A review by ngallion
The Justice of Kings by Richard Swan

4.0

Very interesting combination of murder mystery, fantasy, and political thriller. One of the main characters feels a lot like a hybrid of Aragorn and Poirot and that works a lot better than you may initially think. The biggest strike against this book in my mind is that it’s doing the thing where a seemingly basic plot point actually has world-changing ramifications. Because of that, the book has to balance empire-wide politics and micro-level storytelling, which is a difficult task to pull off. To be clear, I think this book does it pretty well, but I always felt like the book would be more enjoyable if it could dice completely into either stream. I suspect that book 2 will be exactly that, though, and I’m looking forward to reading it.