"People see the world and think it's made of wind and rock and water, when really it's made of spells and words"

* * * 
3 / 5

Lord of Secrets was a deceptively simple story: a young man is searching for his captured grandfather. He is told to find a man and steal a relic from a temple. To be honest, it was very refreshing to read a book that had a clear direction. I've read way too many books that are needlessly complicated for the sake of surprising the reader. 

"Just like that, he strode out of the place that had been his prison for the better part of a millennium, up into the darkness"

Corcoran Gray is an illegal mage. With a fake tattoo on his hand and a high ranking officer on his tail, Gray is on the search for his arrested, imprisoned, and probably tortured grandfather. He stumbles into a stable and finds a runaway slave girl - Brix - who ends up getting them both arrested. From there we have a breakout, a break in, and a fair chunk of temple-robbing as Gray tries to follow the clues that his grandfather has left him. 

Like I said, the plot it good. Added into the mix was a pretty awesome magic system where spells must be painted onto a surface using runes and then spoken aloud. The catch? Spells burn through paper, skin, or whatever they are written on, and casting a spell takes a huge physical toll on the caster. Not only is Gray constantly in pain or about to throw up, but he also has a destroyed knee that he wears in a brace and is epileptic.  

"A leaky sod barn on the cold moors outside Fenwydd that did not contain twenty shitting goats was already a piece of luck. You can't have everything"

The characters were a bit of a mixed bag. On the one hand I thought Corcoran was a solid guy with a load of baggage, insecurities, and chip on his shoulder. He is complex. He's also twenty-six and this book is solidly in the realm of adult fantasy rather than YA. But my favourite character was Jaern, a living god and necromancer who was pretty twisted and got his flirt on a lot. On the flipside, side characters Brix and Lorican were pretty blank slates that felt pretty stale; Brix's only 'real' features are her loyalty to her sister and her cool racial magical abilities (which weren't explored enough). 

Like the plot, the writing was also simple and clean. This is a very easy book to read and Corcoran is a solid narrator. I did raise my eyebrow a couple of times at some turns of phrase that I thought were totally out of place in a fantasy novel that wasn't in a modern setting. The worst offender was probably "at the moment she was joshing me". Joshing?? I've never heard anyone but twelve year old boys say joshing!

Overall, Lord of Secrets was an interesting and imaginative book. I definitely give it a lot of credit for the magic system and its elegant simplicity. But I think it could have done with a bit more polishing, fleshing out of characters, and the ending was a bit cringe. 

My thanks to Netgalley, the publisher, and the author for an ARC of Lord of Secrets.

Thoroughly enjoyed this, the characters are great , funny and sarcastic, my favourite ! Chemistry between them is good, notromance heavy and the only criticism I’d give it is could do with a bit more world building here. But a great entertaining read, would be a 5 star read with the world building improved

Thanks to netgalley and the publisher for a free copy for an honest opinion

I received this ARC from the Publisher via Netgalley for an honest review and can confirm all opinions are my own.

This has got to be one of the best debuts I've read in a long time. I blazed through this book in a matter of days and was thoroughly hooked by the plot and characters.

Corcoran Grey is an easy character to like. He is hilarious, most of the time without trying, passionate and despite what he tells you, an extremely good guy. Hes a character with great disability representation, and I love how Teintze didn't shy away from the ugly side of his disability, he describes his pain and limitations in detail, making you slightly more able to empathise with his character.

On his journey to find and rescue his grandfather Grey, quite literally, stumbles into Brix, a slave girl who is on the run from the guild for stealing from one of their temple's. He quickly realises that Brix may be his only hope in rescuing his grandfather, and so they form an uneasy alliance. I really enjoyed reading the relationship between these two, and seeing it progress from people who barely tolerated each other to something more. Brix doesn't let Grey get away with any of his "shit" and calls him out more than once. I truly believe that through the book she manages to make him into a slightly better person. That being said "Romance" doesn't feature heavily and if i'm being honest it was a breath of fresh air, you could tell the characters cared for each other without massive declarations of love, or mass amounts of sex. It was a pleasant change and made their relationship all the more relatable for me.

The World-building in this book was unique as you see it through Greys eyes, rather than having a dump of historical data, like you get in some other books. You learned about magic through Grey and once we meet Jaern we learn more about Grey's and the worlds history. This book contains a fresh magic system and though I found it slightly confusing and overdone at the beginning of the book, the more I read the more it fit into the general plot and story-telling so that it felt natural. One thing I liked was that the magic had limitations, so often in books now "Wizards" have little or no limitations when casting spells, but I felt that the limitations made it seem more plausible (yes I know i'm talking about wizards and spells) , every time Grey cast a spell he poisoned himself and his recovery time depended on the strength and difficulty of the spell.

The storyline was brilliantly thought out and written, there were no "slow" parts of the book, and I felt that every little fact that we learnt added something to the overall plot. I enjoyed everything about this book the characters, the fresh magic system and the plot. It was brilliantly witty and at times had me laughing out loud. I will definitely be reading the next in the series, and the only downside is that I have to wait so long for it. This is an amazing debut and because of that I am giving it 5/5 stars. Perfect for fans of Sebatien De Castells Greatcoats series.

A really fun read. Gray was acerbic and grumpy. Brix was the perfect foil for him. It’s quite a linear plot and the world building is on the kind that doesn’t have reams of history and description behind it, but this was still a really engaging fantasy adventure story with a compelling cast of characters. One for fans of lighter fantasy. Thoroughly enjoyed.

Thoroughly enjoyed this, I found the soul magic quite unique in the genre and really enjoyed it. Loved the characters, great pace and magic, not much world building, but a fun fantasy that offers something fresh.

Every so often I encounter a book that I enjoyed while reading it, but somehow had trouble remembering soon afterwards, and this is one. I can't put my finger on why.

It had some good elements, definitely. Motivated protagonist (his grandfather has been captured by the bad guys and is probably being tortured). Dynamic situation (there's a race on for an artefact that could unleash horrible undead warriors and plunge the world into war, or might save the grandfather, and the protagonist has clues to where it is and how to retrieve it). The protagonist is principled; unlike other wizards, he insists on bearing the physical cost of magic himself rather than pushing it off onto other people. He hates slavery, and will risk himself to free slaves, even one who has betrayed him.

The world is dark and troubled, the antagonists are a scary sociopath and a complete psychopath, and the protagonist has complexity and depth, imperfections and insecurities, courage and determination. His sidekick/secondary antagonist/love interest, the escaped slave, is her own person with her own thing going on; she also has a motivation, a captive sister. That's a bit too much reliance on fridged relatives for me to be absolutely happy with it, but at least the third in their party is coming along out of gratitude to the protagonist's grandfather. Both of them are courageous, intelligent, and resourceful.

Overall, I'd definitely read a sequel, but I'd have to hope that there was a good recap near the beginning.

I received a copy via Netgalley for purposes of review.

Thank you to Netgalley, Quercus Books and Breanna Teintze for my arc of Lord of Secrets in exchange for an honest review.

Synopsis: Corcoran Gray is an outlaw wizard, and the Mages Guild... well the Mages Guild don't like that. For one, they've imprisoned his grandfather and Gray isn't having any luck finding him, that is until an escaped temple slave quite literally falls into his lap and seems like she could be the key to helping him get his grandfather back. It's fairly simple after all, all he needs to do is break out of prison, go to an underground temple and evade capture and death by his own magic along the way. It should be easy right? But everyone involved has secrets, loyalties won't lie in the same place and there's a lot more at stake than anyone actually realises.

This book was, in a word: great! I really enjoyed it. The world building was excellent because it showed instead of telling. We didn't get any big lecture on the history of the place or the way the magic system worked, instead we saw how it happened as Corcoran did things. I liked the humour that was in there which made me laugh out loud on a number of occasions and it was refreshing to see a good disability representation in there too as it's not something which crops up in books very often.
I liked the banter between the characters and thought the whole exploration of magic vs gods/prayers/religions was done really well. I didn't see anything coming, the twists and turns just happen as the reader goes along for the ride.

Gray's character was wonderful I liked that he had the attitude of an old man in a young man's body it just really enhanced his humorousness. His interaction with Brix was great and I liked learning about her and her past as well.

I'm not sure if this is a standalone or if there will be further books but if there is I'll definitely be reading them! A dazzling debut!