Firstly, I want to disclose that I was given a copy by Escapist Book Tours in exchange for an honest review and to host a stop during the book tour.

I think this is not a book for everybody, and that will bring mixed reviews to it. Although I love grimdark and I think the genre is marvelous, I can understand that not anybody is going to enjoy it. And A King’s Radiance doubles down into the genre premise.

While the first quarter of the book might be slow, cause it is used with a double purpose, presenting the characters and acting as our first contact with the world. Let me say something, I love the creation of Luke Schulz: the world feels like something unique, the magic system of Light is hard but not too hard and especially I want to bring the spotlight on the characters.

The book is narrated from three different POVs, the three brothers: Daze didn’t particularly click on me in the first half of the book, but Raiz and Isha are marvelously written. Raiz is probably the epitome of an outlaw that has a clear objective in mind and is a really powerful Light user. Issa, on the other hand, is a slave in the house of one of the Eagles. Because I think I kinda forgot that Eagles are powerful rulers of this world and that have absolute control over the kingdoms that are subjugated to their will.

An interesting equilibrium of power between the Six Kingdoms and the Eagles is shown, at least in the meanwhile Eagles have access to a weapon that allows them to control them.

I have to remark that Luke’s prose is really powerful and it let some absolute banger of sentences, which also helps to empathize sometimes with the characters. The plot is really interesting, and honestly, I hope this is the first book of a series.

My only problem with the book and I think it’s the reason it only gets 4 stars is that I find some problems of pace in two main points of the plot: the start is excessively slow, while you are being dumped a real ton of info, which can make you feel a little bit disoriented; and for me, the ending is too abrupt, too fast in comparison with how many pages there are in a slower pace. Said that, the story hooked me fastly.

In summary, I find this a really great book that I enjoyed, but that can be hard at some points. If you are a grimdark enjoyer, and an Abercrombie fan, you should totally read A King’s Radiance.