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A review by drlark
The Justice of Kings by Richard Swan
adventurous
dark
mysterious
medium-paced
2.5
I went into this fantasy knowing it would be dark, but I picked it up because I enjoy my genre fiction mashed up with other genres, so a fantasy with a murder mystery and some plucky roving government investigators on the case sounded like a good time. It was not a good time. But I think that's mostly because I would put this in the grimdark sub-genre of fantasy, and that is just not for me.
I couldn't root for the characters. Our narrator is a 19-year-old clerk named Helena, who grew up on the streets fending for herself as a thief. Yet, all she does in this book is flail about and cry, be petty and immature (she is 19, after all), make a couple of decent observations about the case, cry some more, and get rescued a few times. It's not that I think female characters shouldn't be allowed to cry or be rescued, but when her background is that she survived on the streets in a truly grim fantasy world where the threat of violence, and sexual violence specifically, was at every turn -- I'd have thought she'd be made of sterner stuff. Or at least know how to defend herself. But all of this was written by a cis white dude, and that group has earned my suspicion when it comes to writing women.
As a clerk, she's apprenticed to Sir Conrad VonValt, a Justice of the Emperor, who's empowered to be judge, jury, and executioner as he carries out the Common Law in the realm. He's a moderately interesting combination of father figure to Helena, employer, and mentor, but he's a more interesting combination of righteous and naive. His arc is tied to the larger arc of the series, which is the question of who should wield the power and how in an empire with far-flung outposts and colonies.
I was way more interested in this larger political question -- the legitimacy of VonValt's authority in an empire built on (graphic) violence -- than the smaller murder mystery the bulk of the book was spent on. But, given that this is a grimdark fantasy, I don't think I'm going to like the answer, as one of the themes of the genre seems to be how people who try to do right are slowly disillusioned and compromised.
And finally, I'm still not a fan of stories told in retrospective. I don't like being told a story. I want to be in it with the characters. So, tl;dr, I should've DNFd this one because it was clearly not for me.
I couldn't root for the characters. Our narrator is a 19-year-old clerk named Helena, who grew up on the streets fending for herself as a thief. Yet, all she does in this book is flail about and cry, be petty and immature (she is 19, after all), make a couple of decent observations about the case, cry some more, and get rescued a few times. It's not that I think female characters shouldn't be allowed to cry or be rescued, but when her background is that she survived on the streets in a truly grim fantasy world where the threat of violence, and sexual violence specifically, was at every turn -- I'd have thought she'd be made of sterner stuff. Or at least know how to defend herself. But all of this was written by a cis white dude, and that group has earned my suspicion when it comes to writing women.
As a clerk, she's apprenticed to Sir Conrad VonValt, a Justice of the Emperor, who's empowered to be judge, jury, and executioner as he carries out the Common Law in the realm. He's a moderately interesting combination of father figure to Helena, employer, and mentor, but he's a more interesting combination of righteous and naive. His arc is tied to the larger arc of the series, which is the question of who should wield the power and how in an empire with far-flung outposts and colonies.
I was way more interested in this larger political question -- the legitimacy of VonValt's authority in an empire built on (graphic) violence -- than the smaller murder mystery the bulk of the book was spent on. But, given that this is a grimdark fantasy, I don't think I'm going to like the answer, as one of the themes of the genre seems to be how people who try to do right are slowly disillusioned and compromised.
And finally, I'm still not a fan of stories told in retrospective. I don't like being told a story. I want to be in it with the characters. So, tl;dr, I should've DNFd this one because it was clearly not for me.