Review: A King's Radiance by L.R. Schulz

Blurb:

Three siblings… a rebel, a prince, a prisoner

The sun’s light shines bright over the land of Zapour, and only a select few can harness its power. But all power comes with a cost, and the world is not kind to those who refuse to pay it.

Raiz Glaive, a strong shine wielder, was born into royalty, though even royals have to answer to someone. When the King-Radiant sends one of his precious underlings to the Kingdom of Trost, Raiz quickly learns who holds the true power in the realm. After his sister is taken prisoner simply for having the violet eyes of a mystic, Raiz swears vengeance. But when an unwilling father stands in his way, Raiz promises to take revenge into his own hands.

Dazen Glaive remains heir to the throne of Trost, and a sworn defender of the King-Radiant, but he has not forgotten what happened to his sister, and will not forgive their cruelty.

Forced to be the centrepiece of her “master’s” twisted human art gallery, Isha remains a prisoner. Though she has not lost hope. Finding friends among fellow captives, she begins to formulate a plan for escape. Though what she discovers has a much more sinister bearing on the fate of all of Zapour.

Review:

I finally picked this book up after seeing it recommended a few times. And honestly? L.R. Schulz’s book, “A King’s Radiance”, decides to take your expectations, run to the nearest window and drop them out of it. I am not just saying that because he is a fellow reviewer on this site. I say this because I was not expecting to have my expectations kicked to the curb, being replaced with excitement for the next book in this series. 

Why do I say this? Well, a variety of things. “Six Kingdoms, Seven Kings. Six Kings in treaty with the Seventh. There’s barely peace as it is. What will run this peace off the rails? Come find out now!” is how I’d pitch this book to people in under a minute. But there’s much more than just seven Kings having issues with each other. The tale is told from the perspectives of three siblings born as royalty for one of the six kingdoms, and all of them have their own roles to play in upending the peace. I’ll come back to those three soon. Very soon. Even those three are just a small part in the much larger tapestry that is the final years of the treaty. 

Let me start this off by saying what I liked about this book. The characters, magic, plot, and thematic. 

First of all, the characters within this book. They are all unique in their own way. All of them carry some sort of trauma. Raiz is off doing his own thing away from home to save Isha after getting injured as a kid. His brother, Dazen, sits as heir to the throne wishing everything had played out differently. And Isha wants freedom. And all three of them have the dialog, setting and drive behind them to make all of them feel real. As for the side characters? They are either fleshed out to the extreme, feeling just as real as the main cast, or they’re more on the wayside and one dimensional. Which doesn’t drag the story at all.

Which leads us to this next part of the review: the plot of this endeavour, this book. Excuse me, I meant to say three plots leading to a final scene that just works and the outcome of this book only seems natural in hindsight. I say this because the three plots revolve around the three siblings, and their end goals. Raiz’s goal? Save his sister. Isha’s goal? Being free of her imprisonment. Dazens goal? Keep the ruins of his family together while also keeping his family’s name upright. Those are the three subplots. And as soon as the joining of these three subplots happen, expect “A King’s Radiance” to go from great to excellent with how it plays the fickle strings of climatic plot endings. It doesn’t feel forced or rushed. We expect the final part of the book to be the end of someone. But the end of that someone remains a mystery while so many others have been brought to light. The reveals within this plot also don’t feel rushed or forced, with many things being foreshadowed or even talked around to the point where the answer is within grasping distance, yet it is not. In fact, if you have an answer to what you think might happen later in the book, flip a coin. You have a 50/50 shot at getting the right answer in your mind before the reveal happens. And if that guess turns out to be right, the feeling of getting the right answer before it happens feels ecstatic.

Up to this point, I haven’t touched the magic system for one simple reason. If I mentioned anything of what the “shine” is in the previous parts of the review, this would turn into a rambling essay about how this magic affects each aspect of this tale to the point where this book goes from three royal siblings trying to further their own goals not knowing what the other is doing to two of these three siblings able to wield a power that only just a few can harness. That power? The shine. The light of the sun god Zur used as weapons of death and destruction. There are other magics at play, but this book is all about the shine. There’s an army in front of you? Laser blast them with the power of the sun. Want to melt a lock? Sure. Go ahead. The sun makes it possible. But with the shine of Zur comes another rather peculiar part. The power of the sun, when made into reality, should burn everything it touches, right? Well, technically, if used long enough, yes, it would absolutely burn everything. But up until that point the shine user is fine. He can get burned by others using the light of Zur, but he’s fine until then. Adding to that peculiarity, there’s a metal called peridium. And how does it affect the shine when hit? Different from all the other metals that are held within the Kingdom of Zapur. 

Taking the Kingdom of Zapur as a starting point for the next part, this world within the book has such an interesting religion reminiscent of Egypt in its days as a world superpower ages ago, with the pharaoh god kings. Not sure if that’s meant to do so, but even if it isn’t, I’m going to say that within Zapur, the religion held is one of both reverence and fear. Reverence to Zur, and his creations, the Eagles and the King-Radiant. But also fear. Many within this book see the Eagles for what they are, but the fear of the power they hold, that is what keeps them in line. There’s a reverence held to good, old days, so say the tomes of the Eagles themselves, but there’s the fear of the present, fear of those now in power. And that aspect helps shape the culmination of the plot and the ending of this tale, even more so than the magic.

Now to what didn’t sit right with me reading this book. As much lore and backstory that we got within this book, sometimes all the characters seem to be neglected in favour of moving plot forward. Tacking onto the last point, I’d also have to say that the book could’ve been much longer, with some more character development and still have been great. With a somewhat larger tale, the light in this book would go from shining to gleaming in the light of Zur. 

All in all, this is a tale set in a world that doesn’t shy away from being realistic when it comes to the non-fantasy things and absolutely maniacal when it comes to the magic system and the way it is used.

As always, thank you for reading to the very end of this review and I sincerely hope I’ve helped nudge you towards your next read. If this book doesn’t sound like something for you, don’t fret, we here at SFF Insiders have an extensive review catalogue to give you a more indepth view of books, ranging from epic tales of magic, technology and woe to more mundane tales where the main character struggles with memory loss, in order to help you with your next reading choice.

Wherever you are reading this, have a good morning, good afternoon, good evening or goodnight!