Five Broken Blades by Mai Corland

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Five Broken Blades by Mai Corland
The Broken Blades #1
Published by Entangled: Red Tower Books on May 7, 2024
Age Group & Genres: Fantasy, New Adult, Romance
Format: ARC, Physical
Source: Publisher

It’s the season for treason…

The king of Yusan must die.

The five most dangerous liars in the land have been mysteriously summoned to work together for a single objective: to kill the God King Joon.

He has it coming. Under his merciless immortal hand, the nobles flourish, while the poor and innocent are imprisoned, ruined…or sold.

And now each of the five blades will come for him. Each has tasted bitterness―from the hired hitman seeking atonement, a lovely assassin who seeks freedom, or even the prince banished for his cruel crimes. None can resist the sweet, icy lure of vengeance.

They can agree on murder.

They can agree on treachery.

But for these five killers―each versed in deception, lies, and betrayal―it’s not enough to forge an alliance. To survive, they’ll have to find a way to trust each other…but only one can take the crown.

Let the best liar win.

A copy of the book was provided for review purposes - thank you! Receiving a copy does not guarantee a positive review and therefore does not affect the opinion or content of the review.

Trigger & Content Warnings: violence, blood, death (loved ones, animal death - includes dog death, children, incarcerated people), poisoning, alcohol, substance abuse, animal abuse, suicidal ideation, genocide

When Five Broken Blades first landed in my mailbox and I read the synopsis on the back, I was like, “Hmm, this sounds like something up my alley! I think I’ll enjoy it.” And then I start the book and was like, “Mmm, maybe this isn’t going to go well, but I’m still interested in seeing how this plays out.” I was like 60-80 pages in, which is a fair amount for a 450+ page book to get a pretty good feel on how you might feel about the book, at least for me personally.

So I continue reading, and then eventually it’s like the final few pages, and I’m left with disappointment because I need to know what happens next! But also I kind of saw that coming, but I didn’t at the same time. That’s probably where I had the most fun in — seeing everything come together.

Corland’s debut novel involves five killers who receive a summons to kill the king of Yusan, Joon, who’s believed to be a god king. They all have their reasons for not going through with it (because I wouldn’t either if I knew the chances of me surviving were slim to none) and yet they do it anyway, because their reasons for going through with it and succeeding doing the impossible is a glimmer of hope for a better future.

Immediately this gives very strong Six of Crows vibes, and you would not be wrong, but I feel like giving that direct comparison would be setting people’s expectations up for disappointment. There’s found family and an impossible heist (or assassination here), and there’s six people who kind of give off the same character vibes that start off separated from each other but eventually cross paths and work together to pull this off. Sounds like a fun time or maybe a recipe for disaster; surely a group of liars and killers working together will pull this off without a hitch, right?

That’s pretty much where the comparison ends.

Five Broken Blades is told in six perspectives:

• Euyn, the banished prince, who’s so privileged and sexist (and underestimating women) that I’m sometimes surprised he survived as long as he did. Every time he said, “she’s just a girl” in his thoughts, I just wanted to shake him.
• Mikail, the royal spymaster who would love a taste of revenge for his family and people.
• Aeri, a bubbly thief who could steal a diamond in the blink of an eye and just wants to be accepted by her father. 10/10 would probably not be friends because I’m too introverted for that energy.
• Royo, a grumpy man for hire who’s secretly soft and wants to free an innocent man from Idle Prison, wrongly accused of something Royo feels he himself did.
• Sora, a poison maiden who lives for her sister and just wants freedom for them.
• Tiyung, son of a count. He’s kind of just there.

I used to have a passionate hate for multiple POVs, but over time, I find it’s almost always something else behind it causing multiple POVs to not work for me. Sometimes it’s the writing style, which this one is a little disjointed at times, but I don’t think that contributed to why the multiple POVs in Five Broken Blades didn’t work too well for me.

I felt like the chapters were so short in a quickly paced novel that oftentimes I forgot about the character I was reading about by the time we got to the next one. The average was maybe 5-6 pages, and personally, I feel it’s not really enough time to fully develop the characters, especially early on, because there’s a lot going on as each pair is going on their own path before they meet.

I also felt like their chemistry, both as a group and romance in their pairings, to be pretty stale and surface level; it’s almost like Corland focused a lot more on the plot and story over the characters. Don’t get me wrong: I love a good plot and story and enjoyed my time reading this, but I feel like the brief chapters backfired a little here.

That being said, I did feel toward the end it was easier to tell the characters and the different POVs apart, so at the bare minimum they each have a distinct voice and personality from each other. And given this is the first book in a series, it’s too early for me to go around saying, “but they don’t develop!” when I very well could’ve missed tiny signs and future books might have more development overall.

(It’s very possible that since I focused all my reading time on this one, something finally clicked in my one remaining half shell of a brain cell zoning out.)

Despite the short chapters, though, there’s never a dull moment. If I think really hard about it, okay, yeah, Five Broken Blades does essentially drag because it takes like 200+ pages before two pairs of the characters even meet and before we get to the best part of the novel, but there was always something going on even during that time.

Whether it’s trying to escape from pirates or giant man-eating birds (samroc) or even second-guessing the decision of going through with this — it does not get boring at all. I love finding each of them have their own reasons and motivations, some of them earlier than others, and plotting to double-cross each other as they get closer to the possibility of them succeeding. You think you know who’s thinking about doing what or why they’re doing XYZ, and it turns out sometimes you’re not even close. And then Corland turns it around and bamboozles us, even if I had my suspicions already.

So Five Broken Blades turned out to be a very pleasant surprise (which I love) and I can easily say as of right now, it’s my favorite read of 2024. But I’ve only read maybe 7 books this year, so there’s not much comparison when over half of those were purely comfort reads. This was overall a very fun and adventurous debut novel from Corland, and I’m excited to read the sequel when it comes out.