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OFFICIAL AUTHOR BIO: Richard was born in North Yorkshire and spent most of his early life on Royal Air Force bases in Yorkshire and Lincolnshire. After studying law at the University of Manchester, Richard was Called to the Bar in 2011. He subsequently retrained as a solicitor specialising in commercial litigation.
Between 2015 and 2018, Richard self-published "The Art of War Trilogy", a sequence of epic space opera novels, as well as a prequel ("Hadan's Reach") and two spinoff mil-sci-fi novellas ("VIPER One", and "VIPER One: Countervalue", the latter co-authored with George Lockett).
When he is not writing or working, Richard can be found in London with his wonderful wife Sophie, where they attempt to raise, with mixed results, their two very loud sons.
FORMAT/INFO: The Justice of Kings will be published on February 22nd, 2022 by Orbit Books. It is 432 pages split over 30 chapters and an epilogue. It is told from the first person POV of Helena. It will be available in hardcover, ebook, and audiobook formats.
OVERVIEW/ANALYSIS: In the fringe regions of the empire, where formal courts of law are scarce, Sir Konrad Vonvalt travels as an Emperor’s Justice. Empowered to act as judge and executioner, Vonvalt roams the kingdom alongside his law clerk Helena and his taskman Bressinger, investigating crimes and rendering justice. So when Vonvalt is summoned by a local lord to investigate the murder of a noblewoman, it seems like any other case. But Vonvalt’s investigation will bring to light political factions that have been slowly gathering power, and one small case could topple dominos that will forever shatter the rule of law that Vonvalt holds so dear.
The Justice of Kings is an absorbing fantasy murder mystery that slowly reveals itself to be about so much more than the death of one person. The murder itself is engaging, with schemes and conspiracies and dark adventures to eventually catch the culprit. But the real head of the conflict here is not between detective and murderer, but between secular and religious law (referred to in the book as common and canon law). For decades, the Magisterum and the Justices have operated as inviolate powers that no one dare question; so when Vonvalt finds himself at odds with those who refuse to bend to his decrees, he finds himself on uncertain footing. The simple question of who has a right to try these men, the church or the court, is a pile of kindling one match away from igniting.
If those sound like dry questions, never fear, the actual execution of the story keeps the reader full of tension throughout the book. I frequently found myself putting the book down to do chores (or that pesky thing called sleep), only to find myself back ten minutes later for “one more chapter.” There’s plenty of action, especially towards the ending, to keep you reading from one bit to the next. The final 50 pages alone are worth reading in one go to sometimes surprising and often devastating effect.
Where I struggled a little bit was the choice of POV character. Instead of going with the obvious choice of Vonvalt, the story is instead told from the first person POV of his law clerk Helena. While Helena is 19 at the time of the story, she herself is telling the story decades after the fact, allowing her to foreshadow the doom that is to come. While it could be an effective storytelling device, the first half of the book left me a little cold on Helena (even as I was gripped by the overall story), as she mostly just observed Vonvalt and wrung her hands as he went about his investigation. By the second half, however, Helena takes a more active role, and as events unfolded, I appreciated having a character who wasn’t Vonvolt who could contextualize his actions, both emotionally and politically.
CONCLUSION: The Justice of Kings is the opening act of what is promising to be a tragedy of grand proportions. We are told in the opening sentence that the Empire of the Wolf is not long for this world, which means readers have a ringside seat to its collapse. While this book takes place in the hinterlands, where only rumors of strife at the capitol stir, the next book looks to move events to the capital itself. I have been thoroughly hooked by this series and cannot wait for the next helping of political upheaval.
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