BOOK REVIEW: THE FALL IS ALL THERE IS | CONNOR CAPLAN

Recently I got the chance to listen to the audiobook of The Fall Is All There Is by C.M. Caplan (thank you very much😁). So, let's crack on.

All Petre Mercy wanted was a good old-fashioned dramatic exit from his life as a prince. But it's been five years since he fled home on a cyborg horse. Now the King—his Dad—is dead—and Petre has to decide which heir to pledge his thyroid-powered sword to.

As the youngest in a set of quadruplets, he’s all too aware that the line of succession is murky. His siblings are on the precipice of power grabs, and each of them want him to pick their side.

If Petre has any hope of preventing civil war, he'll have to avoid one sibling who wants to take him hostage, win back another’s trust after years of rivalry and resentment, and get an audience with a sister he's been avoiding for five years.

Before he knows it, he's plunged himself into a web of intrigue and a world of strange, unnatural inventions just to get to her doorstep.

Family reunions can be a special form of torture.

Petre is a royal quadruplet and he's in hiding - from his conniving, scheming family.

That is until he receives a letter summoning to swear fealty to his sister who is to become the ruler. Well, she would be, but his brother has got other ideas and thinks that he has a claim.

Now, this is a familiar tale that we have all heard before, except when Connor Caplan gets a hold of a familiar trope and then injects it with a heavy dose of complete barminess. 

Whilst you think you have heard this one before, Connor Caplan decides he is going to write a complete mash up of genres that includes thyroid science swords, biomechanical horses that explode and one giant dysfunctional family

Following Petre's POV, you are thrown into a world where not one, but two cataclysmic events have occurred and science has gone wild.

Petre's voice really comes through in this story, but Caplan also populates the story with a full complement of strong characters who feel like an active part of the book rather than being plot devices to move the story along. 

The plot has a good balance of action and politicking, particularly when Petre's family enter the story proper.

In addition to that there's some really vivid world building that includes things like ghostfog that makes those that encounter it into some form of revenant, possessed by a hungry ghost.

So, I never know how to finish these things, so I will tell you that I enjoyed the book immensely