The Bladed Faith

Character: ★ ★ ½ ☆ ☆ ☆

Plot: ★ ★ ☆ ☆ ☆

Prose: ★ ★ ★ ☆ ☆

World: ★ ★ ☆ ☆ ☆

OVERALL: ★ ★ ☆ ☆ ☆

So this is just Dishonored but *checks quickly* uhhhhh not good?

Admittedly I picked this book up knowing it was going to be a hot pile of garbage (just the vibes, you know?), but my goodness. My goodness.

Firstly, the overarching conflict was so juvenile it was frustrating. Richard Swan, who's the author of The Justice of Kings, talked about how one of his frustrations with fantasy that led to worldbuilding and character choices in his book was that he noticed “sides” were presented as monoliths, i.e., everyone in the good kingdom is good, and everyone in the bad kingdom is bad. Granted, Richard's example was Tolkien, but damn, if that wasn't true for this book too. Everyone in the good kingdom is good and righteous, and everyone in the invading empire, down to the gruntiest of grunts, is a zealot for their God Emperor, and it doesn't ring true as to how humans work. Shades of grey are well and good in stories, and many don't need them, but it would have been nice to see some variety to characters on both sides, whether it be Guard #1026 screaming battle cries as he runs towards certain death, to the people caught in the middle who maybe put loyalty to their lives and themselves above loyalty to any one righteous cause.

Secondly, the religious aspect of this book was not handled well. I think the most frustrating thing about this was I thought Dalglish intended to write a sincere depiction of how religion plays into people's daily lives, and the pain they experience when it's been banned by an overpowering nation, but it comes off as someone who's very areligious and has been coasting along on those dang vibes again to write the book. The only theology that seems to be in place is “our dude/s are better than your dude/s and we'll prove it by killing you in a gruesome fashion”. I felt like the competing religions were treated more like sports teams which wasn't ... great.

Thirdly, there was a whole lot of logic lacking in this. Like, sure, the deposed heir assassinating his way back into power is like, a sick and timeless fantasy trope, but there are so many ways these characters could have strengthened that premise, you know? Just by asking some few, obvious questions or having some sense of empathy for people other than the main cast. The plan to make Cyrus the one and only Vagrant was ... questionable? If he's to hide behind a mask, make lots of them! Don't put all your eggs in one basket! Maybe that way you can help the people of Thanet in the meantime whilst you're training Cyrus up because he's the one who knows the secrets of the ones in power or something. I was disappointed. What happens if he refused to be trained? What happens if he dies on a mission through random bad luck? What if he quits because he can't stomach it anymore? Does your whole rebellion then fall apart? Again, it just felt like a lot of very simple questions were not thought about.

(Also made me laugh that this evil empire is intent on conquering a small island nation that has the same distance between itself and the empire's mainland that Europe and North America have, if it takes two to three months to reach it via sail.)

Finally, my other sticking point is that the narrative felt unfocused. The first and last parts felt solid, but the core of the book really did feel like a bunch of scenes mushed together until they were book length. I didn't feel much of a cause and effect going on; it was just characters running from gory scenario to gory scenario, only for them to wait and be directed towards the next bad guys they had to take down. It felt like a bunch of side quests? Lending to the unfocused feeling too were the number of POVs. I wouold have appreciated if these had been cut down to a handful.

Overall, even though I wasn't expecting much going in as, in my experience, assassin premises are executed more poorly than not (why is that anyway? It's weird that the only “good” assassin book/s I tend to hear about are the Night Angel ones (also provided you close your eyes to the sheer amount of rape going on in those)), I wish more thought was put into character and drama instead of sneaking, swordplay, and gore as I love assassin/rogue archetypes :(