Everything Is Better With Dragons

Blurb

No man is above the law.

The Empire of the Wolf simmers with unrest. Rebels, heretics and powerful patricians all challenge the power of the imperial throne. 

Only the Order of Justices stands in the way of chaos. Sir Konrad Vonvalt is the most feared Justice of all, upholding the law by way of his sharp mind, arcane powers and skill as a swordsman. At his side stands Helena Sedanka, his clerk and protégé, orphaned by the wars that forged the empire.

When the pair investigate the murder of a provincial aristocrat, they unearth a conspiracy that stretches to the very top of imperial society. As the stakes rise and become ever more personal, Vonvalt and Helena must make a choice: will they abandon the laws they’ve sworn to uphold in order to protect the empire?

Introducing an unforgettable protagonist destined to become a fantasy icon, The Justice of Kings is an unmissable debut where action, intrigue and magic collide.

My Review

I listened to this in August and September, but completely forgot to review it for you all. Since I’m doing my ‘favourite sci fi and fantasy of 2023’ list soon, I thought I’d better add it, because I really enjoyed the book.

In this first book in the Empire of the Wolf series we meet the main characters, Helena Sedanka, Konrad Vonvalt and Bressinger. They are on their rounds, as Vonvalt is a Justice of the Empire, applying the common law across fractious provinces. They are accompanied for part of their journey by Patria Bartholomew Claver, a fundamentalist priest with ambitions to even greater things. In the first village they visit, they find an enclave of ‘heretics’, people following their indigenous religion, instead of the imperial religion of Nema. Vonvalt tries to find a solution that helps everyone, while Claver demands they’re burnt and then leaves. After Vonvalt, Helena and Bressinger move on, Claver returns with Templars and kills everyone in the village, burning them to death.

Later, Vonvalt is called to a port town to investigate the murder of a noblewoman. They find a much deeper conspiracy involving a monastery funnelling money to Claver and the Templars, a woman held hostage, and a child murdered. Helena has to go under cover, while Vonvalt is diverted by the arrival of an old friend and his investigations take him elsewhere.

Claver brings his army to the same town to demand the release of one of the priests held for the murder. He attacks the town, slaughtering innocent residents to hide the evidence of the crimes he and his funders committed. Claver shows his new powers, stolen from the Justices.

Vonvalt becomes obsessed with defeating Claver, getting revenge for the death of his old friend and for the people murdered by the Templars.

That leads us to the start of The Tyranny of Faith.

Helena tells the story, moving between her present day and her past, her recollections of events that lead to the downfall of the Empire. The structure is really interesting and we see her character development from a young, naïve, secretary to an experienced investigator, a scholar of the law. We see her first love, sex, and loss, her heartbreak and her developing relationship with her colleagues. Bressinger is her best friend but he’s a less developed character, while Vonvalt is both her mentor and a man she is developing romantic feelings for. She is torn between her professional obligations and her personal feeling, both for her first love, for Vonvalt, and about her job, killing people, and the things she must give up to be a Justice.

Vonvalt is a highly developed character, a complex man who desperately wants to be a force for good in the Empire, but is torn between the law in theory and the way it’s practiced in reality.

Bressinger is not as well developed; we know he fought in the Riekskrieg, lost his wife and children, to an attack on his home town, and joined the service of the Empire only because Vonvalt was his friend and he wanted revenge.

The worldbuilding is amazing! It is a medieval Germanic inspired world. It reminds me of a cross between the Roman Empire and the Holy Roman Empire, with hints of earlier medieval European states. There’s Templar knights and hints of gun powder, while village ladies lead rituals around bonfires to forbidden gods. The supernatural elements are woven into the story completely; from Vonvalt’s necromancy to Helena’s unexpected trips to the ‘Holy Realm’ – the places where the dead and the spirits live. The ‘gods’ are shown to be questionable, while the magic, under different names and either allowed or not depending on who is using it, is a tool that people use or fight over.

The writing is really accomplished and the story flies by. I’d never heard of Richard Swan until I received a signed special edition of this book in the SFF Fellowship subscription in 2022. Now I follow him on Instagram and have the third book in the series on pre-order. I’m a bit of a fan of his writing.

The narrator is really good. We can hear the difference between young Helena and older Helena by the tone of her voice. She puts a lot of emotion into her narration.

If you’re looking for an epic fantasy, try this series.