The Price of Power

Slowburn epic grimdark fantasy. This plays heavily into the grey morality that defines grimdark. Most of the characters here have serious baggage. The world built is a dark and brutal place too.

We have four main POVs to follow: The Former Crown Prince, currently in hiding working as a drug dealer after some questionable actions in his past, an orphaned Princess trying to find her place in society and not get swamped in the continuous power plays of court, a grandmother basically torturing her grandson to try and awaken some mystic power, and a suicidal son of a farmer. This is very much a character driven story and all the characters are well drawn, even if it takes a while to really get to grips with some of their motivations.

The world building is also well done. Right from the prologue we are drawn into a world where there is an underlying conflict, a recent liberation that still defines the nation that is focused on. The idea of national identity is a key one! The mythology around that is also ever present and plays an important role in defining the action.

The magic is something intriguing as well. We have beings known as ‘The Awakened' who possess some mystical powers, but this is relatively ill defined within this first book.

Intriguingly despite this being an 700+ page beast of a book we are only really scene setting here. All of the stories are separated with no crossover. This is very much a first book in a series, and whilst there is certainly a steady build in the action it all still feels like only the opening shots in something greater.

Definitely intrigued enough to delve further into this!