Age of Assassins

This is a book that had been sitting in my tbr for way to long. My girlfriend ended up getting started on this trilogy before me and was effusive in her praise. I really enjoyed the Bone Ships so was looking forward to reading more of RJ Barker's work and it did not disappoint.

In many ways this a typical coming of age story, where we follow Girton Club-Foot, an apprentice assassin. However, Barker has built a really impressive world around this. Here, magic is looked upon as evil - it damages the land and the only way to heal it is with blood. The ruling classes are dominated by petty dynastic squabbles and it is these that we are drawn into.

Being assassin themed there are lots of secrets in play and these are gradually revealed in a very satisfying way.

This is mightily impressive debut and I am looking forwarded to delving further into the Wounded Kingdom!

In the face of the negative reviews here, I actually thought this was a fun book. Maybe not what was expected based on the title and the summary, but I still enjoyed my time with it. Flawed? Sure, but I still enjoyed reading it, and I think that's what counts.

Girton Club-Foot is an assassin apprentice who learns under his master Merela who rescued him from being sold into slavery as a child. There's an heir to the throne that's being threatened, and Merela and Girton are tasked with uncovering the plot to kill the heir without revealing what they do. Despite the summary it's not an action-packed book–by merit of growing up under Merela's tutelage, Girton hasn't had much of a childhood, and much of the book is him integrating with other young squires, making friends (and enemies), and otherwise enjoying the joys of being young. Merela cautions him repeatedly to maintain a distance between himself and the other boys, but Girton doesn't listen, for better or worse. While living his best life, Girton also finds time to investigate the castle for potential murder suspects, and we get a bit of a murder mystery twist reveal at the end that's satisfying.

So I thought this was a fun read (or, listen, I guess, since I listened to the audiobook), but it's definitely not action-packed. There's some fight scenes (rather gruesome sometimes), and there's definite plot development, but it's not the cloak-and-dagger, stealthy, super assassin type of plot development. More of a coming-of-age medieval story while also being a great fighter (and maybe more?). The author's writing style is fantastic though, I sort of loved the cliffhanger statements he built into his writing that readies you for something awesome to happen in the next scene, and the epilogue really has me interested to see where the story goes. There's lots of untapped world potential here, like the magic system that was brought up but not fully explored as to what it means for Girton, and some other loose threads that weren't satisfyingly tied up. I look forward to the next book to read more!

Fun debut. I love fantasy books about people being trained in their craft, especially martial combat. It's a genre of fantasy that I really enjoy, as its far more pleasant than reliving my own high school memories. Age of Assassins doesn't quite fit the genre because by the time the protagonist arrives in his training, he's already been trained as an assassin for years and is just pretending to be a squire-student, but it has the same feel.