The Last Lies of Ardor Benn by Tyler Whitesides

Title: The Last Lies of Ardor Benn

Author: Tyler Whitesides

Publisher:  Orbit, Little, Brown Book Group UK

Published Date: December 1st 2020

Length: 784 pages

Genre: Fiction, Fantasy, Adult Fiction, Adult Fantasy, Epic Fantasy

Rating: 3.50/5

The final book in an action-packed epic fantasy series set in a world with dragon-fueled magic where master con artist Ardor Benn takes a job to steal a living dragon.

Ardor Benn has taken his lies to a new level, infiltrating high society so he can steal a priceless resource. But now that he’s on the inside, he finds himself poring through ancient texts, searching for answers to his deepest questions. He discovers something is coming. Something world-ending.

Now, an old enemy is extorting him for one last job. Steal a live dragon. He doesn’t know how, and he doesn’t know why. But he’s got a feeling that it’s a job he has to take. Only problem is, Ard’s running short on time and shorter on lies. And his personal ambitions are alienating all of his allies.

With no one else to rely on, he’ll have to trust the one person nobody else does: himself. 

+++++

I think I can safely say that Kingdom of Grit was one of the most entertaining fantasy series I found last year. I really enjoyed it as a whole and loved the wild ideas that the author brought in fantasy despite those ideas being almost scifi? I would love to say that the concluding book was just as fun and satisfying as the other two books in the trilogy but…I couldn’t. There were some things I could not ignore no matter how much I wanted to. The sheer convenience of certain things really bothered me and while I am okay with convenient plot landings, this one didn’t land well.

Although the main problem aside, this book was devoured in days and mind you, it’s chonker of a book. Even though I had the ebook on hand. I read upwards of 700 pages in a matter of days because I had to know what happened next. As far as enjoyment goes, this book delivered that. Sometimes, it’s really hard to let go of the mind where it’s starting to take notes of what worked for me and what didn’t and that’s probably brought the enjoyment and the rating down for me. I love the main character and the gang still and I did enjoy it, I just didn’t enjoy it as much as the previous books. Possibly because those two books built up some expectations in my mind and the author despite plotting it really well, didn’t manage to wow me with it.

Oh, goodness, it sounds too negative but I really did enjoy the book! It had all the hijinks that I had come to expect from this trilogy and its almost action movie like pacing clearly worked for me as usual. The humour also was pretty good! I do think that Ardor Benn was given so much room that the other main characters almost felt like side characters at times and people are free to argue the fact that they might be side characters but for me, they weren’t. They were their own people and I loved that individuality in the previous books whereas in this one, near the end, it’s all about how Ardor Benn is struggling with the thoughts of religions and his beliefs and not also about the other characters. It kinda bugged me, I guess.

Overall, a very solid trilogy to read if you are in the mood for something thoroughly adventurous and just love to read about characters getting up to shenanigans. It is a very solid end to the trilogy and it was pretty satisfying if a bit convenient, shall we say?