There is a lot to be delighted by in The Kingdom Of Liars by Nick Martell. The magic system appears unique, the characters have rich backstories, and the world seems full of a wild, mishmash of cultures.

Michale Kingman is a traitor. He can't escape it, wearing the brand on his neck for all to see. He also can't seem to escape the legacy of his family name. While his older brother has accepted fate and built a life to encompass his families dishonor, Michael cannot deny the pull to become something great. What ensues is a series of quests, tugging Michael into all kinds of histories, deception, and intrigue.

Martell sets a fast pace, moving Michael along on the rush of a river. The thing is, Michael can't swim, nor can he seem to get a foothold into who he should trust. A lot is going on in The Kingdom Of Liars. The story would have succeeded as a serial instead of an epic fantasy novel. There is a rich world ready for more detail, but overall the story lacks lushness. The magical system is also highly intriguing and exceptional. While it gets more details ironed out on the pages, there could have been more.

Overall, the whole novel could have bloomed like a lush garden with a touch more time afforded to developing it. The rush of the story does make it a fast-paced read, but at the sufferance of fully realizing the world in which our protagonist Michael lives.

The Kingdom Of Liars could be a fantastic start to a series. If Martell plans more novels following Michael Kingman, they should reveal more about the world and the magic to truly raise this novel into the epic fantasy realms.

I have to know the rest of the story!! Not because so much was left out but because the story builds and builds. Just because I finished the book doesn't mean the story is over.

The Kingdom of Liars introduced me to the phrase "mild water". As a white person, a native English speaker, and a retired waitress - Michael waking to bland food and a glass of "mild water" was one of the greatest linguistic thrills of my reading month. So ends my flaccid attempt at positivity.
I downloaded this arc because there is a fancy edition for sale through Goldsboro books and I was curious to see for myself if the book was as strong as reviews in my instagram feed led me to believe before I purchased the edition. It was not.
This book is largely comprised of conflicting side quests. It is exhausting and I was constantly muttering let's get back to it Michael (cue focusing finger snaps). There are a number of things in this world that are either never explained, or explained so late in the story as to be pointless: the magic system, the tweekers and Blackberries, the Endless Waltz (which was like 3 events, so perhaps more of a Finite Waltz?), the geography of the city/world (hopefully there will be a map in the final copy to clear up all the fast-travelling).
This is very much a book that tells, rather than shows, Michael's value and belief system. There are many interesting ideas (using magic causes memory loss, the broken moon, some of the politics) but clouded by the unrelenting structural issues.
Thank you to the publisher for providing me with an arc for review. This has in no way influenced my opinion.

Wow. I'm just going to say it: this is my fantasy top pick for 2020. Maybe even my top pick of any genre. That's how much I love this book.

From the first strong chapter, you're introduced to a well-fleshed world with complexity and darkness. The worldbuilding is truly spectacular and remains totally immersive the whole way through the plot but it never takes over the story. You're living it rather than reading it. Personally, I found the social dynamics to be absolutely fascinating.

But the characters are just as well-rounded and complex as the world is and they slowly reveal themselves to you as the plot progresses. Michael is a great protagonist. He thinks he knows everything about the world and what he wants but he grows so much through the story that you're left with a new young man in the end. It's a very organic growth though and I rooted for him hard the whole way through. The author does a great job at making the reader feel Michael's emotions, from his justifiable anger to his desperation to his undying loyalty to his family. All the other characters who are introduced are just as interesting. To me, Dormet was so intriguing but by the end I wanted to know so much more about Dark and Michael's mother too.

One of my favorite things about this book is the high cost of magic. As a fantasy reader, I want consequences and I shun magic building where you can just cast spells and there's no debt to pay. The cost of using Fabrications in Hollow are rough but to me that gave it weight. I was hoping this would be the case since the book's cover features a good review from Brandon Sanderson, one of my favorite writers and a master at worldbuilding with high-cost magic systems. I'm so glad to see another series in that style!

I could keep going. Really, I could. There's one note in my Kindle that just says 'I LOVE THIS BOOK SO MUCH!' and that's the truth. A great story, amazing cast of characters, fantastic worldbuilding, solid magic rules. It has everything. I already can't wait for book 2.


Note: I received a free Kindle edition of this book via NetGalley in exchange for the honest review above. I would like to thank NetGalley, the publisher Gallery Books, and the author Nick Martell for the opportunity to do so.

This is the first book in the Legacy of the Mercenary Kings series and is a debut fantasy book. While this is a solid debut book, the slow start meant that I didn't become fully invested in the plot or the story. I found the main character, Michael, to be pretty infuriating for the first half or so of the book - he is cocky, naive and makes stupid decisions. By the time he was improving, I just wasn't invested enough to really love this book. It's still a good fantasy debut though with plenty of politics and intrigue. If you are a big fantasy reader, then this may be worth checking out.

I had seen a few reviews of The Kingdom of Liars that made me curious to read it, and I am so glad did. I was hooked early on, invested in Michael Kingman’s journey and how he was going to try to get redemption for his father. I thoroughly enjoyed the book, not a page wasted. Great world-building, a really interesting mix of characters and an intricate plot made this a really great read for me. Loved it!

The Kingdom of Liars by Nick Martell is the first book in his new fantasy series, The Legacy of the Mercenary Kings. I had some mixed feelings about this book, but since this is Martell’s debut novel, and considering this is an epic fantasy, it was a well written story.

Michael Kingman is our hero in this series, though in the first half of the book, he wasn’t a good hero, being somewhat unlikeable. Michael, whose father murdered the King’s son 10 years earlier, has lived with his family branded as traitors. Michael works with friends to con royals to make ends meet. Michael is determined to prove that his father was innocent and framed; he pushes his way into situations that endanger himself and his friends. The story did begin with Michael on trial for supposedly killing the King, and it then switches to the past, detailing how Michael ended up being accused of murder.

In order to get closer to the royal family, he helps a Fabricator, who is looking for evidence and in doing so becomes more visible, especially to the Corrupt Prince, who wants nothing better than to have Michael killed. In any first book of a fantasy, I recognize the author trying to give us a lot of information of the worldbuilding. My mixed feelings were more that the first half was a bit slow, the hero wasn’t overly likable, the secondary characters were ok, and the storyline was somewhat confusing with each chapter. I wasn’t sure I would continue. However, I am glad I did, as the last half of the book picked up, with a bit more clarity, and excitement and the hero becoming more focused.

We learn more later in the book about Fabricators and their magic, as well as Mercenaries. I also did like Michael’s sister, Gwen, who was a heroine in her own right; and Naomi was another interesting character. This is a difficult review to write, as so much is going on from the start to finish that is hard to put in writing without being spoilers.

The Kingdom of Liars was an interesting fantasy, that became exciting and intriguing in the last half of the book. The finale was a surprise, and did have me pushing to find out the end. Being fantasy, Nick Martell wrote a good story, especially being his debut novel, which I expect to see some improvements in the next book.

The Kingdom of Liars
This is a changeup from the usual baseball writing you see on this site, but if you’ve read my about section at all you’ll know that fantasy baseball is not the only genre of fantasy of which I have interest.

I received this book from Gallery / Saga Press and Netgalley.com in exchange for fair and honest review.
The Kingdom of Liars is a debut novel by Nick Martell which he wrote in his last two years of college. The setting is a place called Hollow on an alternate world from our own that takes place around the time of the industrial revolution and the move towards gun powder but combined with magical elements.
Here’s the blurb from the publisher:
“In this brilliant debut fantasy, a story of secrets, rebellion, and murder are shattering the Hollows, where magic costs memory to use, and only the son of the kingdom’s despised traitor holds the truth.
Michael is branded a traitor as a child because of the murder of the king’s nine-year-old son, by his father David Kingman. Ten years later on Michael lives a hardscrabble life, with his sister Gwen, performing crimes with his friends against minor royals in a weak attempt at striking back at the world that rejects him and his family.
In a world where memory is the coin that pays for magic, Michael knows something is there in the hot white emptiness of his mind. So when the opportunity arrives to get folded back into court, via the most politically dangerous member of the kingdom’s royal council, Michael takes it, desperate to find a way back to his past. He discovers a royal family that is spiraling into a self-serving dictatorship as gun-wielding rebels clash against magically trained militia.
What the truth holds is a set of shocking revelations that will completely change the Hollows, if Michael and his friends and family can survive long enough to see it.”
The book places the reader right into the deep end, beginning at the end of the story and then making its way back to that point throughout the course of the novel. It is told in the first-person with who is not an entirely reliable narrator. There are no all at once data dumps about the magic system or history of the world, but details are revealed at the appropriate times and you will have to be patient and stick with it as your reward. There is no spoon-feeding going on here.
The main character, Michael Kingman, is likeable, crafty, and reasonably intelligent, but really is not particularly special, but simply driven and stubborn. Since the book is in the first-person you don’t get a lot of character development from characters not named Michael, but on the other hand none of them seem two-dimensional or lacking in depth.
While the book contains one or two moments that seem a bit on the “too convenient” side, they are outweighed by far by the moments I didn’t see coming and how the mysteries are neatly tied together to a satisfying conclusion that leaves me eagerly awaiting the next book.
Did I say next book? Yes this is the first of a brand-new trilogy entitled “The Legacy of the Mercenary Kings”
On a scale out of five, I’m giving it a 4 and am eager to see if he can top it with the following novels.

I stopped reading at the 14% mark. I felt like I had been thrown into the middle of a story, and I hadn’t really warmed up to Michael or any of the other characters by the time I quit. I liked the premise, but I didn’t have the patience to see it play out.

It’s unfortunate that I was very excited to read this book but ended up not finishing it because I just didn’t like the main character. I’m a very character focused reader, so that didn’t bode well for me. I have heard that it gets better during the second half of the book, but I’m currently not in the mood to continue. However, I might still decide to pick it up again but I can’t be sure at this time.

Rating: 10/10

Thank you to Will and Gollancz for sending me a review copy. This did not influence my opinions/thoughts. This review is a non-spoiler review and so will contain more about the world building than anything else.

This is what Game of Thrones would look like, if it had a sense of an moral compass and heroism. This is what my intepretation of this fantastic novel is. It comes at a whopping 608 pages or so. This is what fantasy books should be in my opinion. I have seen a boy become a man by the end of this book. If I had to summarise it in one sentence, that describes everything that is for this book.

The details of distinguishing between the high and low nobles, the Ravens and the Fabricators, the Archivists is so painstainkingly done to every single detail, this was a labour of love done by Nick Martell. Michael Kingman is a character that you would expect to be a coward, a person that knows nothing. A man that’s too afflicted from his past. A man that runs from his past. A man that needs to discover the truth of what afflicts him the most.

I would call this under a category of a good mix of grim-dark fantasy combined with heroic fantasy. That’s what I think the novel represents in my opinion. Gwen in my opinion needed more scenes with Michael. I also wanted to see even more scenes of King Issac, to better understand his motivations, and more scenes of the Corrupt Prince, who I felt needed a few more scenes in there. But you can’t fit everything in this whopping debut. Without spoiling too much, I also wanted Michael to go towards his mother a lot more. I feel as if the mother holds more clues than she’s revealing.

Dormet is officially one of my favorite characters along with Dark. I do not know why, but if you read on, you’ll figure why. You will feature loss throughout this novel, and you will cry. The way in which Nick demonstrates loss is honorable, though it does have Game of Thrones tendancies some times. There is so much power and political intrigue I cannot understand how Michael Kingman must navigate through all this when his father was branded as a traitor. Sirash is a great character, and yet Trey…has a past that he must come to grips with.

If I were to compare this to any fantasy novel out there that has a similar genre, it would be Mark Lawrence’s the Broken Empire. The characters are similar, and both are running from a past rather than taking course of their own lives. You know I’ve always loved fantasy novels which focus on the under-dog. And Michael Kingman is just that. There were so many emotional scenes in this novel that it is better you read it. I cannot express this into words. I found this an awesome read. The writing and prose is sharp. I want more novels that show the underdog. That show the under-dog rising through society to take his or her steps. I want more novels like this.

This is a brilliant, dazzling novel that will have you be emotional within hours of reading this book. It’s that fantastic. The writing, the dialogue, everything is on point. It is not easy to create an emotional scene, and Nick has done a fab job of making this. Nick, you’ve made me a fan. I am impressed, and I loved this. Please keep writing more awesome and bad-ass content like this.

This book is action-packed, which made it exciting to read, but at times made the plotlines less than clear. The last half of the book was easy to breeze through, but the first half was a bit jumbled in the effort to set up the crazy number of plots and sub-plots featured in The Kingdom of Liars. Elements of the book are reminiscent of other great series—the magic-induced memory loss is very much like Holly Black’s Curse Workers trilogy; the clash of guns and magic is reminiscent of Brandon Sanderson’s Wax and Wayne novels; the initial set-up of the protagonist staring down the barrel of an execution is similar to Megan Whalen Turner’s Queen’s Thief series; and Dark seems like he could have stepped out of Jim Butcher’s The Aeronaut’s Windlass, Brent Weeks’ Assassin’s Way or Brandon Sanderson’s Warbreaker. To be honest, though, The Kingdom of Liars reads differently to every book I just mentioned, so a direct comparison doesn’t really work.
I wasn’t a huge fan of the way the book begins, because I think there’s plenty of tension driving the novel without starting with a teaser that seems a little like clickbait. Local kingsman murders king at end of book? Keep reading to find out how! The slow reveal of Michael’s memories was also less interesting to me than the events happening in the present time, and I think this book could have been simplified to a more hard-hitting, streamlined novel. That being said, the major mysteries set up in The Kingdom of Liars are satisfactorily resolved, with plenty still left to explore in future books.
Other than the at times too complex plot, the protagonist was another weak point in an amazingly strong debut. Michael isn’t likeable, and his actions are pretty stupid a lot of the time. Given his age, it’s not entirely unrealistic, but the juxtaposition of his competence in some areas with his utter lack of foresight in making decisions can be frustrating to read. I’d love to read a novel following Gwen, Dark, Chloe, Omari, Alex, Naomi and half a dozen other characters introduced in this world. I would read another book following Michael, but I think there are more interesting people available.
The world of Hollow and beyond is an intricate and interesting one, and I look forward to seeing more than the one city in future novels in this series. The magic system is left a little vague, but I appreciate that there is a cost for the power. The political system is also less detailed than I would like, but the book was already quite long, and the first installment of a series can only do so much without becoming bogged down with details and backstory.
I was pretty lukewarm on the cover until I noticed the shattered moon, I appreciate when there are personal touches tying the cover to the book. I do wish the title was moved down to obscure less of the cover art though.
The Kingdom of Liars will appeal to those who don’t mind unlikable characters that you grow fond of, that enjoy a good subverted trope, and who are willing to invest in a series with an interesting world, and maybe wait a while for things to really start making sense. After I finished The Kingdom of Liars I was a little shocked at how much got explained, and how much still absolutely had not been. I love fantasy series myself (nothing worse than a fascinating world and cast that you have to leave too soon), so this book was a solid read, but the most exciting thing about this book is the potential in the world and story line.

**I was provided an electronic ARC by the publisher through NetGalley in exchange for honest review.**

Nick Martell's The Kingdom of Liars is a solid debut fantasy that is part murder mystery, part comedy of errors and all magic. Readers follow Michael Kingman, youngest son of a prince killer who wears the brand for his father's treason on his neck. Michael finds out that his father may not have been as guilty as it seems, and is dragged into deal after deal on his quest for the truth.

One thing is absolutely certain. Nothing can go right for Michael Kingman. Every time he thinks he has a solution, or has accomplished a goal, something else gets in his way. Each error raises the stakes a little bit higher, and gives Michael more to lose. He may have a serious case of protagonist armor, but the reader is left trying to figure out how Michael will figure his way out of the next mess.

The magic that we see appears to be a variant on elemental magic that uses memory as currency. It's an interesting concept that really isn't explained beyond that level, but definitely adds to complicating a lot of different things.

This novel, while having many traits common in high fantasy, was a quick read and flowed smoothly. I think the biggest strength Martell showcased was in pacing and the general writing style of this book. At no point did I feel either overwhelmed or bored, and I was eager to keep reading throughout.

Easily, the most intriguing character for me is Dark, and I am very eager to read the next book where I hope he will be featured more prominently.

Overall, a respectable debut from Martell, and I look forward to his future works.

I rarely read fantasy, but I really liked the unique magic usage, and how magicians are called Fabricators. This fantasy novel is action-packed, thrilling, lot of characters (which seemed confusing in the beginning). The Kingdom of Liars is the first book in the "Legend of Mercenary King" series. The story took off slow, but it was interesting throughout. The ending was epic. Even though I guessed who would-be heroes and villains, I liked how they were magically revealed in the end. Very apt for "Mercenary King". Based on the world-building and character building in this novel, the story can go in any direction, which makes me more intrigued to look forward to the next book in this legendary series. I loved the writing, story flow, and the characters.
Thank you NetGalley, Nick Martell and Gallery books for reader's copy of this novel. This review is my own and is not influenced in any way!

Thanks to netgalley, I got to read this one. It started off a big slow but the world Martell builds is fascinating and complex. Twists and turns abound, the reader (and Michael) never quite know who to trust or what is real and what is a fabrication. I highly recommend!

The Kingdom of Liars was a FANTASTIC debut. Nick brought to life one of the most unique fantasy premises I had read. It was very refreshing to read something that seemed so incredibly different from a lot of the fantasy I am used to.
The world in this is really great. In this world chunks of the moon fall from the sky and magic costs you memories. My biggest criticism with this story is that I wanted more. I wanted more! I actually found myself wishing that it was longer and I got more of a history of this incredible world.
There were two elements of this story that I felt were near-perfect. Martell's character work, specifically the character of Michael, as well as the political intrigue were the shining stars of this book. Michael is a character that I think people will have very mixed opinions about, but he worked for me. He is a character who is constantly making questionable decisions, but so many times I understood his motivation and if I am being honest I probably would have done the same thing in his shoes. He continues to grow throughout the story and by the end I was so connected with his character that he felt like a real friend. The political intrigue in this story was truly the driving force for this entire story for me. Political intrigue is something that I either love, or hate within a story and The Kingdom of Liars hit the nail on the head.
Overall this story highlights the best parts of modern fantasy and puts an fun and fresh spin on it!

The first half of this book was a bit underwhelming for me but then the second half happened and it was incredible! If this whole book was like the second half it would be 5 stars but because of the first half it’s gonna sit at a 4 stars for me. I still highly recommend!

Michael Kingsman's father was found guilty of killing the prince when Michael was just a child and his life was never the same. Michael and his siblings are marked as traitors and attempt to find a way to accept their father's crimes and live their lives. This world is beautifully written and has a unique twist to the magic present - every time . you use a spell you risk losing memory - something small like what you had for breakfast or something bigger like your past, your family, or how to use a basic sense. This story is well written and the characters are alive on the page. The reader is glued to the pages to find out what happened long ago and what will happen to Michael and his family. I highly recommend this book.

While this author shows promise - excellent ideas - interestin concepts in world building, serious editing is needed. This author still needs to hone their writing skills.

I have been very excited for this title and I am glad that I have been approved! I think it makes a very good debut and I am looking forward to book 2!