Oathbound to the fifth prince of the empire, Mateo and his friends head north.
The Fifth Prince, Isaac Cassius Kell, has been sent from the empire’s capitol to the mountainous northern border, and Mateo and his Iron Wing Feather have been sent along to keep him safe. Tasked with guarding and advising the prince, Mateo quickly realizes that the job is more complicated than he anticipated.
Not only is the Prince locked in a hidden struggle with his four siblings, all of whom want the throne, but he has no desire to face the Barbarians he is supposed to be negotiating with. As Mateo navigates the complexities of the fight for the Imperial throne, he’ll soon discover that the true threat to the Prince’s life comes from within the empire rather than outside of it.
The deepening mystery of his master’s past only adds to the challenge as Mateo and his friends are forced to contend with a mysterious group of magicians wielding mind-bending magic unlike anything Mateo has ever seen before.
Don't miss book 3 of the next great Fantasy LitRPG Series by Seth Ring, author of the best selling Battle Mage Farmer and Nova Terra. Grab your copy today and join Mateo as he ascends through the flames of war.
About the Series: Following a weak-to-strong protagonist, this series mixes epic fantasy action, mystery, cultivation, and a world with endless depth where little is as it first appears. This LitRPG/GameLit series is perfect for readers who enjoy exploring rich worlds and complex characters.
This story just gets better and better. Seth has started something incredible and the next books just solidify the world building and epic characters. Can't wait for more.
I like where the last book left off aside from this pointless contest set up. The betrayals were seen a mile away. The poisoning was obvious, the raids were obvious, and the betrayal was obvious. This setup took eighty percent of the book, and it was tedious to read about.
Relatively short, this novel held my attention easily. It seems like the hero is going to take power from every magic system in his world. I like where this is heading.
DNF at 70%. A climax should have you tearing through pages, desperate to see what happens next. Instead, I had to drag myself along, increasingly frustrated. The plot is painfully transparent—every twist and trap is telegraphed well in advance, and worse, the main characters acknowledge it. They literally see the setup coming, comment on it, and then… do nothing. They just sit there and say, “Welp, guess there’s no way to stop this.” It’s ridiculous.
I genuinely enjoyed the first two books, but this one felt like rage bait. If you’re into stories where characters knowingly walk into obvious traps, then stand around shrugging until everything falls apart so they can finally act—maybe this is your kind of read. For me, it was a disappointing slog.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
This one is a bit inconsistent. Our genius becomes an oblivious idiot savant in this one. The plot twists and betrayals are a little obvious. I liked the story overall and this series but I found myself getting annoyed a lot in this one.
Is the tyranny of rank a real thing in this world or not? It seems to only apply to our main characters party, they struggle to fight a rank up even with all their advantages. The enemies(who are not elite forces) seem to fight duelist forces no problem and always have high rankers on hand. The world power scales are extremely poorly applied. The author created rules and then only apply them when it suits him, mostly to make our main characters life harder.
Why are these magic soldiers who are supposed to be able to 1 v 20 easily running away from standard troops so often? Why is a plot with mostly mortal soldiers even dangerous at all to the magical troops?
The Iron feathers are allegedly the only all duelist forces in this world and most armies are made of normal men so the vast majority of the combat between forces make no sense in this book. On top of this they are the elite special forces of the world with super spies, strategists, and commandos. 60 duelist with silver duelist should have incredible overmatch against a few hundred normal men from what has been demonstrated.
The main character also has a crow that can deliver messages to HIS immensely powerful order and elects not to. A single message from him to his order would have treason charges issued and have all of the offending parties executed or at least marked for death by supernatural assassins, that is the single most annoying part of this one. Everything is resolved by one fucking letter... that's all that is required. And yet he doesn't contact or use the resources available to him. He also had many super spy types in his immediate vicinity and he made use of none of them when he knew he was in a hostile situation with traitor commanders.
Our main character also constantly forgets about his ability that can make a massive difference in any battle.
The second book was already a slight downgrade on the first by having a pacing problem. but dialogue still remained good, plot points and twists remained intriguing and fun. I'm sadly deeply disappointed in the third installment. The story felt like it was trying drive many plots forward while letting none take its time to brew. Nothing exemplifies more the relationship of our characters with the prince and the ending situation of the book with him. Our cast had barely any time to settle with the prince, no time to build any sort of relationship, not to mention the dynamic already being extremely skewed. So to have such a unnatural relationship where they simply love him, to the point that our main character is questioned by his closest person, to the point he was scared of losing said person, over a prince they barely know is jarring. The last part of the book how ever, was the most unsatisfying plot twist and i will forward this by saying it may spoil you on the nature of the thing that happens but not the intricacies, i will leave it open. Our resolution to the book and the plot twist is not only unsatisfying, but induces anger, our main character just gets something horrific done to him by someone who he was blindly putting trust and faith in. And after the deal, his friends are... fine ? even the crow is calling it a gift ? It's so absurd I'm considering not reading the 4 installment. The last critique is how the author forgone dialogue entirely, we are in multitude of points, in situations that are extremely serious and dangerous, and we have this immersion breaking dialogue where our main cast talks like cartoon characters with jokes and giggles, it happened multiple times, the rest of the characters introduced are losing all sense of common sense as well, before you were introduced to characters who had a small semblance of normalcy, now everyone else feels like a NPC with 1 note personality, and they talk all the same. overall, I'm extremely disappointed, i really loved book 1, i found book 2 still enjoyable, but book 3 is a impossible re-read.
Having read Seth's other series, Battle Mage Farmer, Titan and Tower, while waiting for Tower book 8, I thought I'd read this series and see if it was good. To my surprise it wasn't. It was amazing! It pulled me in even deeper than the previous books I've read, meaning that Seth spits out a new book on average once a month and they just keep getting better and better.
So far Iron Tyrant doesn't feel like it is the same universe as some of the other series, but you never know - It could be revealed in a later book, so we may be in for a surprise.
Amazon was listing this book as books 3 of 4, so as I was reading and getting near the end, I thought to myself "no worries, we'll just grab the next one". As I finish the book and attempt to purchase the 4th book, what do I see? To my lament book 4 is only up for pre-order and is set to release in December! That's half a year! That's too much! - I felt physical pain while my dopamine crashed because I didn't want to start on yet another book series...
After a few hours however, I did and have bought the rest of the book series published so far. Seth is just that good.
Book 3 ended on a cliff-hanger and having to wait this long for book 4 is pure torture!
Great book up until a certain point. Which honestly made me want to rage quit but…. I mean the rest of the book was pretty good. But just….the end left you feeling the ick. Or it did for me. And I thought it so unnecessary to the plot. Like I get wanting to set our MC up for the future but I don’t understand why it happened this way. If they are friends, why couldn’t dude just ask? Not like MC would have said no…so… idk. I really disliked, not the direction Seth took, but the way he went about it.
And also his friend’s response. I think I understand that they were trying to be helpful I guess? Or maybe funny to break the severity of the situation? But it just felt like a betrayal, like they weren’t really friends. Kind of Iike a certain someone’s doubt at the beginning of the book. It just really makes me question the whole trio and everything they’ve built.
Just really disappointed. But I’ll be reading the next one anyway. Hopefully it’ll get better.
Shameless plug: Also go read Dreamer’s Throne if you haven’t! It’s so so good and I need more people to read it so Seth will finish the series! But like hopefully with all his heart and not half of it cause it’s SO good. Also it’s way spooky so I mean, perfect time yes? Check it out!
So good! Yeah, Mateo, Rose, and Eric are finally back together! Yay! Their original team... bringing their Feather together, fully trained to an elite fighting force. Their given one task only which is to keep the fifth Prince, Isaac alive, while he treats with the Barbarian tribes, in hopes of brokering peace! While I'm sad that building his heart deck takes a back burner, while saddened it didn't stop the pleasure of reading this awesome book! Mateo is dealing with a lot! As he has barbarians and magician to contend with, and each uses a different system, a different kinda magic! Mateo is not about to be out done here! And learns how to do both. Learning even more about his Beastmaster Skills/Totem too... So grab the book and paint the world! 'Cause you're not gonna wanna miss the grand conclusion!!!
Here's a quote for yah:
“If I was a beastmaster, I’d get an elephant,” Rose said, slamming her fist into her palm. “That way I could just ride straight over my enemies.”
Seth Ring has to be the most creative writer ever. Every book I read by him just gets more inventive, interesting, and intriguing. I feel like this book was so detailed but didn’t feel bogged down or slow. The story was fast paced and the twists were perfectly placed. The Isaac/Matteo switch was perfectly foreshadowed and felt like a perfect twist and way to make the story move along. It wasn’t a surprise but more like the author knew what the story needed and wrote a book that written well over some crazy twist. I loved it. This book was full of found family, family betrayal, and having to put trust in others when no one has earned it. The narrator did a phenomenal job and their voice acting, pacing, and vocal inflection made this story so, so good!
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
Seth Ring does it again. Healing Skies is a solid continuation of the Iron Tyrant series, packed with meaningful progression, layered political tension, and one hell of a plot twist. Mateo’s journey keeps evolving in ways that feel earned, and the mix of cultivation and LitRPG elements still hits the sweet spot. The magic system continues to impress... balanced, inventive, and with enough mystery to keep things intriguing.
The stakes feel bigger this time around. Escorting a prince who’s less than thrilled to be on the frontlines and tangled in imperial politics was already enough, but the twist over halfway through changes everything. The deeper dive into Mateo’s master’s past and the introduction of mind-warping magic adds even more depth. This series just keeps leveling up. Highly recommend for fans of smart progression fantasy with actual consequences.
This was a somewhat fun read but it is starting to feel identical to Thorns story. Where it really took a hit for me was Prince Isaac’s death and the identity swap. I saw it coming and while it doesn’t completely ruin the story for me I just think it would have been better with Mateo supporting Isaac throughout the competition. I think with a break I will still pick up book 4, but very disappointing to go from book 1 which I loved to this. There was definitely a better route for this series to take.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
I loved this audiobook! It is beautifully narrated by Ramon De Ocampo and I will be looking for any other audiobooks narrated by them. The narration helps bring you into the story and makes you really delve into the characters. This book is book 3 of the Iron Tyrant series. It has a total run time of 10 hours and 52 minutes. Even though this is a shorter fantasy story, it is well written and has an immersive way of building the world.
Thank you to Dreamscape Media for allowing me to listen to this audiobook via NetGalley in exchange for my honest review.
Mateo graduates early from his training with the army in intelligence gathering and joins his teammates (feathers) to defend and protect the fifth son of the Emperor, Isaac.
The children of the Emperor are in competition with each other to become the next Emperor. Only Isaac doesn't want the job. He'd rather paint, where he has a gift. Each child gets an assignment. Isaac's job is to bring peace with the northern barbarians.
That would be hard enough, but each of his siblings is out to kill him, as well as some of the nobles.
Hold on to your seats! You're in for a rough ride!
I normally don’t leave reviews, but I had no choice this time around. This book was amazing. There was action, there was drama, there was comedy. In me, there was terror when I realized I was 70% done with the book. Look, this is book 3 so if you’re a fan you know what’s up. Honestly I can’t wait for book 4 and I’m a bit mad that I actually do have to wait for it.
This is the second book in one of Seth's series that I've read this week, and both of them had twists that I didn't care for. Really odd coincidence that! But anyway, there wasn't a lot of growth from am ability/power standpoint, and while the plot did move forward, it felt like a lot of this one was filler.
When I saw that description I knew of three different directions the story could have gone. It was more or less what I was expecting out of the three. I'm not sure how I feel about it. And the prince said the whole book, even in the last book that he didn't want to be emperor
The book lost its edge when they took over watching the prince, there was no actual advancement in the main character power or his friends. The prince was a weakling and cowardly the book started to get into conspiracies that I don't like to read about, I quit reading after 70 percent because it was not worth reading any further!!
Matteo is a dumb genius. The book is beginning to feel contrived. The problem with child heroes is managing expectations. For someone who has a spirit guide, PERFECT MEMORY and meditates so much, he is quite forgetful He forgets his powers quite often. The author forgets that cardholders drop their cards on their death. The sidekicks do not feel like people. Just trope machines
This has to be his best book yet. I was enthralled the entire time. The Cloak and Dagger, mixed perfectly with the action. Throw in some answers to questions from the first book, then mix in a unexpected friendship. You have a book you can't put down. Coming from someone who has read almost all of his other series.
This was an excellent installment. The MC continues to impress. I’ve read several of the author’s series, and this one is my favorite. There’s a great plot twist about 80% in.
The MC and the characters are constantly evolving their skills and personality traits. The plot is complex and intriguing. Curious how the story will reveal the secrets of Mateo/Isaac Master Solomon.
Fantastic addition to the series, read the entire book in a day. Mixes a lot of different paths to power, cards, sorcerer, totems and more. Amazing plot twists.
Wish this series was on Patreon or royal road so I could keep reading ahead
I certainly wasn’t expecting Issac Kell to make the choice that he did, but it will certainly reverberate through history. Was Solomon able to predict this? Was Mateo somehow being prepared for this from the beginning?
This is a very good story, very tight. All the reasons made sense. No holes. Only thing that do not make sense is Isaac’s ability to do a third tier transfer of his entire being to Mateo. Isaac does not have that power. I gave this book 4 and 1/2 stars.
I was drawn in immediately and my attention was easily kept with good pacing and interesting events, action and drama. So much twistyness. I look forward to the next book so so much!
Another great chapter in the series. An easy read as we trace the three friends through more of their growth into their powers in the Iron Crow Army. Now that have to look after a prince, when all he wants to do is paint!
Seth ring weaves his spell again with his epic skill Author, as the spell weaves through your mind inspiring your mind with this very enjoyable read. Got me again hook line & sinker.
Seth ring’s card system is great. One of the mechanics in this book causes a predictable evolution that corrupted the suspension of disbelief for me. But still looking forward to book four