Review: The Crimson Court by Brendan Noble

Blurb:

Spirits haunt the realm of Zekiaz. Flee them, fight them, or wield them. But they bow to no master.

The upstart matriarch of a fallen house, Kasia Niezik has sworn to destroy the elusive Crimson Court who assassinated her father. They are near immortal, wielding the spirits that once ended civilization a millennium ago, but she is a Reacher of the realm of Death. Their worst fear.

But to kill her deceitful foes, first she must find them.

Kasia travels to the capital, seeking allies either brave or foolish enough to help her infiltrate the Crimson elites. Whether spirit hunter, princess, or thief, though, everyone has a hidden agenda. And those with the widest smiles hold daggers behind their backs.

Step into a new world of fantasy intrigue where flintlock guns, risky magic, gaslamp technology, crystalline dragons, and dangerous spirits clash amid shadowy bids for power. Revenge is sweet, but at what cost?

Review:

I first saw “The Crimson Court”, written by Brendan Noble, being advertised in a kickstarter campaign while scrolling through the SFF Insiders discord community. Thought that it was cool, and went about my days reading other books. Then, I saw it over on the SFF Insiders review catalogue, and I thought that I’d get to reading that book after I was done with the other books I was reading a few weeks ago, as of this review coming out. That was before I browsed through Twitter on a Friday and stumbled across a post by Brendan Noble saying he still had review copies (post here). So, I signed up, set it aside, and started my read through of “The Crimson Court” in earnest five days later after reading some other novels. 

And after setting down this book, I’ve come to the conclusion that this is one of the most intriguing books I’ve read this year, with so much going on the index and glossary for important houses and names that exist at the beginning of the book. Due to that, I decided to bookmark those pages, and read, and then go back to the bookmarked pages if I didn’t understand something. To those of you who are reading this, I marched straight through this book without using those pages in the slightest, not because I understood everything that was going on, but because I wanted to know what was going to happen next and didn’t want to break the flow of reading.

If I had to interest you in the book, I’d say this to you:

“Kasia Niezik is looking for revenge. But those who she hunts are aware of that. And once she arrives at the capitol, the chaos begins.”

But that small blurb, that small blurb that only mentions Kasia, the capitol, and the chaos, plus the fact that the Crimson Court is aware of Kasia looking for revenge, it fails to cover the entirety of this absolutely off the rails story that left me wanting to know more of this world, and of the individual characters that were introduced to us in “The Crimson Court”.

First of all, we have Kasia Niezik as the main character who is mentioned in the blurb. There are a few more, but for now, they’ll be mentioned by their professions. In terms of the central character in the story, Kasia is extremely stubborn and crafty when it comes to her ideas of revenge. But that's not all, no. She’s haunted by past ghosts, and has some trust issues. Over the course of “The Crimson Court”, she grows a bit in character, and continues piling up more and more trouble that her ghosts can taunt her with. Then, we have the crippled scion of a minor house trying to elevate it to a great house. He’s having “fun” with that. Another character is the princess, granddaughter of the king. She wants some things to change around in the capitol and the realm in general, but setbacks keep happening. So she goes and tries finding allies in new waters. After that, there’s a thief who has some magical luck in cards. They grift money off of people and one day filches something that drags them into the overall conflict. This brings us to the last of the team, the last of the characters that’ll be introduced here. He’s a knight who keeps spirits at bay wearing glass armor, and wields a glass blade. Practical elsewhere? Absolutely not. Does that stop him from trying to help elsewhere when he can? Nope, even if it could lead to maiming or death. Out of all the characters here, he’s the second most interesting one behind Kasia. Instead of being in the capitol like half of the people mentioned here at the start of the book, he’s out in the wasteland trying to figure out why a lone person wandered in there. And throughout the book he’s slowly peeling back the layers of plots.

This brings me to the next part, the plots. Not plot, plots. This is one of the few books I’ve read this year that has a cohesive string of story that spans at least three plots. And honestly, I’m here for it.

Plot one: Kasia and her revenge.

Plot two: The thief saving their friend.

Plot three: The crippled scion keeping his house alive.

Plot four: The princess trying to figure out what the hell is going on.

Plot five: The almost glass canon trying to keep spirits at bay.

And despite none of those plots really overlapping with each other(except plot four almost doing that), it works because each of the characters are using the other for either personal or communal gain. Kasia reaches out to all the previous characters, not to help further their goals, but to reach her own. And so on it goes. The only one who behaves in such a way that everyone else can achieve their goals is the crippled scion, despite also reaching for his own. 

For me, that kind of dynamic, that kind of character interaction, works. I love the fact that all of them have their own goals and at some point just run into each other and do a quid pro quo exchange to further their own interests, even if it might conflict with the other one at a later date. 

The next part of this tale that was fun to see in action was the magic. I know I’ve said this with other books I’ve read this year, and I’ll have to say it again here, the magic system felt unique to accomplish the specific needs of the world while also not feeling like it’s reaching for anything. Speaking of reaching for anything, that’s the magic system. People who can afford it purchase a crystal, put it on their hands and pick a realm. Once they do that, they can reach into that realm and pull its elements into the world. And that leads to some interesting encounters. There’s fifteen realms you can theoretically choose, and those are the elements, light and dark, life and death, manipulation of chance and force, truth and mind. All of these are used in “The Crimson Court”, and all of them work. In the blurb, it’s mentioned that Kasia is a Death Reacher. She has almost infinite usages of “Avada Kedavra” that she can launch at will. But that comes at a cost. If she overdoes it, she starts seeing the spirits of those she killed. If one were to look at all the different realms that one can reach from, the opposite is usually what people suffer under if they overdo it. That safeguard makes this magic system move from finicky to brilliant.

Tacking onto the magic system, I said that there’s a glass knight who fights spirits. That’s the other terrific aspect of this world that makes this tale oh so much more compelling. The spirits can kill people, and the only thing that can stop them is glass. That’s at least the only confirmed method of stopping them. But the fact that there’s a group of people who are specifically there to keep them at bay and that they are functionally useless besides what they already do, more please. 

Lastly, the amount of intrigue in this book is enough to fill another book, that would be smaller in word and page count, but still, a thick enough book that connects all the varying factions, secret groups, betrayals, treaties, deals, and upstaging that takes place in “The Crimson Court”. A hint of what will come for you is the starting pages, where the maps of the different kingdoms and the house seals are displayed, but it is truly not enough to show just how off the rails the intrigue gets. Bringing the start of the review back to this part, I bookmarked those pages, started reading, and never looked back at the bookmarks. Not because I even remembered half of the bookmarked pages, but because I didn’t want to interrupt my immersion to the story by going back to check who was who. 

If I had any gripes about this book, I’d have to say that some parts of “The Crimson Court” decided to conveniently place characters there to help the ones with PoVs, like the lovecraftian horror that’s also extremely adorable. However, that is masked by those plot moving devices giving the most helpful, but unhelpful advice, leaving the PoVs to figure out what the heck is going on, and then having them figure it out through the trial and error method. That’s my own personal gripe about it, might not be so for others.

Overall, if you want a book that has a lot of crimson and a lot of court, Brendan Noble has you covered with his newest book. I had an absolute blast reading through this book and would recommend it to all of the people who enjoy high fantasy, magical hijinks and an almost GoT level of political chaos.

As always, thank you for reading this somewhat longer review than usual, and I hope I’ve helped you find your next read. If not, don’t fret. We here at SFF Insiders have a plethora of reviews to explore. If you want something similar, go check out Phil’s review of “Soul Cage”, written by another reviewer here, Luke Schulz, here. If you’re looking for something totally different, go check out Jake's review of “Our Lady of the Artilects”, written by Andrew Gillsmith, here.

Wherever you are reading this review, have a good morning, good afternoon, good evening and good night!