The Hand of the Sun King

There is definitely an increasing influence of Asian cultural mores in modern fantasy and this is definitely welcome - it has provided a significant shake up to the standard tropes and created some fascinating new worlds to explore in literature. There is an unashamed Asian influence on this debut novel from J.T. Greathouse - the mandarin style schools gives it a very distinctive flavour, reminding me of Poppy War.

The world we are introduced to is one where an empire has conquered many outlying kingdoms using its particular control of magic. Citizens of these conquered parts of the empire are effcetively second class citizens with strong ethnic tensions underlying most of the novel. Each conquered culture had its own magic which the empire has stolen for its own and repressed within the local population.

Our story lead is a half caste, whose father is from the conquering nation. They yearn to wield magic and this is tightly controlled requiring them to be selected as a ‘hand' of the emperor to get trained, requiring them to become top of the mandarin style training school. Loyalties become more complex as they learn more about how the empire works and their role within it.

I really enjoyed this - it was well written with an engaging story development. I look forward to more from this author!