: Delgos still needs to be freed from the Ghazel, and if the implication of Nimbus being Kile are true, then the gods actually exist in this story.]]
129	* SdrawkcabName: [[spoiler: Nilnev is backwards for Venlin, which also anagrams to Evlinn. In fact, all the "patriarchs" are just anagrams of those six letters, and all of them are actually Mawyndule]]
130	* SmartPeoplePlayChess: Merrick is rather fond of the game and uses it at various points to explain his actions and/or make veiled threats.
131	* StandardFantasySetting: There's no [[spoiler: obvious]] Dark Lord or other evil threat, but otherwise a pretty straightforward one.
132	* StuffedInAFridge: [[spoiler: Gwen suffers an unexpected and distressingly straight version of this in the penultimate book.]]
133	* TheReasonYouSuckSpeech: Of all people, Myron gives one to [[BigBad Mawyndule]] in the last book, basically telling him that his grand plan 900 years in the making [[spoiler: was wasted time, given that, since he's already very old, even for an elf, he's not going to live long enough to enjoy his victory.]]
134	* TailorMadePrison: Esrahaddon is in one.
135	* ToThePain: Royce gives a pretty humorous one to some kids looking to steal his horse. [[spoiler: Saldur gives a much darker one to Arista not long after]]
136	* TrademarkFavoriteFood: Royce's preferred beverage is Montemorcey wine.
137	* TrailersAlwaysLie: The first book's tagline is "There's no orphan destined to save the world, nor ultimate evil to be slain... just two guys in the wrong place at the wrong time trying to survive." Turns out [[spoiler: BOTH of them were orphans destined to save the world.]]
138	* UtopiaJustifiesTheMeans: How [[spoiler:Saldur]] rationalizes his actions.
139	* VestigialEmpire: The empire of Novron never technically fell in Calais and the humans there still use the banners of the empire, as well as it's traditions of having the king flanked by his chief military adviser and sorcerer. However, since the sea goblins destroyed the main city and many of the humans have adopted goblin ways due to close contact with them, they aren't really considered to be worthy successors by the rest of the former empire.
140	* WackyWaysideTribe: A lot of these.
141	* WholePlotReference: Much of the book is related to a Dan Brown-esque series of conspiracies relating to the heir of Novron/Fantasy Jesus.
142	* WorldHalfFull: see Earn Your Happy Ending above.
143	* WizardClassic: Esrahaddon looks like this.
144	* ZergRush: How humans eventually defeated the elves in the first war. For all their awesome powers, the elves' low birthrate proved their undoing. As one of the heroes puts it, "The elves were drowning in a floodtide of humanity."

Context Literature / TheRiyriaRevelations