Many thanks to NetGalley and the author for the ARC on which this review is based

T M Carruthers tells the entertaining story of a man swept up in the center of momentous events in his debut novel, With His Father’s Sword.

Harald is a nobleman’s bastard who narrates his eventful life - his family gets massacred by a monster called the Draugr, he murders nobility, gets exiled to fight crusades on foreign shores, becomes a slave, rises to become the greatest gladiator, gets chosen by a fallen god to lead a rebellion - you know, the usual… and he is still probably only in his early thirties by this time.

The pacing of the book is uneven, zipping onwards where a steady, slow walkthrough is required and slowing down to highlight mundane events.

The world building is a mishmash of cultures - much like our real world, and that is a strength and weakness of the book simultaneously. Harald is born in a Viking adjacent world, embarks on a crusade with Catholic adjacent army to invade and conquer a polytheistic Moorish/Maghrebi country.

Its shows the breadth and variety of the world, its mythos, society and religion.

At the same time all of this feels shallow and confused, as if the author was unsure which setting is best. We get treated to superficial immersion into all the settings and overall it feels unbalanced.

Similarly, the story cycles through multiple tropes in this relatively short book - grimdark, political, milfic, training school montage, high fantasy and even university and coming of age. In isolation, some of them work, some dont. But overall, tonally its a bit of a mess, as they dont necessarily blend well into each other.

The character work is similarly uneven - Harald is almost a Gary Stu - steadfast and unbending in his beliefs, his legend only grows as the book progresses, escapes with his life and limb intact by the skin of his teeth and constantly falls upwards.

The supporting characters feel shallow and cardboard cutouts as well and none standout really.

One thing I did love about the book is that it has a very kinetic quality. There is something happening on every page that compels you to turn to the next one, even if it induces an occasional eye-roll.

I’m hoping that the author gradually irons out the above inconsistencies and finds his tone and setting, as this has the makings of an interesting story.

Overall, With His Father’s Sword is an uneven and chaotic, but a fairly entertaining debut.

The debut novel of T M Carruthers is a dark fantasy tale of vengeance against human and mystical forces. It kicks off his trilogy, Empire of the Beast.

With His Father’s Sword sets the stage for a tale of Harald Fairhair’s vengeance after his family is slaughtered by a mysterious creature, the Draugr. His thirst for revenge sets him on a path of wanton violence, and political deceit, into the trenches of warfare, to the slave pits, in far-off lands in external conflict and internal conflict.

From the starting gun, Harald is pushed through the “conga line of torture” as he goes from set-piece to set-piece, inevitably escaping terrible circumstances of violence and ill omen by the skin of his teeth, racing him through the first third of the book. The pacing of the book is haphazard at best, racing through sections that need to breathe to develop heft, and slows down for mundane introspections that don't further the plot nor sufficiently increase the emotional connection Harald or flesh out his motivations beyond “this world is a dark place, and vengeance will bring righteousness”.

Carruthers cannot decide the magic/fantasy level in his story, between the nearly no-magic setting of grimdark, to the bombastic dark magicks of dark fantasy, his world languishes in the vague middle ground. The worldbuilding lacked any coherence or anchor, with Fantasy tropes being lobbed at us with names of places, people, mythos, etc. which were lackluster enough to gloss over with no reason to delve any deeper into. As an example, with a name like Harald and the opening location, I expected a Norse-themed premise to his character, yet the characters he encounters and locations he explores, the setting turned into more of an Anglo-Saxon/English-esque vibe, which was initially jarring but ultimately was set in the “meh” pile. His foray into the Golden City arc again conjured a Middle-Eastern desert aesthetic, but I was baited again, and the setting felt vaguely Greco-Roman, with a smattering of other dissonant elements that led to an aesthetic mess.

What grew from an initial annoyance to an irritation as the story plodded through, was Carruthers narrative choices. Told as a hodgepodge mix of a single-POV first-person style, Carruthers distracts the reader by adding snippets of a memoir-style remembrance, with “if only I knew…” foreshadowing which fell completely flat. The few cases where this memoir-style has word have been in the fantastic grim-noir trilogy Empire of the Wolf (Richard Swan) and the utterly immense grimdark space-fantasy sage Sun Eater (Christopher Ruocchio), both of which have narrator characters with oodles of charisma. This partial stream-of-consciousness style with the jagged pacing causes the narrative buildup to lose any weight or emotional investment from the reader. At no point, did I feel genuinely worried about the fate of any of the characters, least of all the frankly just plain annoying, Harald.

As with the worldbuilding and the narrative style, the character sketch of the protagonist, Harald Fairhair is a confusing mess. His continuous contradiction of action, intent, motivation, worth, and self-image is jarring at every juncture. Again, unsure of what kind of protagonist Carruthers wanted to create with Harald, he samples all the hot favorites, leaving us with an internally inconsistent, externally conflicting (not conflicted, which would be better) character. A genuine Gary Stu at most places, his own lionization could be another case of meta-commentary about the quintessential grimdark protagonist, but trips at every attempt to make this a solid claim. Dragged from one location to another, Harald lacks any agency which is an annoying counterpoint to his own claimed worth and effect on the world and people around him. If this was intentional satire, it was lost upon me at first read.

Along his journey of ill-advised revenge, Harald MehHair runs headlong into several side characters that range from moustache-twirling baddies to thinly veiled antagonists, to doe-eyed romantic inserts. Even the trilogy titular Beast is so laughably mundane and tropey that causing an immediate eye-roll by this grizzled veteran reader/reviewer. None of these characters or checkpoints service the plot except by being tentpoles which Harald drags himself through the story, accruing woes and reasons to inflict his own brand of violence, in the name of revenge, of course.

A of boyhood vengeance is not unknown in the dark fantasy and grimdark spaces, but With His Father’s Sword lacks the artistic deft to handle vengeance as a topic with any kind of experience hand. There is much to be said about how vengeance is a double-edged blade that hurts the wielder (usually) more than the world. While I do believe that Carruthers attempts to get this point across, Harald is a clumsy vehicle to deliver that message.

Overall, With His Father’s Sword is an uneven and chaotic, yet anemic and mundane debut, set in a world that lacks any breadth or much depth, characters without nuance or emotional heft for the reader, following a plot that has no direction other than mindlessly pushing forward, heralded by a protagonist that encompasses all the flaws mentioned, a pale imposter of other better dark fantasy and grimdark antiheroes.

This is a really complex story about how Harold experiences the world after the brutal murder of his father and brothers. This was a story that I had to take breaks reading from - not because it was bad but because I needed time to process the horror that this character goes through. Harold experiences trauma and abuse throughout his story. The centralness of the sword to the story is a really interesting motif - the representation of how poorly his father treated him in life, yet the sword is what he uses to carry out his work.

A really interesting read that I look forward to seeing where it goes.
Thank you Netgalley for the ARC.

I was hooked from the cover and description and so glad I got to read this. It had that element that I was looking for and was a strong introduction to the world and characters. It was a strong start to the Empire of the Beast series, and had that fantasy element that I wanted. I enjoyed how good TM Carruthers wrote this and am excited for more.

I've received this book as an eArc through Netgalley in exchange for an honest review.

I liked the premise of this book, reading the synopsis and the beginning of this book was a good hook, and drew me in initially. I love the concept of the bastard son and reclaiming what is his, and I think this had the potential to do that, but just not for me.

I unfortunately DNF'd this book. I gave it until about 25% until coming to this conclusion so that it would give the book some time to draw me in.

For me personally, I just couldn't get into it. I can see how this could be appealing for some people, but it just wasn't for me.

I thought that the story just kind of jumped around, without any real rhyme or reason. I didn't really care for the main character, nor the side characters. Everything that happened, even the twist in the beginning just didn't have any weight behind it, so it wasn't impactful for me.

I'd be willing to give this author another try to see if this was just a one off for me, but unfortunately, it just didn't deliver.

This book was very well paced and very well written. I loved the story and the characters in this novel very much. The relationship was developed very well, and it felt realistic. I would love to read more books set in this world.

"His Father's Sword" is an extraordinary journey into a richly imagined fantasy world that grabs your attention from the first page and never lets go.

The protagonist, Harald, is captivating in a deeply human and complex way. His internal dialogue and struggles with recent events are written in a way that makes you share his feelings. The relationship between Harald and Lot is another standout, evolving in a wonderfully genuine way that grounds the story and makes the emotions even more emphatic and the twist full of tension.

t’s a story that feels both epic and intimate, and I couldn’t put it down. I eagerly anticipate more stories from this world.

I will happily read about Harald all day, this book was engaging well written and paced beautifully. I look forward to more twists from this well written fantasy world. Especially is the characters continue to be as well fleshed out as this book .
All in all a well written book with strong characterisation beautifully descriptive text and a tale that's still relatable despite its fantasy base

His Father's Sword is as close to a true fantasy as I can find. But aside from the true fantasy elements, this book is much more.

Harald, and LOT are both human and real with their relationship developing and evolving in a very realistic way. Haralds internal dialogue & mental response to trauma are so poignant for the reader that you can imagine yourself in these mindstates.

The story builds up and creates suspense & is multidimensional and interesting. The pacing is just right, as it is slower and more detailed when needed and quick to change with twists.

I would highly recommend this book and would gladly read more in this world.