The Emperor's Blades

Huh, well, I disagree with a large number of reviews here.

To be vague and brief, there's an ancient race(?) of evil(?) people, returned again and bent on revenge. That's the high level Big Bad we don't see much of after the beginning. The low level Big Bad of this particular book is a coup that kills the current emperor, leaving the children to pick up the pieces. Kaden is the oldest (and now the emperor), and was sent to a remote monastery ostensibly to learn monk things, but also for other more specific plot reasons. Valyn, his younger brother (and the more interesting of the two, IMO) is training to be a Kettral, highly skilled bird warriors who can do basically anything and do it with style. He finds out about the coup and wants to go protect his brother/the new emperor, but is waylaid with his training and unravelling his own set of plot problems before he can do so. Adare, their sister, is in the capitol at the time of the coup, survives, but cannot take the throne because, whoops, she's a girl. Instead, she's been made Minister, and is evidently highly skilled at politics or somesuch. She thinks she knows who's behind the coup, and wants to see them punished. We don't see much of her in this book.

I didn't think it was a perfect fantasy book by any means, but I don't think it was slow (a common problem I see mentioned here). I agree Valyn's storyline was the most interesting of the three, but I also think Kaden's was necessary to set up his development as a character, and also establish what he can do later on. I think both characters suffer a bit from the Chosen One(s?) trope, where they both seem incredibly capable by merit of being the main characters, though. And Adare, who exists in this book, definitely needed something more to keep her apace of her brothers and not made to feel like she's a less capable sibling.

All that said, I thought the story that's set up is interesting to me, and I do feel compelled to continue to see where it goes. It's not a perfect fantasy book, but if it's fun for me to read and interesting enough for me to want to continue with it, that's enough for me.