"Nobody conquers the world with insincere lies".

Blood of the Old Kings is dark than I thought it was going to be, and I'm talking about Lysandros. I needed a fantasy, since I was coming off a five star fantasy read and I wanted to keep the momentum going and boy did BotOKs deliver.

There was such a wider range of representation throughout the book with POVs alternating between Loran, a widow in her mid thirties, to Arienne a young scholar and Cain, a young man trying to solve the murder of his friend. I say wide range even though it may not seem like it because one of our protagonists is in her mid-thirties and I never really see books with this. Loran is a window, having lost her husband and child to the Imperial Prefect, she decides to see out the dragon (who looks amazing on the cover) for aid against the empire in the process becoming princess of Arland (that's not a spoiler btw).

I thought the magic system was great, it felt new and creative as did the execution, The concept of power generators and a dial of destiny was fun as was the exploration of magic, especially for Arienne. But also, dragon magic. It's fun.

"Victory or defeat matters less than the fact that we fight".

Obviously, BotOKs is translated from Korean to English, so there's probably alot of the origonal magic that got lost in that translation but I'm very grateful to have had the opportunity to read BotOKs, thank you to Anton Hur for the lovely translation.

I am awaiting my hard copy of the book and very excited to see what the next book brings.

Thank you, Sung-il Kim, Little, Brown Book Group UK, Orbit for the ARC in exchange for an honest review.