My Five Word TL:DR Review: Hooks you with Indecent Haste

I really enjoyed The Silverblood Promise.  It just worked really well for me.  The writing is smooth.  The characters are easy to become attached to.  There’s the whole mystery and saving the CIty element to the story which never became dull.  The setting was easy to imagine.  And, well, it was very entertaining with this really easy going style of banter and bluff going on between the MC and his companions.

So, as the story begins we meet Lukan Gardova.  Lukan is the disgraced son of a noble family fallen on hard times.  Basically, they have little cash but they compensate by having a long history that keeps them in good stead, that is until Lukan’s actions result in his expulsion from the Academy he attends and a life on the move, estranged from his father and living a life not dissimilar to that of an outlaw.  Lukan is set on a path of wine, women, and cards until his father’s trusty retainer seeks him out with the sad news of his father’s demise.  Lukan will never have the chance to make amends and the pill is made more bitter to swallow with the knowledge that his father was murdered.  However, in his dying moments his father wrote a letter to his son, three words, written in his own blood that will set Lukan on a strange journey in search of answers.

This is very enjoyable and a great start to a series.  Let’s have a look at what worked well for me:

The world building was great – and in fact the City we spend most of our time in was fascinating.  There’s the sort of attention to detail that bring the place to life without being clunky or purple.  Just little snippets of religion, festivals, the way people live, the huge disparity between the rich and the poor that make this a rich and believable place.  There’s a tall tower set within the sea where criminals are taken, we soon learn that this is run by the much feared Inquisitors.  We have the merchant princes who control everything that takes place, corrupt religious officials who don’t practice what they preach and a twice crowned king of the underworld, nobody so much as picks a pocket in this city without giving him his tithe.

I really liked the characters.  Lukan is a lovable and cheeky rogue with a heart of gold.  His journey has him racing round the City in search of clues, usually as one door closes another opens and frequently this takes him on a new magical mystery tour that he must solve before he can get any further with his own quest.  I will say that Lukan is very easy to read and what makes this more so is that he isn’t perhaps as good as he thinks. He can use a sword but he’s perhaps not the best and he sometimes just runs headlong into trouble.  So, he’s not perfect and that goes for the rest of this cast.  He is fairly quickly joined by a sassy street urchin known as Flea.  She’s a great character, talks too much, but is endearing and her tough early years have given her a hard outer edge.  Yes, this is an obvious and frequently used trope, it allows our MC to travel around easily (because he has a knowledgeable companion) and it gives us an ongoing commentary that delivers other snippets of information but, it succeeds  because the two work so well together.  There are plenty of other characters along the way and they all felt distinct which is a really winning element of the story for me.

I loved the locations we travel on with Lukan.  His journey sees him conning his way into a place that most people are trying to escape from, creeping through the dark and creepy catacombs and being chased by a huge magical wolf.  Well, I won’t go into everything else because you need to read and discover these things for yourself.

Basically, if you love a fantasy story with great world building, characters that jump off the page, funny banter and plenty of entertainment, a murder mystery that morphs into so much more and offers plenty of promise for the future, portals, magic and strange ‘faceless’ ones, don’t wait any longer – do yourself a favour and jump on this series now.  Yes, right now.  You know you don’t want to get left behind and this first in series has ended on a perfect note with a great set up for the next book that promises a whole new location and an entirely different mystery for Lukan to solve.

In terms of criticisms.  Well, I don’t know, I might have had some along the way but to be honest I was enjoying myself too much to give them much thought and I didn’t make any notes – either good or bad – I simply read.

An impressive debut – my only problem now – waiting for No.2.

I received a copy through Netgalley, courtesy of the publisher, for which my thanks.  The above is my own opinion.

My rating 4.5 of 5 stars