The Emperor's Blades

I have been queuing for this book on my library app for a while now, maybe a month or so. I remember being excited for it when I discovered it was provided by my library and immediately forgetting what the plot was and why I was excited. As you can clearly tell, I loved it.

My overall feeling from the book is that this is an adultier, better version of An Ember in the Ashes (which I liked, possibly loved). This book follows two (kinda three, but honestly not really) children of the Emperor. One son is the heir and was sent to live in a remote monastery as a part of his training. The other was sent to train to become a member of an elite military squad. The Emperor dies (it's in the Goodreads blurb, so I can spoil it) and the sons are thrown in immediate danger. The book follows both boys closely as they try to complete their training but there is also a murder mystery at the heart of the story that is a stroke of genius. I want more fantasy murder mysteries.

I adored every second of this book. I initially planned on marathoning it in one day while I was in work. The initial 30% or so is a slow paced deep dive into the world, but as we get further into the plot we reach the surface of the water and things just gradually speed up until we reach a comfortable pace. The plot was complex enough, and the different connections between the separate story lines kept me interested.

I found the male characters to be compelling and enjoyable to read. There wasn't too much in terms of variation between the women, they were all gorgeous and adept at their required physical skill. This in some cases felt surprising (a young girl who has not trained physically can keep pace with three others who have trained relentlessly everyday) and repetitive. No bloke was described by how sexy or attractive he was, so I could have done with less of a focus on the women's bodies and more on their person. All that being said, there were some fantastic female characters that showed flaws and strengths at the same time. I think the main source of the poor characterisation came from the idea that the book was written from the point of view of a 19-21 year old man, so he will be focusing on the sexy aspects of the women. If we could abandon this idea and let young men in books control their genitals more often, that'd be great.

The setting was clearly well developed and I adored every aspect. I'm desperate to find out more and see a map, as my library ebook copy did not have one. The writing had me by the heart from the prologue and it didn't let me down once. I feel acutely aware that the next book I read is going to be heavily compared to this, and likely won't hold up.

I'm excited to see where the second book goes, and I will definitely keep an eye out for more of the author's works. My largest paragraph in this review is dedicated to a negative aspect of the book, but it was a minor issue and overall I felt like this was going to be a five star book all the way through from page one.