Empire of Lies

Man was this a hard book for me to get through at first! Empire of Lies turned out to be really good! However, the first 200 pages felt like they were just setting up for the plot. I got bored throughout those pages, the history being rewritten and the character backgrounds were really cool, don’t get me wrong, but it was a lot! Now the last 245 pages were absolutely incredible. Once things got rolling, I was absorbed into the writing, wanted to know how things were going to turn out for our unlikely heroes. It was a roller coaster, and I loved it! Wins: -action packed plot once we got to it. -character development. Kamals character development and change throughout the novel was absolutely incredible. I know at first he was supposed to be unlikeable. I didn’t get that, I liked him from his first chapter. -a good history lesson for people -like me- who didn’t know much about the Ottoman Empire. -absolutely heartbreaking moment towards the end. I wanted to scream, throw the book and cry all at the same time. Didn’t see it coming, super impressed with it! Opportunities -as I said above, the first like 180-200 pages are setting up for the plot. At first, I wanted to DNF the book because nothing really happened. -a lot of Turkish that doesn’t have any explanation or meaning that’s just kind of thrown in there, but then the year is constantly pointed out as being 2017 in the footnotes. I would’ve liked a page just with translations or footnotes for those. This book is very heavy, and it’s not one you want to pick up for an easy fast read, this took me a few days to get through, and that was after a reading streak of reading 450 page books in 1 day. I was definitely afraid of it putting me in a reading slump. Until I got to the actual plot, and things started flying by and the action was fast paced and real. The heartbreaking moments hurt like hell! All in all, a very good read once everything is established!

I was lucky to get an ARC of this from Bookish First. This was a great what if thriller! What if one man had the power to go back in time to a key spot and change the way the future was going to go. That is what Rasheed did. He did not want all the fighting and violence and so he made sure that the Ottoman Empire won the key battle at Vienna. And thus was born the new future where the Ottomans conquered and controlled a vast majority of Europe. Unfortunately by the modern times, it was failing too, even with the wildly changed history. The first part of the book was pretty interesting and set things up nicely but I was not totally hooked until about halfway through the book when Nisreen and her husband learned the secrets of time travel themselves. I really liked Nisreen, she was a strong character and even in the world she lived in, she made herself heard. Kamal, on the other hand took a bit of time to become likeable, though by the end I was totally rooting for him too. This was a good story and I am glad that I live in the world I do, even with its own issues, rather than under the rule of the Ottoman Empire.

One man with a secret only he knows, can and does change history... But is it for good? - In that instant, in a blink of an eye, everything changed. History changed. - After discovering a secret that enables one to travel in time, Rasheed knows exactly what needs to be done. He aims to do whatever it takes to ensure the survival of the now collapsed Ottoman Empire. In doing so, he wants to create a world he believes will be better than the one we have all experienced. Some may disagree with what he has done... if they ever find out. Others may agree with it not knowing exactly what "it" is or what was lost/gained because of it, while most everybody else is completely oblivious to the origins of their world or the secrets behind the infamous Rasheed's involvement. I found this story to be crazy intriguing and dove right in. In the beginning, Raymond Khoury immediately draws the reader into a new world that is also extremely familiar, drawing from our present struggles and triumphs throughout the whole story and finding a great balance between History and the "Alternate" History created by Khoury. I have to admit, there were multiple times I felt the storyline really struggled to move along at a comfortable pace, but if you don't let yourself become bogged down by these slow spots; the story catches up with itself and pulls you back in. Unfortunately, most of these slow spots correlate with Kamal. I had a hard time relating to Kamal as a character but eventually I found myself rooting for him while he tries to understand his world, his role, and the well being of all humanity. A great story that intertwines time travel, alternate history and historic fiction *All quotes are taken from the ARC version of the related title and may not accurately represent the finished/published version*