Firstly, thank you to Dalglish for yet another wonderful book! I got an eARC from Orbit and Netgalley, so thank you to both!!

"No crowns. No Thrones."

The TLDR, This is Dalglishs best book yet. I've now read a total of 8 books from him, and originally I would have said Level:Unknown or the Sapphire Altar, but Radiant King is his best work yet.

What started out feeling a little bit by the numbers of a fantasy story, especially with tropes feeling like Dalglish has tread these waters before, turned into something greatly more.

This I would consider a grimdark novel. Dalglish has always had gruesome action, but I found the tone and characters don't always match that action. This time it does.

The world of Kaus is dark, dreadful, and depressing. But there is still some hope in a better tomorrow.

This is very much a military fantasy, literally following in the events of armies travelling and fighting. With that we get lots of soldiers smashing into soldiers, which I love, but we also get plenty of down time.

And here is where his characterization has peaked. Sariel is a standout, and from other reviews he seems to be the favourite. The character work and motivations really helped drive the overall plot, decisions, and mystery added in.

The story, to me, is balanced well between action, character work, and the mystery.

And in typical Dalglish fashion, a hell of an ending.

Good f**king work, man. I'm super eager for book 2!!

This review was originally posted on sffinsiders.com.

For a long time, I’d wanted to pick up one of Dalglish’s works but never could choose which one to begin with. Thankfully for me, The Radiant King essentially fell into my lap, and here we are.

This was a rather long book at around 600 pages, but I absolutely TORE through it. I’m not a particularly fast reader, and usually a book this long would take me multiple weeks, but I think I finished in just one. I attribute most of that to the pacing. Dalglish does an amazing job splitting this book up into its constituent parts. Chapters don’t drag. Arcs don’t feel abrupt and sudden. And by the time I’m done with one page I’m immediately flipping to the next, regardless of whether or not it's the end of the chapter (which is something I know people tend to do). Another fantastic aspect for this book’s pacing was the worldbuilding.

Sprinkled in here and there, with a few larger dumps when called for in the form of exposition, expertly navigated dialogue, and so forth, we get a very fine picture of the world of The Radiant King early on. With every consecutive page, it gets fleshed out more and more, until we are practically right in the story with the main characters.

I say practically because if I WAS in the story, I would rip my hair out and run and hide from almost everybody.

We follow siblings, there are six of them, but one of them has mysteriously disappeared decades ago and hasn’t been found since, and so we only really deal with five. A few of them have more minor roles (one has a few chapters, the other shows up late) so we see the contents of this story play out through three of the brothers; Faron, Sariel, and Eder.

These siblings are almost gods amongst men; they have a power that lets them do all manner of things, though it varies between siblings. They have a VERY storied past, one that haunts them, and so they’ve vowed never to create a kingdom again. However, when Faron reawakens from dying in order to be reborn (I’m still not quite sure why he had to do this, to be honest, and it kind of bothers me…) he finds that one of his brothers, Eder, has created a kingdom, and given their power to the people. A big no no.

He reunites with Sariel, and the two go on a crusade of sorts, using and befriending a princess blessed with their power from birth to stop Eder. Along the way they meet interesting friends—a young boy who definitely got more than he bargained for, and avery cute, very old, very companionable coyote.

We learn how this new kingdom came to be, and what the others were doing in Faron’s stasis, of sorts. The story—at least in terms of these warring siblings—was rather unique, and for that I had a grand old time. I enjoyed the bit where the elves had a mystically valley maze to trap humans, because I always like grotesque fey-like faerie elves, compared to stereotypical ones we might see in Tolkien inspired stories. The elves were not a particularly integral part of the story, but nonetheless a pleasant surprise.

I am, as I have said time and time again, a HUGE fan of flashbacks, interludes, what have you. We get some here, but very sparingly, and very randomly. I enjoyed them, they provided a great deal of information and backstory and development—or at least set up for it—but their occurrences were a bit out of place at times, if I’m being honest.

By the end, we’ve had our characters all painted out for us, and we reach the big finale. And what a finale it was. I still don’t know what to make of it. Who lives? Who dies? Who… changed? Its all so strange, so different, but it was SO COOL. This was one of the more out there endings I’d read, reminding me of Berserk and the Witcher, and I say that with high praise; those are two of my favorite series.

This story was a lot of fun. Was it my favorite, no, because I can only have so many, but it IS one I will be keeping an eye on, especially when the later books in the series come out, as I am eagerly awaiting the continuation to those that remain of the siblings, and the others that are tied to them.

One last thing, though, and minor spoilers ahead. In the afterword/author’s note/whatever you want to call it, Dalglish mentions that Sariel and Faron were originally the same character. This was something I didn’t know I was going to read, but wasn’t surprised about in the slightest. They were meant to come across as different, kind of as two sides of the same coin, but to me… They would have been better off as a single character. I enjoyed the journeys each went, and I understand the roles they played in the story. But in terms of their characterization, while one was outgoing and the other was broodish, they were more or less the same person. Would that have affected the story a lot? Probably. Thats why Dalglish wrote it and I didn’t, and he did a fantastic job at it. But hey, I felt the need to be honest.

In the end, The Radiant King by David Dalglish was a wonderful tale that tells us blood is thicker than water, but makes us question if that's really even true. Fast, action packed, and one hell of a ride, The Radiant King is perfect for fans of monster filled dark fantasy, especially if you’ve enjoyed the Witcher or Berserk.

Thank you to NetGalley and Orbit for the arc!
Unfortunately, this book was a miss. The characters are 2D Mario flat, and the character development was minuscule. Also, for a book that is supposedly epic fantasy, I found the world building to be lacking. I was bored and unattached until I put the book down at around 30%. I couldn’t read another page; my mind was numb. That’s all, folks

David Daglish’s brand new trilogy, The Astral Kingdoms kicks off with The Radiant King, a tale of an immortal family, sworn from crowning themselves rulers of the mortal world, thrown into a maelstrom of chaos, when one among them seemingly betrays the rest for ultimate control over humanity.


Daglish is one of those authors about whom I have heard good things, but life and the deluge of new works every week allowed to slip through the cracks. His dark assassin fantasy series The Vagrant Gods caught my fancy, but ultimately slipped past my attention. So when he announced a new series (adding to his impressively vast catalog), I compelled myself to get ahead of the curve.

The premise of the Astral Kingdoms seems straightforward enough at the outset. Six siblings granted magical powers via “radiance”, are functionally immortal. Through wisdom and bitter experience, they arrive at the pact of never taking a crown or kingdom in the mortal world, and only striving to use their radiance to nudge humanity towards a better future. One of them, the brother Eder “betrays” them, proceeds to set up a religious cult devoted to his radiance, and ushers in a new empire, dubbed the “Astral Kingdom”. The siblings get justifiably upset, and chaos ensues.

The Radiant King weaves its way through the burden of immortality through the eyes of those who survive the rigors of time, and the toll it takes on their souls. The book also toys with the cycles of rebirth, and the idea of past lives, with the sins of past selves coming back, in very real ways to haunt the present. This book also explores the dilemma of sharing magical powers with the commonfolk, each with their personalities, motivations, and ambitions, and how great power in small hands leads to the downfall of everyone.

While I had a good enough time being carried through the plot of The Radiant King, this book felt like it had more misses than hits. At the outset, immortal characters are particularly challenging to write plot around, because having severely overpowered characters in any regard takes away from the stakes of the story, reducing much of its gravitas. While this is most definitely a dark fantasy book, packed with violence, gore, and an (un)healthy level of body horror, the immortal nature of the protagonists created a gap between the plot tensions and the reader. Even when pitted against one of the immortal siblings, even at the lowest, most catastrophic plot keystone moments, I never felt truly pulled into the “danger”.

By far, the weakest part of The Radiant King is the characterization. At surface level, Daglish seemingly creates unique characters in each of the siblings, each with their own archetype, motivations, strengths, and most importantly flaws. But even with the slightest bit of scratching beneath the surface, the characters come off as incredibly monotone and are caricatures of their archetype. Whether it is the brute-with-a-heart-of-gold softboy Faron, or the brooding I-have-a-haunting-secret Sariel, the two major “protagonists” become parodies of themselves within the first few chapters, as soon as readers catch onto their character paradigms. The whimsical-but-whiny Calluna, and the indomitable-but-traumatized “humanity must suffer” Aylah, none of the characters had any sense of believable nuance. Even the antagonist, Eder, who has been radicalized by powers beyond this world, stumbles through the burden of being the counterpoint to the protagonists. His motivations feel entirely lackluster, which when coupled with everyone’s immorality and gung-ho nature, takes away yet another facet of danger or tension the reader may face while moving through the book.

The only character who I felt had potential to be complex was fanatic Queen Isabelle, the secret wielder of Radiance, who could have been written to be a great shake up to the sibling dynamic. Her meteoric rise to empress with Faron and Sariel doubting her altruism with hints of tyranny lurking just around the corner at every action set piece, Isabelle had enough going for her to carry this book into something truly spectacular. However Daglish, only takes a passing stab at any of those themes, thereby relegating her to discount-bin Evadine (from Anthony Ryan’s fantastic grimdark Covenant of Steel series). The side-characters while serviceable, fall flat when their contribution to the plot beats are so infinitesimally insignificant compared to the power struggle of immortals.

The pacing of The Radiant King also felt quite uneven, with the first half of the book plodding along hitting stale plot checkpoints, with brief action scenes. These chapters, perhaps intended to flesh out Faron, Sariel, and most importantly Isabelle’s motivations, would have been much more rewarding had the climactic chapters not push all of that away for a generic climax. The flashback section of chapters towards the two-thirds mark also grinds the pacing to a halt. Daglish would’ve done better to have the flashback chapters interspersed through all the chapters, or have bits and pieces of Sariel’s tale told in some other way.

In The Radiant King, Daglish had an interesting and compelling story to tell, but somehow fell just a wee bit flat on many counts. There are unique perspectives when writing character development and motivations of immortal beings, and the conflict that can arise between them, yet Daglish only takes the most perfunctory stab at those perspectives. Every aspect of the book feels good enough but stops just a few steps short of truly great.

The Radiant King has a fresh story to tell, with a unique premise, but the predictable plot, the weak characterization, and a severe lack of meaningful gravitas leads to an insurmountable gap between the story and the reader leading to a book with the potential to be great but stumbles into the mires of mediocrity. Here’s hoping the next entry of the series, tightens up the plot, gives the characters more depth, and that Daglish does not hold back from truly diving deeper into the darkness within himself to unleash it upon us all.

While I normally enjoy epic fantasy, this one just didn't work for me. The pacing was pretty steady overall, which was a plus. The biggest focus of this book is on battles, planning for battles, and combat. This isn't something I mind if the rest of the book is engaging, but it wasn't in this case.

The characters are flat, especially the secondary ones, with little-to-no development. The worldbuilding is almost nonexistent. There are a few interesting aspects that are scattered throughout the book, even a couple that were really fascinating, but not enough to create a vibrant setting or make anything come to life. Despite there being situations in the book that should be high stakes, that feeling never comes through. The author also heavily relied on telling rather than showing. All of these things combined made for a flat experience.

If you love fiction that focuses on war and planning, then you may enjoy this one. My thanks to NetGalley and Orbit Book for allowing me to read this work. All thoughts and opinions expressed in this review are my own.

Phenomenal! Amazing! I need book 2 immediately!

The Radiant King follows a family of six ever-living siblings. With unknown centuries of experiences and wisdom, they have made a pact: No Thrones. No Crowns. No sharing their unique magic with humans. When one brother not held to the vow breaks all three rules, the siblings must act, gathering together a force of humans to stop their brother's plans.

This was an incredible story about family and the weight of living multiple lives. Each sibling felt special and unique and definably their own. They each are covered in shades of grey: neither fully right, or fully wrong. I fell in love with each of them.

The magic of the world is so interesting and is woven through with interesting religious themes- something I'm finding I love in Daglish's stories.

This book is bloody, brutal, and breathtaking. I can't wait to see what happens next.

Thank you to Net Galley and Orbit for the ARC. The concept and plot is full of intrigue, the world building is so interesting, but alas the plot drags and none of the characters interested me, so I could not enjoy this book.

Thank you Netgalley and the publisher for the opportunity to review this Advanced Reader Copy!

This is my first David Daglish story and after reading a few reviews, I definitely agree. This story was well paced and entertaining, but it was also very run-of-the-mill. I really gravitate towards stories that have religious undertones and I was drawn to this story because of that. It definitely scratched that itch, but the story wasn't blowing me away.

I enjoyed Isabelle the most, next to Calluna for sure. The girls were definitely the best characters.

Again, this story was good but nothing really gripped me to continue the series.

This was such a quick read for me. I loved the writing and the world most of all. The characters were great but not the standout aspect of the book for me. The plot was fast without being hard to follow. I have never read anything from this author before and this book made me excited to read the authors past work! Enjoyable fast read!

4.0 stars

As a long-time fan of Dalglish’s work, I have to say that I wasn’t disappointed in this book! It has all the flair that makes his writing style, characters, and the world interesting to read! I certainly found myself wanting to turn the next page or go on to the next chapter to see what happens.

I will say, as an issue I have with multi-pov books regardless, some of the characters in this were simply weaker/less interesting than others and it made it a drag to get through their chapters. Additionally, as with all his work, it takes a little while to fully get immersed in his world, but I didn’t find that to be a major detractor.

I could certainly see if this is your first time reading Dalglish that you might be put off, as you try to follow the plot and uncover the mystery going on, but I would simply say try to stick with it, as you just might find yourself surprised by the end.

I certainly recommend anyone give this book a try!

This started out so weird for me and just didn't know what to expect really. The story focuses on a family of what seem to immortals who possess powers that only they have. Not sure if they are human or if they are like just an unique race of humans. They cannot die but they can have periods of regeneration to get over traumatic episodes. Well, that seems to be what Faron does. Didn't seem clear if the others did that as well. There was one brother that was only in one part that of the book so don't know exactly what happened to him unless I missed out on something. The whole family is just so used to their immortality, and they were just so tired of living century after century. They have made mistakes which some of them seem to repeat over and over. This sort of brings me into the whole religion system or life cycles that exist in the world. There seems to by a system of rebirth where humans keep being reborn. It was sort of confusing in a way that will be but leads into what the brother Eder wants to find another religion system based on the Father. There is also the goddess which may or may not be real just like the Father may or may not be real. I liked Faron and Sariel was interesting. They all seem to have so much going on after living for centuries so that pain is evident in them throughout the book. The magic system which is unique to Faron and his brothers and sisters which should not be shared with humanity and the reasons for that will become clear in the book later on. The battle and action scenes were pretty well done. Mr. Dalglish continues to write the most interesting stories and create worlds that ignite the imagination. Thanks to netgalley and the publishers for giving me the opportunity to read a good book.

The Radiant King by David Dalglish. a well written book that I had to come back to a few times. It failed to pull me in and make me want to keep reading but I do think others will like it and thank you for giving me a chance with it.

☆FOR FANS OF: George RR Martin's A Game of Thrones, Mark Lawrence's Prince of Thorns, Kentaro Miura's Berserk series, John Gwynne's The Shadow of the GodsDark Souls, or other dark fantasy

Ultimate verdict ☆☆☆☆/5

☆☆☆Best Character Award goes to:☆☆☆ Sariel and his amazing dragonbone sword stole the show for me

Review: A Radiantly dark fantasy saga

Oh David Dalgish, I wish I had read your work before you're AMAZING. I've been chasing the high of reading ASOIAF for the first time for years, and this is one of two books so far this year that's given me that feeling back again. Years ago all my friends and family did a read-a-long of the ASOIAF books. When this one hits the shelves, I really want to encourage everybody to do that again with The Radiant King. It just hits right.

The different POV characters have distinct and well defined voices: Sariel's chapters were my favorites because he's not afraid to chop people in half. This is a gory, gruesome book. People die in nasty ways, and it's just so much fun! The magic system called Radiance is very interesting and comes with a wide variety of different uses, from flushing groundhogs out of holes to doing like a Jedi mind trick on people. This book kept me on my toes all the way to the very end and I EAGERLY await a sequel because AAAAAH the ending! THE ENDING!

You got a new fan, Mr. Dalgish.

Thank you to NetGalley, the author, and the publisher for this early ARC copy in exchange for my honest review!

I thought the worldbuilding and plot were so unique. As usual, Dalglish writes a pretty good fantasy that has enough elements to keep me reading. I just think there were a couple aspects that seemed routine or overused. For instance, you could tell who the author's favorite character was and how the author was going to develop said character. I'm sure it would be fine and well, except that I personally didn't enjoy that character so I had to tolerate that POV everytime it popped up. And watch them prevail and win and eventually get what they wanted even though I didn't want that particular ending. But that is just a personal preference, I'm sure lots of people will love this character. Beside that though, it was pretty good!

Faron has slept for many years, and when he awakes searching for news about his siblings and what has changed in the world in his absence, he makes several unwelcome discoveries. Of his immortal siblings, only his brother Eder has violated the oath to not wear a crown or seek a kingdom, but it seems that sitting upon a throne may be the least of his crimes when Faron finds evidence that the sacred power only shared by his family has been gifted to some humans in Eder's kingdom to help spread his influence. For these crimes, Faron resolves to seek out his missing kin, throw down Eder's rising religious empire, and restore order to his immortal life.

A brutal, exciting, sweeping fantasy story that mixes intrigue, violence, and broken family dynamics to incredible effect.

I had to dnf at 50%. I didn't go in with expectations but when I hit 50% in a book and I don't know much about the world, or it's characters, or feel really attached to anything, I have to dnf.

The writing was good! The pacing was good as well, it's just more of a structure and/or content problem for me. I like war scenes, I like darker themes, I just felt like the characters were 2D with how the set up and plot was. I definitely think many people will enjoy this book! It just wasn't for me and that's ok! It has a very interesting premise and lots of people like kinda being kept in the dark about certain things for big reveals later so I feel this may happen later on.

Thank you to netgalley for giving me an ARC in exchange for an honest review ~

Yes! This was amazing! Definitely a must read for anyone that loves great characters and a fantastic world building.

I enjoyed this one a lot. In the past I have struggled to connect with this author. I really enjoyed the premise and story telling in this one. Highly recommend for fans of fans of the author although I will not be reading anymore in this trilogy. It just didn't hold my interest to continue on.

Immortality to humanity is like the mailman to your dog. What I mean by that is -- what happens when your dog finally catches the mailman? What then?

What will people do when they can live forever? How does that affect them? How does that corrupt them?

The Radiant King takes the concept of immortality and looks at it through a lens of pessimism and the man’s evil nature. In fact, we get six different looks at immorality in the first installment of David Dalglish’s Astral Kingdoms series from the vantage points of six siblings who are each immortal. Each handles and perceives their “gift” differently and those perspectives guide and affect the humans who are trying to survive and thrive with just the one life they’ve been given. The idea of living forever and keeping your sanity intact is definitely a key idea for a few of our siblings.

Now, I say six siblings, but one is absent for a significant chunk of the book and we never do get to meet one of them entirely. But each of their stories tells about how they are shaped by their long lives, particularly Faron and Sariel, who almost act like co-lead protagonists in this novel. Faron is the more optimistic of the two, seeing humanity can grow and improve, while Sariel is the more dour of the two. They present a nice contrast to the story, but to be honest there were times that they seemed a little too similar. It seemed a bit odd to me until I read Dalglish’s Author’s Note at the end of the novel, and it seemed to make a little more sense.

I was into the story and did love the forward momentum Dalglish kept up throughout the book. I wasn’t sure I was as interested in continuing the series, however, until the final few pages when the aftermath of the final battle takes shape and the characters find out what’s happened to their friends and world moving forward. The scars left behind present a fascinating opening point to whatever Dalglish brings to the second book in the series and I’ll be interested in seeing what he does with a followup.

There is some great action and some interesting ideas that weave in and out of The Radiant King and I do recommend picking it up for a great fantasy read.

An overall enjoyable read.

The characters were well developed and honestly carried the book for me. The plot was interesting and I enjoyed the ending. I also enjoyed the quality of the writing itself.

I did find the flashbacks awkwardly placed and they pulled me out of the main story.