Spoiler-Free Review

If you like stories about a group of individuals with unique skills coming together and forming a bond over a shared criminal goal, Five Broken Blades should definitely be on your list. I haven’t read Six of Crows, but many fans have also loved this one.

What’s Five Broken Blades about?

A spymaster and a prince, an indentured poison maiden and her master’s son, and a thief and her bodyguard all join forces to attempt the biggest heist of their careers: killing the king.

I enjoyed this one, and look forward to the sequel.

Five Broken Blades did a good job of sucking me in. It was really fast-paced and easy to read, with short chapters that kept me flying through. The characters and their relationships intrigued me, and the story successfully wove together such a large cast – a feat that can be rare when there are six whole POVs to manage.

The storytelling relied a lot on telling instead of showing, so I felt like the writing style could’ve benefitted from some more finesse. There were some places where information was just shoehorned in ungracefully. However, its direct approach is part of what made it easy to consume quickly.

Short chapters have pros and cons, both of which I could see here. It kept the pace at a steady clip from beginning to end, and it also heightened the mystery because each chapter was a different POV, so you couldn’t always see what the others were doing or thinking at any given moment. But at the same time, it was easy for some scenes to feel like filler because they were too short for the intended emotion to land. This was especially true in the last quarter or so, when I was itching to move toward the climactic heist and instead it felt like we were dawdling with each character.

On the whole, while I had my critiques, I had a good time with this one. I didn’t see the twists coming, which is rare for me. The sequel comes out next year, and I’m interested to see where the story goes from here.

Should you read Five Broken Blades?

I recommend it to fans of fast-paced, easy-to-read fantasy with interesting characters, fight scenes, and a plot to keep you guessing. There are some romantic subplots, but they aren’t at the forefront – and they’re fraught with suspicion and uncertainty throughout. There are six POVs, each told from a first person narration. If this sounds like your jam, this is the one for you.