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livluvslit's review
mysterious
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? It's complicated
- Loveable characters? No
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated
3.0
thereadingrogue's review
adventurous
emotional
mysterious
sad
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? It's complicated
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
2.0
jonknightknighthunterbooks's review
adventurous
mysterious
tense
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Plot
- Strong character development? No
- Loveable characters? No
- Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
- Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated
3.25
A slightly silly, slightly spicy, cyber-medieval action romp.
The structure is neat and keeps up the pace, though the ending feels a little rushed. And in retrospect, the first person POVs that make up one timeline are somewhat torturously designed to stop the protagonist thinking about her motives or ultimate goal, since that's all juicy reveals for the endgame.
Future London is a set dressing, with just enough detail to justify celebrity gladiator-knights, designed to provide trial by combat, but not quite enough detail to make it feel grounded in real London. (Split radially, into 7 sectors!? Hah!) That said, the Knights and their e-bikes are undeniably cool.
I'm not convinced that the King Arthur parallels were particularly helpful. If you're going to use so little of the source material, I'd be inclined to make it an inference, rather than reuse 3 character names but no more. (This _might_ just be me being dense/not familiar enough with the particular version the author was drawing on.)
The structure is neat and keeps up the pace, though the ending feels a little rushed. And in retrospect, the first person POVs that make up one timeline are somewhat torturously designed to stop the protagonist thinking about her motives or ultimate goal, since that's all juicy reveals for the endgame.
Future London is a set dressing, with just enough detail to justify celebrity gladiator-knights, designed to provide trial by combat, but not quite enough detail to make it feel grounded in real London. (Split radially, into 7 sectors!? Hah!) That said, the Knights and their e-bikes are undeniably cool.
I'm not convinced that the King Arthur parallels were particularly helpful. If you're going to use so little of the source material, I'd be inclined to make it an inference, rather than reuse 3 character names but no more. (This _might_ just be me being dense/not familiar enough with the particular version the author was drawing on.)
alcrry's review
adventurous
dark
tense
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? It's complicated
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? N/A
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
3.75
patchworkbunny's review
4.0
In the Caballaria, knights fight to settle disputes, their performances broadcast across the Seven Kingdoms for all to see… and bet upon. The Blackheart Knights are the elite, closest to the King and taking on only the highest profile fights. But the Sorcerer Knight is looking for people like him, taking him to outer-district arenas where the hopeful seek to catch the eye of a scout. There he finds Red, a young woman focused on revenge. Nineteen years earlier, the young Artorias Dracones takes the crown of London.
Blackheart Knights is a retelling of Arthurian legend with Art playing the part of a new King whose birth was under murky circumstances, perhaps involving magic. Set in an alternate London, by the time the story gets going, magic is highly regulated and god-children must register before they turn eighteen.
The story flips between Art’s rise from his misspent youth, training with his friends in city dumps to his rise to power as King, something that isn’t automatically given to him through hereditary rules, but fought for with knights. He wants to be a kinder ruler, to do things differently, but change is hard to make. The political nature of the story wouldn’t feel amiss in a more traditional epic fantasy, but I really enjoyed the more modern setting. It felt a bit cyberpunky in parts.
The other side of the story is more present day, following Red and her desire to become a knight to get closer to someone, to seek revenge. As it progresses the two timelines start to provide connections between Red, Art and the Sorcerer Knight, as well as fleshing out the worldbuilding behind the magic aspect.
Maybe I am a bit out of practice with reading present tense, but it took me a while to get used to it here, especially since both timelines were in that tense. It meant I often forgot that Art’s chapters were happening a long time before Red’s. Once I got into the writing style, I enjoyed the story and was sucked into this world of knights and magic.
This is not a young adult story and there are several sex scenes. By the time we reach Red’s story, Art and those around his are no longer teenagers. The cast includes queer and nonbinary characters too.
Blackheart Knights wasn’t really what I was expecting from the official blurb but I ended up enjoying it anyway. I loved the way the politics of the world was introduced and how Art’s history fed into Red’s journey.
Blackheart Knights is a retelling of Arthurian legend with Art playing the part of a new King whose birth was under murky circumstances, perhaps involving magic. Set in an alternate London, by the time the story gets going, magic is highly regulated and god-children must register before they turn eighteen.
The story flips between Art’s rise from his misspent youth, training with his friends in city dumps to his rise to power as King, something that isn’t automatically given to him through hereditary rules, but fought for with knights. He wants to be a kinder ruler, to do things differently, but change is hard to make. The political nature of the story wouldn’t feel amiss in a more traditional epic fantasy, but I really enjoyed the more modern setting. It felt a bit cyberpunky in parts.
The other side of the story is more present day, following Red and her desire to become a knight to get closer to someone, to seek revenge. As it progresses the two timelines start to provide connections between Red, Art and the Sorcerer Knight, as well as fleshing out the worldbuilding behind the magic aspect.
Maybe I am a bit out of practice with reading present tense, but it took me a while to get used to it here, especially since both timelines were in that tense. It meant I often forgot that Art’s chapters were happening a long time before Red’s. Once I got into the writing style, I enjoyed the story and was sucked into this world of knights and magic.
This is not a young adult story and there are several sex scenes. By the time we reach Red’s story, Art and those around his are no longer teenagers. The cast includes queer and nonbinary characters too.
Blackheart Knights wasn’t really what I was expecting from the official blurb but I ended up enjoying it anyway. I loved the way the politics of the world was introduced and how Art’s history fed into Red’s journey.
siavahda's review against another edition
5.0
HIGHLIGHTS
~King Arthur, but motorbikes!!!
~King Arthur, but queer people exist!!!
~knights as rockstars
~you should definitely listen to the fortune-teller, actually
~magic graffiti
Perhaps you love the King Arthur mythos. Perhaps you hate it. Perhaps you’ve actually managed to be an English-speaker who's never heard of it at all.
It really doesn’t matter which, because whatever camp you fall into, I think you’ll love Blackheart Knights. Because it’s a retelling that manages to honour and draw heavily from the ‘canon’ (if the King Arthur story can be said to have a canon, which I’m not sure it really can) while being so original, so itself, that you can forget about it being a retelling at all if you want to. It stands on its own with or without the ‘canon’ to back it up – and it’s standing across from you in the fighting ring, with its sword drawn, telling you to bring it.
Laure Eve has created a brilliant world not quite like anything I’ve ever seen before. The landmass that is Scotland-England-Wales is divided up into multiple kingdoms, of which London is the most powerful and influential. But the setting isn’t medieval; there are knights, but they ride motorbikes, not horses, and though they fight with swords, guns are absolutely a thing. There’s magic, but the people who can use it – godchildren – wear monitoring bands around their wrists and are tattooed at 18 so people can identify them. Fashion trends are set by rockstar knights; legal disputes are decided in an official arena, where the champions of each party fight until the Saints grant the deserving side their victory. Televisions are ‘glow-screens’, and over the course of the book we see them go from being an expensive rarity to something every household owns. And London itself is divided into districts, each ruled over by one of the seven families descended from the Saints who established the modern world.
It’s strange, and delightfully different, and it’s so beautifully cohesive. Eve’s London is so real you can almost touch it, all the disparate parts coming together in a perfectly organic whole. No part of it ever rang false or unrealistic or there Just Because. It all works.
And so does the story. Stories, really, because Blackheart Knights is made up of two storylines, following two different characters. The first is Art, who is very clearly Eve’s take on King Arthur; he’s the illegitimate son of King Uther, his conception was surrounded in scandal and magic, and he was raised outside of London, away from its politics. The book opens with him and his friends being surprised by the news of Uther’s death, and the revelation that Art is now, kind-of-sort-of-but-very-temporarily, King. Temporary, because London’s monarchy isn’t decided by blood; the new King (or Queen) will be determined by the Saints, as each noble family puts forward their champion, and the winner of the subsequent tournament takes the crown. And while Art originally has no intention of putting any champion forward – having no desire to be King – his friends convince him of the good he could potentially do in the role, and so he goes through with it.
It’s not really a spoiler to tell you that his champion wins, is it?
Read the rest at Every Book a Doorway!
~King Arthur, but motorbikes!!!
~King Arthur, but queer people exist!!!
~knights as rockstars
~you should definitely listen to the fortune-teller, actually
~magic graffiti
Perhaps you love the King Arthur mythos. Perhaps you hate it. Perhaps you’ve actually managed to be an English-speaker who's never heard of it at all.
It really doesn’t matter which, because whatever camp you fall into, I think you’ll love Blackheart Knights. Because it’s a retelling that manages to honour and draw heavily from the ‘canon’ (if the King Arthur story can be said to have a canon, which I’m not sure it really can) while being so original, so itself, that you can forget about it being a retelling at all if you want to. It stands on its own with or without the ‘canon’ to back it up – and it’s standing across from you in the fighting ring, with its sword drawn, telling you to bring it.
Laure Eve has created a brilliant world not quite like anything I’ve ever seen before. The landmass that is Scotland-England-Wales is divided up into multiple kingdoms, of which London is the most powerful and influential. But the setting isn’t medieval; there are knights, but they ride motorbikes, not horses, and though they fight with swords, guns are absolutely a thing. There’s magic, but the people who can use it – godchildren – wear monitoring bands around their wrists and are tattooed at 18 so people can identify them. Fashion trends are set by rockstar knights; legal disputes are decided in an official arena, where the champions of each party fight until the Saints grant the deserving side their victory. Televisions are ‘glow-screens’, and over the course of the book we see them go from being an expensive rarity to something every household owns. And London itself is divided into districts, each ruled over by one of the seven families descended from the Saints who established the modern world.
It’s strange, and delightfully different, and it’s so beautifully cohesive. Eve’s London is so real you can almost touch it, all the disparate parts coming together in a perfectly organic whole. No part of it ever rang false or unrealistic or there Just Because. It all works.
And so does the story. Stories, really, because Blackheart Knights is made up of two storylines, following two different characters. The first is Art, who is very clearly Eve’s take on King Arthur; he’s the illegitimate son of King Uther, his conception was surrounded in scandal and magic, and he was raised outside of London, away from its politics. The book opens with him and his friends being surprised by the news of Uther’s death, and the revelation that Art is now, kind-of-sort-of-but-very-temporarily, King. Temporary, because London’s monarchy isn’t decided by blood; the new King (or Queen) will be determined by the Saints, as each noble family puts forward their champion, and the winner of the subsequent tournament takes the crown. And while Art originally has no intention of putting any champion forward – having no desire to be King – his friends convince him of the good he could potentially do in the role, and so he goes through with it.
It’s not really a spoiler to tell you that his champion wins, is it?
Read the rest at Every Book a Doorway!
jowlsverne's review
adventurous
dark
emotional
funny
mysterious
sad
tense
fast-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Plot
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
5.0
vezreads's review against another edition
2nd time I've dnf'd this book. Sometimes a good cover just isn't enough