Seven Blades in Black Review

Paperback, 704 Pages
Adult/ Fantasy/ LGBT
By: Sam Sykes
Rating: 🌟🌟🌟🌟

“People were noisome, demanding, judgmental. Books gave everything and asked nothing more than to be taken care of.”

I am going to start with the elephant in the room before I can actually review this properly. I know that the author was accused of harassment earlier this year and he confessed that he was learning from his past mistakes. I may have skipped the book in normal circumstances but I actually got this book before all of that was revealed. I paid ~20$ for this and my friend Fares recommended it for my 10 readers, 10 recommendations challenge. There was no giving it back and I can’t give it to the library because there is not one. It was bound to stay on my shelves for ever and I decided that I will read it. A case of separating the art from the artist.

Now that that is out of the way, I can start this review by saying I actually enjoyed the book! It was a bit different from all the “serious” fantasy books I read. Sal is the main character and she is playing the role of an assassin throughout the story to get her revenge on fellow magicians who she has some history with. Sal is special in that she is morally grey, sarcastic, she has magical guns and she is a bitch most of the time!

The writing is sarcastic and funny, I don’t think I read many books with such a writing style and it makes the story easy to go through! The book is huge and I agree with the reviews saying that it is too long but the writing style made it a fast read anyway and although I would have cut a 100 pages to improve the flow of the story and reduce repetitions! But at the end of the say I didn’t think it was a bad story! Beware that there is a ton of cursing too, almost on every page so if you don’t like that this won’t work for you!

“Courageous read a lot of books. That’s probably why he was so angry all the time.”

The world-building actually surprised me, I am a bigger fan of magic in form of spells and witchcraft over guns and weapons. The world had a lot of interesting magic which I like and I ended up liking Sal’s guns and sword too! I thought the world will be more limited but I was satisfied by what we got!

The characters were interesting too, even those that hadn’t much appearance in the story! I think the enjoyment of the story depends on how much you connect to Sal, if you like her then you will most definitely like the story, if you find her annoying and pretentious you will end up not liking the book! I mostly enjoyed her wits and character, although a few times I felt she was annoying and repetitive to be honest! I also liked Cavric and Liette. Sal’s companions!

“No one ever gets the death they want,” I replied. “Just the one they deserve.”

Summary: I ended up enjoying the story as much as I expected to! I liked how different the story was executed but I think it could have been a bit shorter. Adult fantasy writers think they have to write big tomes to success which usually backfires and it minimally did here. I liked the writing, characters and world-building and the plot twists we had. Overall, I am satisfied by what I read and I still haven’t decide what to do with the rest of the series!