“Victory or defeat matters less than the fact that we fight.”

⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

Thank you netgalley and tor books for the gifted arc!

I went into this book blind (my fav way to go into a book) and I was very pleasantly surprised with how much I enjoyed it! Between the action packed plot, the multi-pov development, and learning about this world, I was pretty invested.

World building is one of my favorite parts when reading a new book, and this epic fantasy was no exception. I really enjoyed learning about the different areas of this world and how they’re impacted by the Empire. The magic system was so unique with sorcerers only being useful upon their death so they can provide power to the Empire.

“Nobody conquers the world with insincere lies.”

We follow three people in this book: Loran, Cain, and Arienne. I really enjoyed the different perspectives this provided on the empire and different areas of this world.

Loran is a self proclaimed princess on a path of vengeance after the death of her daughter and husband. I really enjoyed watching her go from simply wanting revenge, to truly wanting to save her people. She becomes incredibly powerful and is willing to lay down her life for the greater good.

“I am a princess of Arland. And I shall become king.”

Arienne is a student sorcerer who refuses to be used by the Empire and flees the Academy. This girl is my fav character! She’s so badass and learns so much through sheer will. We learn so much about this world through her perspective!

Honestly, Cain was a little confusing to me. I think that he is like a hit man/unofficial detective for the people in the Capital. I really enjoyed seeing how selfless he was and the lengths he would go to in order help others, but I felt like he didn’t really contribute to the story. His journey just felt so separated from Arienne and Loran.

Overall, I think this is a great book for lovers of epic fantasy and unique worlds!

This book was such a fantastic surprise to me.
I hadn't seen this book around the online bookish community, but when I saw the cover and read the synopsis on Netgalley, I was immediately intrigued. It sounded like such a cool concept. And I was not disappointed.

There were so many elements to this plot and story that were unique and varied from other fantasy books that I have read. Sorcerers who have powers that are so different from the typical magic users. A woman who declares her destiny to a dragon, a dragon who aids her. And a seemingly ordinary person, with glasses (!!!) who finds his destiny while on a different path. Sure you might have read stories of similar characters, but when you add the plot, the magic, the worldbuilding, and the writing to these? It becomes something else.

I had been struggling to read, picking up other books and consistently putting them down. I couldn't put this one down.
While it's definitely more of a plot driven story, the characters are well done and you root for them throughout the story. But I imagine there is more that will delve into the characters in the sequels. The plot and writing are truly the focals for this book and they drive the story very well. There is also an air of sci fi, I think, with the way the magic is worked and these automotons that are part of the story.

I would definitely recommend this book to my friends who enjoy fantasy, curious to hear their thoughts as well.
Sung-Il Kim, and translator Anton Hur, have crafted the start of an epic tale and I cannot wait to see where it goes next.

A classic fantasy resistance tale, given a unique flavor by pacts with ancient dragons, somewhat necromantic sorcerer batteries, and magic that blurs the lines between physical and mental reality. I first picked this up just because of the cover, so learning it is a translated work was a fun surprise. With three lead characters and so many moving pieces thrown about, this first book gets right into the action yet in many ways remains just a taste of the trilogy to come. Is it possible to truly withstand the Imperials? What does it fully mean to be a sorcerer-engineer? Unfortunately for me, the straightforward writing is scarce on those lyrical turns of phrase which draw me in to reading, and it's up to the characters and events to bring color to the story.

The Blood of Old Kings sold me on the necropolis empire alone. A kingdom of sorcerers powered by even more dead sorcerers? The badass factor of that is just too strong. Additionally, I’ve read some of Anton Hur’s original work and I was very curious to see what his translated work was like. I certainly wasn’t disappointed.

The Blood of Old Kings is split across three POVs: Loran, a self-proclaimed princess looking to restore her country’s sovereignty from the colonizing empire. Cain, an immigrant living in the Empire’s capital, looking for details of his missing friend. And Arienne, a sorcerer-in-training, on the run from the Empire carrying an important package.

I loved Arienne‘s chapters. It’s through her that we get to learn the most about the magic of the world, the dead sorcerers (known as generators) that power this empire, and some of the history of the founding of this empire. Her character follows the arc of ‘naive girl plunged into a world of intrigue’ and I really enjoyed how she handled it. You can see her courage really grow over time and it was a delight cheering her on.

Loren’s chapters were easily the most anime, with all the badass fights attached. Her mission is to free her country from the rule of the Empire and the fights she takes against literal tanks with nothing but her sword and her dragon’s power was so so fun to read. Kim and Hur can really put together a fight scene, one that’s both easily followed and keeps the reader cheering for more. The actual politics side, when Loren has to deal with other parties and existing powers felt a little on the weaker side but the fight scenes and her sheer badassery (and dragon power!) more than made up for it.

The weakest POV in my mind was Cain’s chapters. Cain starts off as an interested party asking around for details to his friend’s disappearance. He quickly realizes he’s been asking the wrong (or right?) questions and finds himself pulled into a much larger conspiracy, used as a tool by higher governing powers. Frankly, I thought the intrigue was horribly written. There were so many scenes where Cain would be captured by an enemy group, ask them extremely detailed and pertinent questions, and they would answer!! Like, why are you telling him this?? Why are you telling him anything??? Just threaten him and send him off to do your bidding!!! Thankfully, the book had two other extremely fun POVs to follow.

Overall, I rate this book a 4/5. While the political intrigue isn’t amazing, the world-building is incredibly unique and the fight scenes alone make this book extremely fun to read!

Review will go live 4 October 2024

TL;DR Review: Compelling, colorful, and complex. Epic storytelling that sinks into your bones and keeps you turning pages.

Full Review:
Blood of the Old Kings had me intrigued from the very first page. Heck, the first paragraph.
A dragon with too many eyes locked away by magic in a volcano, a desperate woman willing to make a deal for the salvation of her people, and a promise of vengeance against an all-powerful conquering Empire.
For Loran, the deaths of her husband and daughter are the only thing driving her to take up the dragon’s sword against the Empire. She will cut her way through their armies, defeat their magic, and destroy their mightiest creations—and in so doing, become the Princess and ultimately the King her people need.
Her story is the most compelling of the POV characters, and the most dynamic. She begins fighting alone, but through her courage and resilience, winds up joining forces with a ragtag band of rebels that may have a chance at becoming an army. Spitting in the face of the Empire could cost her everything—but the price is worth paying to free her people.
Cain is an ordinary-seeming young man working for an oil vendor, but there’s so much more to him than meets the eye. Sort of a grifter/spy/smuggler combination, he finds himself drawn into a quest for revenge against the ones who murdered the woman who saved him and kept him alive during his earliest days on the streets of the Empire’s capital city.
His story feels smaller, but it gives us a fascinating look into the “Ministry of Intelligence”, the shadow arm of the Empire’s police force. He is drawn into their tangled web by the chance to unmask his friend’s killer. But what he discovers could lead to the death—or salvation—of the Empire he has good cause to hate as an outsider.
Arienne is a mage, gifted with the ability to control magic and trained in the Empire’s most prestigious school. Only that school doesn’t actually teach her anything except ways of keeping her body and mind in shape to be a “Power generator” after her death. Because of course the Empire runs on the corpses of their mages—that’s what powers everything from their lights to their most advanced weapons.
But a mysterious voice in her head leads her to break free of the mage school and sets her fleeing into the farthest corners of the Empire. She and her new companion are hunted by the “Order of Truth”, those tasked with keeping mages firmly in line, and have to cross desolate terrain, dense forests, and icy mountain passes in the desperate hope of finding somewhere safe from their clutches. Though she has no understanding of magic to begin with, every trial and test she endures will teach her more—and more about herself, too.
Blood of the Old Kings is a fascinating story of a fight for freedom–freedom from oppression, from control over magic, from being told how you have to live your life. I particularly loved the message inherent into Loran’s story: it doesn’t take blood to make a princess or King, only the courage to stand up and show the people what it means to lead.
The world is rich and colorful, with so many fascinating cultures and customs that shade each captured kingdom with wondrous nuance.
Fans of K.S. Villoso’s Chronicles of the Wolf Queen and R.F. Kuang’s The Poppy War will feel right at home in this story!

Blood of the Old Kings is an epic fantasy tale featuring a unique world. This tale is told through three different POVs - Loran, Cain, and Arienne who are each on a distinctly different path that happens to interweave with the others. As with many multi POV books, I found myself drawn to certain characters over others. In this case, I was most interested in Loran and Arienne and often found myself wanting to hurry along Cain to get back to the others. His POV isn’t boring by any means, I was just more invested in the others. I found the world building and magic systems in this book especially fascinating. The world building was richly detailed. The magic, though, is where this story really shines for me between using dead sorcerers as a power source and the nuances of it for the living, you can’t help but be drawn in. I also appreciated how seamlessly the story flowed which is a testament to both the author, Kim, and the translator, Hut. I felt the plot was well paced and had plenty of action and intrigue to keep my interest. By the end, there is still much that could be explored if the author chooses to do so. I combo read this via ebook and audiobook. The audiobook, though, is something special. I love the choice to use three different narrators to voice the different POVs. Eunice Wong, Major Curda, and Suzy Jackson did so well in their respective roles. I could feel the emotions and drivers behind each character in their narration. I would highly recommend the audiobook for this.

The premise of this story is great, but I had a hard time with the prose. It felt more suited to the younger side of YA, which majorly contrasted the storylines we were following. The characters felt flat and I had a genuinely difficult time trying to care.

DNF. I don’t think this is a bad book at all, but it’s just not gripping me. The opening was amazing, and there are one or two details that are really interesting – I love how each nation had completely different magics before the empire came! We don’t see that often at ALL – usually magic is magic, more or less the same for everyone, but here the sorcerers of each country had wildly different abilities; in one place they were shapeshifters, in another they had magic words… It’s the one thing about this world that I really wanted to know more about.

But it wasn’t the focus at all, and the rest of the book just…felt very okay? I think if you like High Fantasy, you’ll probably enjoy this, but I was hoping that Blood would be bringing influences I haven’t seen before – the author is South Korean and this was written in his native language before it was translated – but I wasn’t getting any of that. Blood just doesn’t strike me as substantially different from the American/British High Fantasy of the 90s, which was never my thing.

There are a few hints here and there that this book might eventually reveal itself to be more unique…but I wasn’t willing to keep reading to find out if that was actually the case. If I find other reviews saying that’s so, I might be willing to try this again, but the fact remains that I have zero interest in where most of the plotlines are going. Nothing about Cain’s story grabbed me; Loran, the woman on the cover, seemed to have the most promising arc but wow did I hate the allies she fell in with; and while Arienne’s plotline rapidly became the most interesting to me (she’s the runaway sorcerer) I didn’t care about what might happen to her. I didn’t care about any of the characters for their own sake, found them pretty dull and normal individuals. Nothing about any of them stood out after reading the first third of the book…so why keep going?

Like I said: if you do routinely enjoy High Fantasy, you have a much better chance of enjoying this than I did. It just doesn’t seem to be for me.

I love that Tor is publishing translated Korean fantasy, I don't know that I've ever heard of that happening before. It's so interesting to read such different worldbuilding. I enjoyed this story, even if the first chapter was a little brutal, it made me interested in what was to come!

I enjoyed the world building and characters. The book was had some info dumping that made some the beginning drag a bit. But I was invested in the plot and the MC, so I powered through it. But by the end I just felt like something was missing. It was good just not my favorite.

Really classic setup here, but the world was incredibly interesting and refreshing. So many cool reveals. The characters were very basic though. I struggled to care about them. I will read the next one!

Blood of the Old Kings is a translated fantasy about a world under the thumb of an all reaching empire. This follows three POV characters, each on their own separate journey toward contributing to the downfall of the empire. One is a 31 year-old mother who has lost her husband and child and his bent on revenge, one is a young woman being trained as a sorcerer, and the other is a shop worker in the empires main city.
Thank you to NetGalley and Tor for the opportunity to read and review this book in exchange from my honest review while this book did start out strong it lost a lot of momentum and I can only give it three stars. At times this book read like a fairytale in the way that it was “character runs away through the woods and sees a tower to run to. The character is inside the tower in the next paragraph.”
I did enjoy one of the POV characters, Cain, but ultimately this book was just ok. ⭐️⭐️⭐️

Blood of the Old Kings, by Sung-Il Kim and translated by Anton Hur, is the first in a Korean fantasy trilogy well known in South Korea. While it has its strong points, I have to confess to being overall disappointed with Blood of the Old Kings, though I’ll probably give book two a shot when it comes out in English in hopes that the series improves (the last book won an award so there’s a fair chance that’s the case).

The story is set in a world dominated by The Empire (modeled pretty clearly on the Roman Empire with its “legions” and provincial governors), an oppressive rule and one that is seemingly invincible with its jealously guarded monopoly on sorcery combined with its powered equipment, particularly its military gear, which ranges from powered armor and swords to multi-story fighting machines. In fact, the two are literally combined, since in one of the more original aspects of the story, the power supply for all this equipment are dead sorcerers, which are basically used as batteries. Another reason nobody wants to challenge the Empire is that one formerly independent land (Mersia) that took them on decades ago was “reduced … into a wasteland overnight” using a powerful weapon known now as the Star of Mersia.

In this setting come three protagonists (each with their own POV chapters) who in their own way will be set up in individual opposition to the Empire. Loran is a widow in the province of Arland whose family was killed by the Empire. We meet her in a fantastic opening where she bargains with her country’s guardian dragon to avenge their deaths. The dragon, though, was defeated years ago by the Empire and is chained inside a volcanic cave, unable to help. It does, however, make a pact with her. She sacrifices an eye and promised to come back to break its chains and in return it gives her a magic sword (and some other yet-to-be-revealed powers). Her storyline follows her over opposition to the Empire via a series of ever larger battles.

Meanwhile, the other two characters are both in the Empire’s capital city. Arienne is a student of sorcery who is looking for a way out of lifelong and the death-long service to the Empire. This leads her to a problematic bargain of her own and eventually to being on the run from the organization that oversees sorcerers. Finally, Cain is another native Arlander who came to the city as a child and has since embedded himself in its day-to-day life. When his best friend is murdered, he takes it upon himself to solve the crime, which gets him entangled with the secret police and a possible plot to overthrow the Empire. While all three never really meet in person (pairings do occur), their actions do ripple outward from their own storyline to affect what is happening with the others.

As noted above, the foundation of the Empire’s power/energy structure is one of the more original elements, with those who show a sorcerous talent early on taken by the Empire and placed into the academy, where they learn relatively minor magic (if any) unless they become sorcerer-engineers (tasked with running the machinery), as their value to the Empire is greater after death as batteries. Unfortunately, the potential here doesn’t feel fully met, and the whole magic system overall is more than a little fuzzy, particularly when we learn of the far greater power magic users once wielded. In fact, the Empire as a whole is too misty a presence throughout. The concept of it being so strong and so pervasive that it’s nigh on impossible to imagine it not existing (and what the ramifications of it not existing would be) is a good idea, but there’s never a “lived-in” sense to it all. The Empire feels like a stage set or even just a scrim, a bit of bare background to justify the plot. We see a few members of the intelligence, but we don’t feel that they’re everywhere. We see some soldiers, then a few more, but we don’t really feel the overwhelming miliary presence of the Empire. And one could work one’s way through the rest of the world: the markets, the towns, etc. Even on a basic level, though I’m given travel times, I don’t really have a sense of the logistics of place: of distances between them, of terrain. We get snippets, but that’s it. I don’t need pages of geology, but I did need more.

The desire for more detail, more body held true in the plot as well. Loran moves too easily through her arc, with a magic sword that defeats any obstacle at first, and then when it doesn’t, she turns up with other magical powers. When she’s faced with a different sort of attempt on her life, there’s no sense of drama because the attempt is almost immediately taken care of by magic. And passive magic at that; she doesn’t actually do anything— it’s just there inside her. There’s both a repetitive nature to her arc (fight, pause, bigger fight, pause, bigger fight . . .) and a thinness to it. When she needs some allies, they show up out of the blue, are immediately incorporated into battle plans, and mostly become cannon fodder which doesn’t seem to be a problem.

Cain, we’re told, “solves” problems for people, which is how he ends up entangled with some official or semi-official people in trying to track down the murderer of his friend. But we never really see him do anything clever or “detective-like”. He’s given a tip of where to go, he follows somebody who is supposed to be a major bad guy though he never picks up he’s being tailed, and that leads to another discovery and so on until he ends up uncovering what has to be one of the worst kept “secret” plots around. As a character he is likable and his obsession with finding his friends killer is moving at times, but his plotting is never compelling or particularly surprising.

Arienne has the most interesting storyline. Her reluctance in terms of who she is forced to ally with adds some strong, constant tension. As does the fact she being hunted. But again, the way she is able to use magic to get herself out of jams, magic that just seems “inborn” versus magic she has to work for, robs her narrative of drama and agency. We also don’t get enough emotional richness, as when she’s forced to kill for the first time, something we would expect to reverberate but it’s given relatively short shrift and thus feels like another missed opportunity amongst many.

I felt the same, though perhaps to a lesser degree, about the themes. Regarding imperialism and colonialism, the destruction and flattening of cultures, the vagueness of the Empire and its subject provinces made those themes seem more academic than real, outside of Loran’s personal grief over her murdered family. And even that felt flat. That was true to some extent for the idea of freedom as well, since we don’t see the Empire in real action and don’t have a strong enough sense of what Arland was like pre-Empire and what it sacrificed, it’s hard to know what its people are fighting for beyond the word “freedom.” We know of course the Empire is brutal in putting down rebellions, and we see that in action more than once, but those feel like set pieces to make the point and not like the experiences of people for decades. We just don’t see their daily lives in disturbed enough. More effective is Arienne’s fight for freedom: her freedom from her life being fully controlled by the Empire due to her magical talent, her freedom from serving the Empire even in death, her fight for freedom to control her own actions (literally at times). All of these feel much more real, much more visceral, and much more compelling.

Overall, Blood of the Old Kings moved along well enough, the prose was clear if not particularly stylish, the characters easy enough to root for given their plot situations, but
it all just felt both too flat and too thin, with some good ideas in terms of the world or character set-ups that were never exploited enough for a rich, substantive reading experience. At this point, I’d say hold off until one has a sense if there is improvement in the sequel.

I am interviewing Sung-il and Anton for this book in the next few days, and am very excited for it. I really enjoyed this first installment in the Mersia trilogy, and am ready for more. I found the three points of view interesting and liked how they weaved the story together with their chance meetings. I'm interested to see how the next one comes out and if there will be different POVs or more or if it will stay with the original three characters.

I enjoy a good dark fantasy and this lived up to expectations. I loved the dragon opening and the translation seemed smooth. I did not care for the slow pacing tho. I lost interest several times and had to cone back to it. All in all I'm still a dark fantasy fan and I could see myself reteading it.

When someone is getting an eye removed by a dragon before the story even takes off, you know you are in for a fun ride. Lol. This was def a fun read and I enjoyed the journey from different characters pov.

Blood of the Old Kings delivered a lot of the things I love in great storytelling. First, the storytelling style and writing draws you right in. It has a good flow so you can lose yourself in the story. Second, the POV characters are clearly established and followed in their chapters, so you’re anchored in their minds and begin to get to know them. This works really well because it helps establish their motivations and objectives early on.

Loren, Arienne, and Cain are the POV characters, and they represent different age groups and situations. Loren is the oldest. In her 30s, she suffered the loss of her husband and daughter at the hands of the oppressive Empire. Cain is in his 20s and he’s a displaced Arlander who now calls one of the Empire’s cities home. He’s mourning the loss of a friend and determined to find out what happened to her.

Arienne is a 16-year-old sorcerer, forced into a life of service to the Empire, like all sorcerers. With the encouragement of a voice she hears in her head, she’s determined not to follow along and bide her time until the Empire uses her corpse as a power source.

Superficially, it seems the only thing the three have in common are their origins as Arlanders. Although Loren and Arienne have more rage against the Empire, Cain is less of a revolutionary and more of an accidental activist as long as it aligns with his objectives.

The author skillfully weaves their stories together, bringing us to points where some intersect and advance each other’s arcs. Moving between three POV characters definitely kept me on my toes; something shocking would happen and I’d turn the next page to catch up with someone else. I was equally invested in all the characters and their stories, and curious to see how things would unfold. And despite having so many perspectives, there was still plenty of room for surprises in the narrative that felt earned and appropriate within the story.

Blood of the Old Kings also has a unique magic system at work, and it was intriguing to learn more about this and see how it would impact the characters and their arcs. This is one of the highlights of the book, for me.

Honestly, it was such a compelling page-turner, it turned out to be one of my fastest reads this year.

I do think the ending may disappoint some. That will be an individual choice. For me, it felt more realistic, but I can see how that would fail to satisfy some readers. At the same time, it left me with the tiniest flicker of hope that there could be an opportunity for the author to return to this world someday. It was definitely the type of world I was sad to say goodbye to.

First off, I appreciated that this was a vaguely Eurofeudal fantasy world written by a non-European author. It's important to note that this story has little bearing on Korean culture, and good on the author for writing the type of high fantasy that is usually assumed to be the purview of white/European authors! Additionally, Hur's translation was impressively smooth, and thanks to his work the writing holds up well against traditionalist fantasy expectations.

I struggled over whether or not to DNF this (and I may indeed still change my mind in the future), but about halfway in I realized that I still had not learned very much about the world or the three characters, and that, combined with the slow pacing, made it all too easy for me to put this down and walk away. I got the gist that Arland (as well as some other kingdoms?) had been conquered and under the Empire's rule for about 20 years, but found it difficult to distinguish between the culture and values of all the different people that mixed together as a result. I didn't get a good sense of the empire as villain, which made me struggle to invest in the story.

All three main characters, unfortunately, sounded similar and were inadequately developed, despite having supposedly fascinating storylines. The book starts with a fantastic scene of Loran claiming the dragon's blessing as the rightful heir to Arland, but rather than provide us with more backstory about the dragon or the history of Arland, or even about Loran herself, we simply follow her on a series of similar-sounding battles. Arienne also has an interesting storyline which is hampered by a lack of sufficient backstory and plodding pace.

Still, I'm going to give this 3 stars because of the fluidity of the writing/translation. It's just that I'm on a mission to DNF more books that I know will just end up being 3 stars for me. This is a serviceable high fantasy that I wish had done more in terms of character development, world-building, and pacing to capture my emotions.

A great epic fantasy tale that channels the D&D goodness of 80's pulp fantasy in all the best way. But also a story with surprising heart and thought to it. Check out my Youtube video for more details!

I really enjoyed the dark premise of this fantasy novel. The setup was exactly up my alley and reminded me of some of my other favourite media that have gone to similar dark places.

This might be the first time I have read a fantasy novel translated from Korean. I appreciated the unique perspective but I found myself wondering if any style was lost through the translation. The story was good but the actual narrative style was incredibly straightforward with very plain writing. I wish there had been more nuanced and complexity to the prose because this one had serious five star potential but fell a little flat.

Despite my criticisms, I still enjoyed this one a lot and would highly recommend to readers looking for a dark fantasy story.

Disclaimer I received a copy of this book from the publisher.