A review by toggle_fow
The Justice of Kings by Richard Swan

adventurous dark mysterious tense medium-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? Plot
• Strong character development? Yes
• Loveable characters? It's complicated
• Diverse cast of characters? Yes
• Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

3.75

 

Me, before starting this book: Ugh, this is gonna be one of those super long epic fantasies that takes me a month to read.

Spoiler alert, it did not. I read this in 5 days and it only took that long because work was extremely busy. ANYWAY, this was overall much more interesting than I expected.

We are following around Emperor's Justice Konrad Vonvalt. He's like a circuit judge, riding around the far-flung parts of the Empire and administering justice with a combination of magic powers, investigative skills, and Javert-like zeal for law and order. The story is told by Helena, Vonvalt's young clerk, who is now an old woman and narrates with the mostly-ominous wisdom of hindsight.

It was the police procedural aspect of this that hooked me. I'm a big fan of the combination of detective work, political maneuver, and Solomon-style "cut the baby in half" shrewdness involved in the work Vonvalt and Helena do.

The epic fantasy part comes later, and in the form of a huge battle scene. There are a lot of good seeds sown here:

• The omnipresence of the Empire's past. The worldbuilding is explained when necessary, but it doesn't need to be described in explicit, painful detail to be clear how the Empire's recent wars of bloody conquest have left everyone with trauma.

• It is very much hinted that we are about to see the downfall of the empire, and the ominous nature of the story, it being told by Helena as something already over, comes through strongly.

• Vonvalt is a very intriguing character. His complexity and compellingness are presented very well, and the contradictions in his relationship with Helena too. His fall from faith and what happens later because of it promise to be painful.

• Helena is present, but in many ways Vonvalt inhabits the story more than she does. This seems to be the beginning of Helena grappling with her own story, and who she wants to become outside of just being Vonvalt's clerk and shadow.

• The priest and religious shenanigans are not my favorite, but I am VERY intrigued by what is actually going on in the afterlife. I hope that is a worldbuilding mystery we will get to explore more in later series installments.

Overall, definitely an enjoyable, intricate ride and I'm fascinated to imagine where we will go from here.