Ahoy there me mateys. I found this book to have an engaging main character in Lucien de Fotein. He is coarse, intelligent, sarcastic, and a real dastard in some ways. Despite myself, I like him. I also really enjoyed the character of Anea, a smart girl who is a secondary character but an awesome one. The Orfano, the deformed citizens in the novel, overall had fun characters and personalities. The “regular folk” in the world seemed to be more two dimensional in goals and actions. I was not interested in them and wanted them to be better fleshed out.

The world itself feels very renaissance-like with a lot of scheming and plotting and politics. It felt confusing and unclear. It was almost as though the author had so many good ideas that he tried to do it all and it came out jumbled. All the sides seemed to be fighting to “get the power” but for no real reason. And everyone seems to hate everyone else for no real reason either. The portion with the king as a character in the story seemed only to be there so that the Orfano existed. Even the world’s own myths and history seemed to contradict each other.

There was another major flaw in the novel. There were a ton of flashbacks in this novel making it extremely hard to keep track of timeline in reading. I almost wanted a prequel about Lucien and how he grew up and then the boy with the porcelain blade to be what happens next which leads into the series. Normally I do not mind flashbacks, but just as I got caught by one scenario it would switch and derail my train of thought.

I have thought long and hard about whether I would read the next two books of the trilogy and at this point I am undecided. I do like the two characters I mentioned and sort of what to know what happens. Maybe if the books were from the local library or free. But I bought this book and wish I would have spent my money on something else.

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