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fran's review against another edition
adventurous
dark
mysterious
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
4.0
Content Warnings
Graphic: Gore, Murder, and War
Moderate: Sexual assault, Rape, and Sexual harassment
Minor: Excrement, Alcoholism, Death, Body horror, Child death, Medical content, Death of parent, Animal death, Blood, Confinement, Grief, Kidnapping, and Sexism
rheagoveas's review
adventurous
challenging
dark
reflective
tense
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Plot
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated
4.5
Content Warnings
Graphic: Blood and Body horror
pvbobrien's review
adventurous
dark
mysterious
tense
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
4.25
Content Warnings
Graphic: Violence, Death, and Gore
Moderate: Body horror, Confinement, Religious bigotry, Hate crime, Injury/Injury detail, and Murder
Minor: Sexual violence, Child death, Grief, Medical content, Fire/Fire injury, Rape, Death, and Sexual content
onthesamepage's review against another edition
dark
mysterious
slow-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
3.5
ARC provided by the publisher through NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.
While the characters we follow are untraditional, the supposed fantasy world feels disappointingly familiar.
The setup of this is great and different from anything I've read before. We follow Sir Konrad Vonvalt, an Emperor's Justice tasked with travelling the Empire to uphold the law in its remotest corners. His two companions are Dubine Bressinger, his bodyguard, and Helena Sedanka, his clerk and our point of view character. A much older Helena is telling us the story of Vonvalt and the impact he had on the Empire.
This book initially starts off as a mystery of sorts, with Vonvalt investigating the murder of a noblewoman. And that is interesting in and of itself; the investigation and the events preceding give us a good feeling for what kind of a man Vonvalt is: the law is everything to him, and while he is just, he is not cruel, and he is willing to let certain things slide. We also get plenty familiar with Helena, and quickly find out that, while she feels indebted to Vonvalt for rescuing her off the streets and giving her a job, she's not entirely sure that she wants to be a Justice. This conflicted feeling makes her sulky and belligerent sometimes, but since she's only nineteen it doesn't feel strange for her to act the way she does. She is clever, but not particularly strong when it comes to fighting, and it's refreshing to not have a main character that excels at all she does right off the bat.
The relationship between this trio is clearly deep, and fascinating to explore. There's an easy camaraderie among them, but there's also a deeper bond between Vonvalt and Helena that only gets explored a little bit. She sees a bit of a father figure in him, and he clearly has protective instincts towards her. Some of the scenes between them were very heart-warming, and I'm curious to see how this will develop in future books.
As our characters follow the thread of the murder mystery, they become embroiled in something much larger than that. If you like political machinations, you'll probably really enjoy this book, because there's plenty to be found, and I think the rest of the trilogy will focus a lot more on those aspects of the story than the ones related to Vonvalt's role as Justice.
I will say that I felt pretty confused by the world, and that feeling never really went away. The world is big, with plenty of colonized areas and different factions that have different interests, and even though I do feel the author tried to introduce the information gradually, I still found myself unable to form a solid image of the way the world works in my mind. I could never keep the different groups straight, or any of the countries, which made parts of this difficult to follow, especially towards the second half of the book. I did enjoy the writing style overall, and there were several instances where I felt the author had cleverly shown us something about the traditions of this world without telling us, and I really appreciated that.
Unfortunately, there is a lack of female characters in this book. Aside from Helena, there is only one other notable woman in the form of Justice August, and we don't spend much time with her. There is a moment in the story where August delivers a warning to Vonvalt. He ignores it because he didn't consider the situation dangerous enough. Later, someone else (a man) delivers a similar warning, and Vonvalt now seems to feel regret at having brushed off August due to thinking that her concern was born out of affection for him. But the man that he does listen to is also a friend of his, and yet his warning is apparently not considered an overreaction. Take from that what you will, but this, as well as the general treatment of female characters in this book, didn't always sit well with me.
I also wish the world had been less inspired by the Roman Empire. While reading, I looked up some of the words he uses that relate to the Empire, such as "margrave" (a medieval title for a commander assigned to defend part of the Roman Empire) or "reichskrieg" (wars fought by the Roman Empire as a whole against a common enemy). Even the way he described how other religions became part of the Empire's pantheon was reminiscent of Romanization. At this point I can't say whether this is intentional or not; maybe the author is planning something epic and we find out that the world in this book is actually our world. But based on just this book, all I can say is that I wanted something different and more unique than a copy of the Roman Empire with some minor tweaks.
While the characters we follow are untraditional, the supposed fantasy world feels disappointingly familiar.
The setup of this is great and different from anything I've read before. We follow Sir Konrad Vonvalt, an Emperor's Justice tasked with travelling the Empire to uphold the law in its remotest corners. His two companions are Dubine Bressinger, his bodyguard, and Helena Sedanka, his clerk and our point of view character. A much older Helena is telling us the story of Vonvalt and the impact he had on the Empire.
This book initially starts off as a mystery of sorts, with Vonvalt investigating the murder of a noblewoman. And that is interesting in and of itself; the investigation and the events preceding give us a good feeling for what kind of a man Vonvalt is: the law is everything to him, and while he is just, he is not cruel, and he is willing to let certain things slide. We also get plenty familiar with Helena, and quickly find out that, while she feels indebted to Vonvalt for rescuing her off the streets and giving her a job, she's not entirely sure that she wants to be a Justice. This conflicted feeling makes her sulky and belligerent sometimes, but since she's only nineteen it doesn't feel strange for her to act the way she does. She is clever, but not particularly strong when it comes to fighting, and it's refreshing to not have a main character that excels at all she does right off the bat.
The relationship between this trio is clearly deep, and fascinating to explore. There's an easy camaraderie among them, but there's also a deeper bond between Vonvalt and Helena that only gets explored a little bit. She sees a bit of a father figure in him, and he clearly has protective instincts towards her. Some of the scenes between them were very heart-warming, and I'm curious to see how this will develop in future books.
As our characters follow the thread of the murder mystery, they become embroiled in something much larger than that. If you like political machinations, you'll probably really enjoy this book, because there's plenty to be found, and I think the rest of the trilogy will focus a lot more on those aspects of the story than the ones related to Vonvalt's role as Justice.
I will say that I felt pretty confused by the world, and that feeling never really went away. The world is big, with plenty of colonized areas and different factions that have different interests, and even though I do feel the author tried to introduce the information gradually, I still found myself unable to form a solid image of the way the world works in my mind. I could never keep the different groups straight, or any of the countries, which made parts of this difficult to follow, especially towards the second half of the book. I did enjoy the writing style overall, and there were several instances where I felt the author had cleverly shown us something about the traditions of this world without telling us, and I really appreciated that.
Unfortunately, there is a lack of female characters in this book. Aside from Helena, there is only one other notable woman in the form of Justice August, and we don't spend much time with her. There is a moment in the story where August delivers a warning to Vonvalt. He ignores it because he didn't consider the situation dangerous enough. Later, someone else (a man) delivers a similar warning, and Vonvalt now seems to feel regret at having brushed off August due to thinking that her concern was born out of affection for him. But the man that he does listen to is also a friend of his, and yet his warning is apparently not considered an overreaction. Take from that what you will, but this, as well as the general treatment of female characters in this book, didn't always sit well with me.
I also wish the world had been less inspired by the Roman Empire. While reading, I looked up some of the words he uses that relate to the Empire, such as "margrave" (a medieval title for a commander assigned to defend part of the Roman Empire) or "reichskrieg" (wars fought by the Roman Empire as a whole against a common enemy). Even the way he described how other religions became part of the Empire's pantheon was reminiscent of Romanization. At this point I can't say whether this is intentional or not; maybe the author is planning something epic and we find out that the world in this book is actually our world. But based on just this book, all I can say is that I wanted something different and more unique than a copy of the Roman Empire with some minor tweaks.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Body horror and Gore
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