Not gonna lie: this series is a beast, and each book could easily qualify as a potentially lethal weapon in its own right. I get it. It can be intimidating. But allow me a second, if I may, to convince you why you absolutely should pick this series up.

I promise I’ll even do better than my motherly excuse of, “Because I said so,” even though that totally works. No, you, dear readers, deserve better. Also, that thing I said about it working? Eh, I was being optimistic. Maybe on a good day.

Today’s Top Ten Tuesday is supposed to be books that make me hungry, but I’m not much of a foodie, especially when it comes to books, so I wanted to introduce you to a series I’ve been really enjoying lately instead!

A Chorus of Dragons is an epic fantasy series set in a dark world full of magic and demons with anti-heroes and gray characters and so much backstabbing that your safest bet is to just trust no one. No, not even yourself.

The series will eventually be five books, but this post will only talk about and include quotes from the first two books, The Ruin of Kings and The Name of All Things. There will be no spoilers for either book unless marked otherwise.

I read both of these behemoth books (each around 570 pages) in less than a week. I loved it so much that not only couldn’t I stop, but I just flat-out didn’t want to stop. I still don’t want to, and thank goodness I can move on to book three because I MUST KNOW THINGS. All I can say for sure is the wait for books four and five? Going to be a struggle, not gonna lie.

So without further ado … let’s get into ten reasons you obviously need to dig into this series.

It’s right there in the title of the series, guys. On the cover of the first book, even. For real.

I’m gonna need y’all to work a little bit harder than that. *sets up big neon sign that says THERE ARE DRAGONS* Duuuuh. Okay, I realize this may not be the immediate end all, be all reason to pick up a book for some of you that it is for me, so I suppose I’ll elaborate.

The dragons in this series (because yes, there are more than one) each have different personalities and different powers, but they’re all ridiculously strong, astonishingly ancient, and like to view humans more akin to playthings.

And really, who could blame them? That seems pretty fair, considering. The dragons aren’t just throwaway playthings of the author, either. They’re integral to the plot, and by the end of book two, we don’t even meet them all yet, which means there’s plenty of goodness to come.

The story is written with a conversational tone, literally as characters are recounting events to each other, which makes the narrative extremely engaging and easy to read, plus filled with dry humor and sarcasm.

This is actually the reason I decided to give such a large series a chance in the first place, especially when I’m kind of iffy about epic fantasy. I read the first chapter and knew right away that this was something I was going to enjoy reading.

The format literally pulls the reader in, makes the narrator a character in their own right, wrapped in a larger story, and means the story reveals its secrets little by little.

Yes, these books are long, no doubt about that, but it felt like having a chat with a (very sarcastic, irreverent) friend. So even though the material can get dark sometimes, there’s plenty of humor to offset that, and the tone was such that the books really just flew by.

This is a dark, brutal world full of dark, brutal people … but also characters who want to save it, for some reason?

Pffft, I don’t get it, but all right. I guess that’s a thing. Slavery still exists in this world, along with basically an aristocracy controlled by eight houses. As if slavery wasn’t bad enough, if a slave gets “unruly,” a demon can be summoned to gaesh them, which basically means rip out half their soul and put it in a trinket that ensures they do what they’re commanded under pain of death. Fun place, right?

As much as I love dark worlds, I enjoyed the juxtaposition of these messed up anti-heroes actually working to save this world, which they all know is less than perfect.

To be fair, it’s the only one they know, so I can understand their desire. World dies, they die. The math isn’t hard here. But part of saving it will require dismantling it, for the good of the people. It’s perhaps one of my favorite dark worlds, because even though the world is absolutely dark and gritty and gory, there’s room for hope and growth and movement in the right direction, which the reader gets to see as the series progresses.

Also, have I mentioned the monsters? More than just dragons, even. The monsters range from the wondrous, like firebloods (sentient not-horses) to the deadly and dangerous.

Not just land monsters, either, but especially those. There’s also sea monsters. Have I mentioned how dark and dangerous this world is? Because yeah, still applies here. If the dragons don’t get ya, the monsters will.

What I found most interesting is that these monsters are baked into the overall lore of the world.

For example, firebloods were created (by a god, I think? … that sounds right) as more than horses, and in Jorat, they’re considered equivalent to people, if not actually higher. There’s similar lore for the other creatures, which adds a nice depth to the story.

The characters are all anti-heroes and gray characters with questionable morality.

So … you know, the best kind of characters. In a dark world like this, honestly, it’s hard to be all sunshine and roses. Besides which, what person could possibly be a hero of the underdogs if they’ve never been beaten down and forced to sometimes take drastic actions? That’s not how things work.

The heroes and villains in this are clearly defined … until they aren’t. And then nothing is quite what it seemed and you’re forced to question everything you thought you knew about everything.

The twists in this are big twists, and nothing is ever as easy as black and white. Lyons does a fabulous job of revealing things a little at a time, as the characters discover them, and sometimes … just sometimes … they’re wrong. Or chose incorrectly. Or assumed something incorrectly. I loved the fact that it kept me guessing!

The banter! The sarcasm! How can you not fall in love with these characters?

It’s a trick question. You can’t. I knew I was going to love them pretty much from the very first page with the dry, dark humor and sarcasm. All the characters have something going for them, too.

Kihrin is just irreverent sarcasm bound in a thinly veiled core of repressed anger. Which makes all his interactions fun, of course. The characters he comes across in the first book are much the same, from Tyentso, who is too old and powerful to be young and naive still, to Teraeth, who is all secrets and sexiness, even if Kihrin refuses to admit it.

In the second book, Janel’s humor feels a little less irreverent. The sarcasm is still there, but hers tends to come from her situation, from the way she sees the world in very clear terms that other people don’t always live up to. And when you put all these characters in one room? The result is just *chef’s kiss*

Speaking of Janel’s beliefs … the cultures in this are so varying, and the Joratese have to be among my favorite.

The idea seems so simple, and yet, it doesn’t quite work when encountering foreign cultures that don’t follow the custom. Although, isn’t that often the way? Basically, there are no real winners and users. There’s idorrá and thudajé. Those with idorrá lead and protect the ones who owe them their thudajé. Which in itself is an honor system, one that I especially loved.

I especially liked the way this system butted up against the culture from the first book, especially in the way that it didn’t assign normal gender roles.

A stallion is a leader, and a mare is a submissive, basically, which assigns no gender to either. A person can be female physically and be a stallion, or a male can be a mare, and there’s no shame in either. It’s just a state of being and an expression of one’s idorrá. It’s basically a distinction between sex and gender, but in these world’s terms. There’s also a festival, though, once a year, which allows praying to a goddess in order to change one’s physical sex, if so desired, and this is seen as perfectly normal and natural. Then again, so is sleeping with whoever you want, regardless of gender.

The plot is incredibly intricate and tied together so perfectly.

This mostly comes to play in the second. There are definitely hints of it in the first book, the way the end weaves back to the beginning and so many things tie in with all the characters and players in this little charade. Where it really shines, though, is in book two, where so many occurrences from book one impact Janel’s story, and they end up running into the same people.

This effect is twofold: beloved characters from the first book are brought back naturally, though in a slightly different context, but it also expands on the occurrences in the first book to give a better understanding of just how connected everything is.

And make no mistake: everything is connected. If there’s one thing and only one thing I’ve learned from the plot is that the villain’s playing a long game, and it’s going to take time to unravel exactly what that means for all the characters. This is a series where you really have to pay attention, because seemingly small things can come back to play a role later on, which makes for some really nice reveals and realizations!

At its heart, this is an underdog story. It’s an uprising that starts quietly, as uprisings do, and avalanches as others are brought in one by one.

If you like rooting for underdogs, you will love cheering for these characters. None of them have had an easy time of it, just in different ways. They aren’t setting out to change the world, per se. That’s just an added bonus when they realize they can, at least in some small way.

From slavery to misogyny to abuse of power, there are several “smaller” issues this cast tackles along the way.

I say smaller, because when stacked up against “the world as we know it is about to be destroyed,” they do seem a little more trivial in comparison. Make no mistake, though, these are big fights to be waged, and the way they tie into the overall save the world shtick is *chef’s kiss*.

The chapter headings for book two, The Name of All Things, are so creative and fun!

The book takes place over the course of only a couple of days, really, as Kihrin from the first book meets up with new characters. This second book is the story of the characters he meets and how they got there (and also a little how their stories intertwine and overlap) before it moves forward with all of them. Which means most chapters start out in the same place, on the same day … but instead of just saying the same “three days after the first book” type heading, each one uses a different event from the first book to mark how much time has passed. Let me give you a few (spoiler free) examples:

Two days since the Devoran Prophecies stopped being so hypothetical.

Two days since Queen Khaeriel lost her patience with House D’Mon.

Three days since Thurvishar D’Lorus committed crimes against historical accuracy.

Three days since property values in the harbor district of the Capital City dropped precipitously.

Three days since Miya’s hatred of Darzin ceased not being personal.

Three days since Tyentso wasn’t even a little bit ready for this.

Three days since Kihrin asked questions to which he already knew the answer—actually, forget this one: that could be any day in the past twenty years.

These are just a select few (and honestly, some of them don’t have the same comedic impact without having read the first book … but I assure you, they made me snort).