What a wonderful series this has been! I've been on tenterhooks to see if the conclusion to The House of Sacrifice would live up to the grimdark label, and it has surpassed any other series in that genre that I've read. No spoilers but that last chapter is the chef's kiss, the denouement of the events of Marith's early life.
All the POV characters have dark, fitting finales. Marith, Thalia, Tobias, Orhan, and Landra have been exciting to read about as they blast their way around Irlast, no matter how murderous and harsh their actions. And this series is mercilessly gory and atrocious, so be warned. There are some light moments but for the most part, I think Ms. Spark has captured the essence of the grimdark genre.
It took me about 50 pages to adjust to the author's writing style, back in the first book, but now I can't imagine this story told in any other manner. She adjusts her tone to each POV, more sophisticated for Orhan, or first-person for Thalia to give the reader a more intimate view of her thoughts. Tobias is more crude and choppy, perfect for the soldier he is. And Marith...poor, lost Marith who wants to kill almost everything he comes across, but who regrets each death while still extolling his role in it.
The writing can be blunt; here's a frequent chant:
"So here we go again, we must start getting bored with this soon, you’d have thought, it’s getting kind of hard sometimes to know where we go from here really, don’t you think? Endless repetition. Kill kill kill tediously unvaryingly unendlingly kill kill kill kill kill."
It can also be descriptive and lyrical such as this passage that I love:
"The book’s pages were perfumed. The scent varied: a few pages might have a faint scent of lilies, sweet and sad, to match a scene of love and heartbreak; the next page might smell of pine resin, bracing, clearing, when the story turned to a hero king come to restore his people’s pride. This too was new and fashionable, a flippant new little wonderworking. The page he was reading now was a genealogy of the kings of Bakh, shocking in its lack of scandal, incest and murder, and smelled of green leaves. The most sought-after book in Sorlost was the three volume True History of the King Marith Altrersyr Amrath Returned to Us, the pages of which were said to smell alternately of blood, semen and human excrement."
This is one of those series I'll think about a lot. It's very dark, but so satisfying, just a wonderful story. ( )