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Five Broken Blades (The Broken Blades, #1)

Mai Corland

Start date: June 1, 2024

Finish date: June 30, 2024

Discussion: Book of the Month

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What Members Thought

Feb 28, 2025 Jenn rated it liked it

Shelves: adult-fiction, books-i-own, new-author-to-me, fantasy, 3-star-reads, who-to-trust, read-in-2025

So this was definitely a book that I purchased solely based on the pretty sprayed edges. I literally knew nothing about it aside from it caught my eye and I'm a sucker for special editions. And here we are.

This wasn't a bad book by any means. I actually found myself heavily invested toward the end as the plan for murdering the king began to unravel. However, I did have issues with it. Mainly that it felt very YA instead of the adult category that it's shelved in. The writing was very plain - it ...more

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Jun 02, 2024 Trisha rated it it was ok

Shelves: goodreadschoice2024

Trust me, no one is as disappointed in my 2 star rating than me. I wanted to love this one but I think I just have to admit that, for now, I'm just not feeling these romantacy reads. It's the second one that I've read that I thought I'd love. But no, I found myself bored and frustrated. I didn't feel the romance that was supposed to be sparkling along every perspective. I liked all the POV but I found them also repetitive.

I found the world interesting but I didn't feel like it came alive. I fou ...more

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Sep 06, 2024 Stefani Robinson rated it really liked it

Shelves: hardcover, library

As a whole this book was utterly enjoyable. The world created was interesting and rich. The narrative was intriguing and I was excited to see where it went next. As a summary, this was a great book.

The premise of this story is simple. King Joon is a bad man. He does terrible things and there is a plot to assassinate him. The only problem is that he proclaims to be a God. There have been previous assassination attempts and he was miraculously not harmed. But, there is a plan and they need a very As a whole this book was utterly enjoyable. The world created was interesting and rich. The narrative was intriguing and I was excited to see where it went next. As a summary, this was a great book.

The premise of this story is simple. King Joon is a bad man. He does terrible things and there is a plot to assassinate him. The only problem is that he proclaims to be a God. There have been previous assassination attempts and he was miraculously not harmed. But, there is a plan and they need a very specific cast of liars and thieves to pull it off.

First we meet Royo. He’s the town heavy. He is muscle for hire. If you need someone killed, beaten, taught a lesson then Royo is the guy to call. He gets pulled into this scheme by Aeri. She’s a thief, who has been invited into this plot and she hires Royo to protect her and be her bodyguard. Then we have Sora. Sora is an indentured woman and so is her sister. The Count who holds her indenture turned her into a poison maiden. He intentionally poisoned her over and over again until she became immune to all poisons, and he uses her to seduce and poison men that he wishes to kill. Tiyung is the Count’s son and has been instructed to go with Sora on this mission and then if she is successful, he will grant her freedom. Euyn is next and he is the King’s exiled brother. He was exiled for hunting prisoners like animals and left buried in the desert to die. Except that he didn’t die. He escaped and has been trying to keep a low profile ever since. And finally Mikhail. He is the mastermind behind the whole plot. He is also the King’s spymaster.

All of this main cast of characters gets their turn to narrate portions of the story. They all had a distinct voice so I had very little trouble keeping track of which story was being narrated. My biggest complaint about the story is that the different narratives were so short. The longest section was 5 or 6 pages, most of them were 2 or 3 pages. It didn’t give me a lot of time to get invested in this new piece to the story and then it was over. And almost every single section ended on a cliffhanger of sorts. That got tiring really fast. So I wish that we got longer sections in one narrative and that we didn’t have a cliffhanger every few pages. But those were my only complaints.

The ending of this book was masterful. I don’t want to give away any spoilers so I will keep this high level. Obviously, because this is the first book in a series, you can reasonably expect that the assassination plot doesn’t go to plan. It would be a much shorter book and no sequel potential if everything went according to plan. I don’t think that’s a spoiler, I think most readers would figure out from the beginning how that’s going to play out. Even so, there were some twists in there that I never saw coming. And they were brilliant. The ending completely sold me on the next book. I’m all in and will definitely be reading it ...more

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Dec 31, 2024 Shruti morethanmylupus rated it liked it

Another fantasy/romantasy (depending on who you ask) series kicks off with this book. The premise was a little different, and I liked that. The plot was ok - I was pleasantly surprised to find I hadn't predicted the entirety of the twist correctly at all and that alone will get me to pick up book 2. ...more

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Aug 08, 2025 Susan rated it really liked it · review of another edition

3.5 star rating

Good but not one of my top favorites. I need to get my hands on the next book because the ending is why I gave this book a decent rating.

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