Seven Blades in Black
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Narrated by:
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Daisy-May Parsons
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By:
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Sam Sykes
About this listen
Acclaimed author Sam Sykes returns with a brilliant new epic fantasy that introduces an unforgettable outcast mage caught between two warring empires.
Her magic was stolen. She was left for dead.
Betrayed by those she trusts most and her magic ripped from her, all Sal the Cacophony has left is her name, her story, and the weapon she used to carve both. But she has a will stronger than magic and knows exactly where to go.
The Scar, a land torn between powerful empires, where rogue mages go to disappear, disgraced soldiers go to die and Sal went with a blade, a gun, and a list of seven names.
Revenge will be its own reward.
For more from Sam Sykes, check out:
The Affinity for Steel Trilogy
- Tome of the Undergates
- Black Halo
- The Skybound Sea
Bring Down Heaven
- The City Stained Red
- The Mortal Tally
- God's Last Breath
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Critic reviews
"With skillful worldbuilding, unexpected humor, and characters real enough to touch, this is easily Sykes's best book to date."—Publishers Weekly (starred review)
"Sykes is a master at taking familiar elements of fantasy and stirring them to a wicked, wholly original churn. In Sal the Cacophony, Sykes has crafted a protagonist for the ages. Ludicrous, wicked, delightful."—Pierce Brown, New York Times bestselling author of Red Rising
"Seven Blades in Black offers villains that are as memorable and unique as the heroes. Action, magic, romance and humor mingle well in this mammoth tale. It's an immersive read in a well realized world."—Robin Hobb, New York Times bestselling author of Fool's Assassin
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He's not just any thief. He’s the greatest thief of the age - and he’s also a wizard. And with the help of his partners - a swordsman with the most powerful magic sword in the world but no magical ability of his own, and a demonseed who can step through shadows and punch through walls - he’s going to put his plan into effect. The first step is to increase the size of the bounty on his head, so he’ll need to steal some big things. But he’ll start with somethingsmall. Something like a king....
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Entertaining light fantasy
- By Kindle Customer on 02-16-12
By: Rachel Aaron
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The Fate's Forsaken Omnibus
- Books 1-2 and Prequel Novella
- By: Shae Ford
- Narrated by: Derek Perkins
- Length: 37 hrs and 58 mins
- Unabridged
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Books 1, 2, and the prequel novella of the Fate's Forsaken series. The series follows the adventures of Kael: a young man who is thrust from his home in the Unforgivable Mountains and onto a hero's path. The journey is long, the battles are fierce - nearly all of his companions are outlaws. And Kael's rotten bad luck seems to make everything worse. This is his story.
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Fantasy with light romance
- By Skipper on 09-23-15
By: Shae Ford
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Royal Bastards
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- Narrated by: Brittany Pressley
- Length: 10 hrs and 26 mins
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Being a bastard blows. Tilla would know. Her father, Lord Kent of the Western Province, loved her as a child but cast her aside as soon as he had trueborn children. At 16 Tilla spends her days exploring long-forgotten tunnels beneath the castle with her stablehand half brother, Jax, and her nights drinking with the servants, passing out on Jax's floor while her castle bedroom collects dust. Tilla secretly longs to sit by her father's side, enjoying feasts with the rest of the family.
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Reading is not the same as the physical copy
- By Annelle Powell on 07-09-18
By: Andrew Shvarts
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Tower of the Forgotten
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- By: Mitchell Hogan
- Narrated by: Oliver Wyman
- Length: 2 hrs and 3 mins
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Niklaus, master swordsman, has not aged a day since being chosen by his mercurial goddess. A slave to her will, he moves from one cryptic mission to the next in the hope of ascending to become her equal. But even a man who has lived for centuries can sometimes find himself out of his depth. When Niklaus is sent to kill a sorcerer of the Tainted Cabal, overconfidence leads to a fatal mistake, and neither experience nor skill with a blade can prevail against the forces unleashed against him.
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What's Next?
- By James on 06-04-17
By: Mitchell Hogan
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The Emperor's Blades
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- By: Brian Staveley
- Narrated by: Simon Vance
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The emperor of Annur is dead, slain by enemies unknown. His daughter and two sons, scattered across the world, do what they must to stay alive and unmask the assassins. But each of them also has a life-path on which their father set them, destinies entangled with both ancient enemies and inscrutable gods.
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4 Primary Crimes Committed By The Author
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By: Brian Staveley
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Cry Havoc
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They say when the demons come, you either fight or you die.The Black Dogs know this all too well. For three hundred years, the warrior priests have sacrificed their lives to keep the island nation of Abios safe from the flesh-eating Nostros, while the rest of the world fell under the demons' savagery. However, an armada now stands poised to invade mankind's last bastion.
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truly evil enemies
- By VJG on 02-01-18
By: Mike Morris
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Web of Eyes
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When a piece of the crown prince's soul is stolen by a traitorous warlock, disgraced knight Torsten Unger makes it his sworn duty to get it back and save the last hope for the kingdom. But he can't do it alone. Self-proclaimed "World's Greatest Thief" Whitney Fierstown sits in the castle dungeon, destined for the gallows until Torsten offers this choice: rot and die in a dank cell or join him on a dangerous expedition to put his skills to good use and earn his freedom.
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A Fantasy Version of 48 Hours
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Storm Front
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A call from a distraught wife, and another from Lt. Murphy of the Chicago PD Special Investigation Unit makes Harry believe things are looking up, but they are about to get worse, much worse. Someone is harnessing immense supernatural forces to commit a series of grisly murders. Someone has violated the first law of magic: Thou Shalt Not Kill. Tracking that someone takes Harry into the dangerous underbelly of Chicago, from mobsters to vampires....
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Excellent Story, Distracting Sound Engineering
- By Tom on 05-20-10
By: Jim Butcher
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Vampire Empire - The Greyfriar
- By: Clay Griffith, Susan Griffith
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1870. A time known as The Great Killing. The vampire clans arose and slaughtered humanity with unprecedented carnage in the northern parts of the world. Millions perished; millions were turned into herd animals. The great industrialized civilizations of the world were left in ruin. A remnant fled south to the safety of the ever present heat which was intolerable to vampires. There, blending with the local peoples, they rebuilt their societies founded on human ingenuity, steam and iron.
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The Greyfriar Rocks!
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Pale Queen Rising
- Pale Queen Series #1
- By: A. R. Kahler
- Narrated by: Amy McFadden
- Length: 8 hrs and 10 mins
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As royal assassin for the Faerie Queen, Claire is used to moving between the mortal world and the Winter Kingdom. When the queen commands her to kill, Claire does the job and doesn't ask questions. Her deadly skills and loyalty are soon tested when Claire is sent to the Immortal Circus. It is one of the many places where Dream is harvested from the imaginings of mortals, and someone is causing it to mysteriously disappear.
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Loved it so much
- By Dandelioness on 11-08-18
By: A. R. Kahler
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Night of Knives
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The small island of Malaz and its city gave the great empire its name, but now it is little more than a sleepy, backwater port. Tonight, however, things are different. Tonight the city is on edge, a hive of hurried, sometimes violent activity; its citizens bustle about, barring doors, shuttering windows, avoiding any stranger's stare. Because tonight there is to be a convergence, the once-in-a-generation appearance of a Shadow Moon - an occasion that threatens the good people of Malaz with demon hounds and other, darker things....
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Worth the wait
- By Aran on 06-20-16
By: Ian C. Esslemont
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Iron Axe
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In this brand new series from the author of the Clockwork Empire series, a hopeless outcast must answer Death's call and embark on an epic adventure... Although Danr's mother was human, his father was one of the hated Stane, a troll from the mountains. Now Danr has nothing to look forward to but a life of disapproval and mistrust, answering to "Trollboy" and condemned to hard labor on a farm. Until, without warning, strange creatures come down from the mountains to attack the village.
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I DON'T WANT YOU TO FOLLOW ME,
- By Jim "The Impatient" on 07-22-17
By: Steven Harper
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What listeners say about Seven Blades in Black
Average customer ratingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
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- N. Cannon
- 11-21-19
Need audio editor
Okay so I like the book. It’s weird and interesting and I like the voice of the narrator she really makes the story BUT I want to know why this wasn’t edited!?!? There are bunch of stupid reading errors and mispronounced words. For example the narrator repeated says “incarcerated” when she means “incinerated”. She pronounces the word debris as “deBRIS” instead of “Debree”. Maybe it’s just me but I found it irritating especially as it seemed like something that could and should have easily been corrected. I have recently found more and more errors like this. Is audible trying to get books out so fast they can’t edit them?!?
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30 people found this helpful
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- Megan Halstead
- 04-27-20
Great into into a new fantasy world
I highly recommend this book. The story is gripping. And while it took me a bit to become invested in the world, the characters are what really drive the narrative. Sal is a wonderful protagonist, complex and broken, but impossible not to love. The narration by Daisy May is top notch. Her voice is perfect for many of the scathing lines that are dripping in sarcasm. Again if you're on the fence, take the leap and become a vagrant!
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- diefroggy242
- 10-04-19
The characters feel real
I loved the story, and thought that the narrator did an excellent job. She brought a lot of emotion to the performance. 5/5 stars indeed! I only wish the next book in the series were ready right now! The ending left me wanting more!
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- iamltr
- 05-17-19
What a story
Sal the Cacophony is one tough mage.
Its hard to describe this story, it has magic, violence, revenge, love, and some odd bonding. It was like listening to an JRPG that I would love to play. There are even a kind of chocobo that one could ride. The story does meander quite a bit. There are details about the details but it doesnt take away from the overall story.
The narrater was ok, the only issue I had was that it was hard sometimes to keep up with who was talking. It was almost like it was the same person speaking (or thinking) as there was very little change of tone for any of the characters. The mc, the men, the women, it was almost all the same. I mention this only because its a 21 hour book so one needs to be prepared.
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- Charlie
- 10-18-19
GREAT Read!
I gotta say, I absolutely fell in love with Sal. I love her character and I love her story and I think I would die of happiness if this ever got made into a graphic novel or a movie. I loved the characters and the plot and when I found out it's the first in a series, I McFreaking Lost It. I'm so excited for the sequel and I am officially completely emotionally invested.
This is a fantastic book and a great listen if you speed up the narrator and ignore the odd mispronounciations and inappropriately timed gaps in sentences. I feel like the reader didn't quite do this book justice, but it's completely worth it to listen through anyway!
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- kristin carlson
- 05-22-22
Took a long time to get interesting but as a whole, good book
I really liked the storyS a whole. However I had to force myself to keep listening in the beginning. I’d heard good things about the book and I got the recommendation from one of my favorite authors: Diana Gabaldon so I wanted to give it a chance and I’m glad I did. It gets a lot bette. So much so, I’m about to order the second book!
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- Kael McDonald
- 07-15-19
Perfect Blend of Rule-of-Cool and Character Study
There's a small, greedy part of me that wants to never tell a soul about Sam Sykes, because I want to use all his ideas in my DnD campaigns.
Sam is an author who I consider to be part of a newer wave in fantasy - he doesn't play to the cliché of Tolkienesque elves and dwarves, of not-so-subtle colonialism that has echoed through the genre for decades. Neither does he play to the supertrend of GRIMDARK, begging to outdo the tragedies of Martin or Abercrombie.
Sam's work reliably focuses on three things: characters with deep personal problems. A grinning disregard for propriety. And perhaps most importantly, an eagerness to ask, "What if?" purely for the fun of it. Something I think writers of both the aforementioned types of fantasy would do well to reexamine.
Seven Blades in Black does exactly that, by starting with a very simple one: "What if we mashed together Kill Bill, Trigun, and Final Fantasy? Wouldn't that just take the piss?"
Sal the Cacophony's story is one immediately familiar thanks to riffing on these concepts, but through Sam's excellent world building and understanding of character becomes one very much her own. She is now one of my favorite characters of all time. Even when I hate her. Even when she hates herself.
All of this brought to vivid life by narrator Daisy May. I will admit that Daisy's heavier cockney accent made it difficult for me to understand for the first chapter or so, but damn if she isn't the best for this job. She IS the voice for Sal. I just want other potential listeners to know that it may take some getting used to early on. Some names sounded a bit to close for my ear since I hadn't personally seen the exact spelling (Galta and Calto especially come to mind, apologies if I've spelled those names wrong).
I rarely write full reviews as I always end up going on longer than I intend, but I hope that conveys to you how much I enjoyed this story and cant stand that I have to wait to read more.
See, Sam and me, he and I had a deal. He'd write the books and I'd read em, revenge for ruin. And no one will say that Kael McDonald doesn't keep his word.
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13 people found this helpful
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- David Hossler
- 08-11-21
Great story great narrator
I liked this book quite a lot. It had an interesting power structure, solid main characters, an unironically powerful female lead with a backstory to match her fiery personality. Overall this book was great! Daisy-May made this already great story even better with her phenomenal narration putting passion behind the words of Sal.
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- Matthew Umoren
- 06-01-19
Brilliant!!!!
The story is incredible. The characters are continually evolving and growing. This is one of the best books I’ve ever read.
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- Terrie
- 05-15-21
Awesome Book
I do not have time to just read anymore. This audio book made want to not only listen but to actually read the book. I love Sam Sykes and this has to be one of the best books. I love the narration as well. I could not imagine anyone else as Sal.
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