The King's Sword

A disillusioned soldier. A spoiled, untried prince. A coup that threatens the country they love.

When retired soldier Kemen finds the young prince Hakan fleeing an attempted assassination, he reluctantly takes the role of mentor and guardian. Keeping the prince alive is challenging enough. Making him a man is harder.

As usurper Vidar tightens his grip on power, Kemen wrestles with questions of duty and honor. What if the prince isn’t the best ruler after all?

Invasion looms, and Kemen’s decisions will shape the fate of a nation. What will he sacrifice for friendship and honor?

Amazon Reviewer: There's no magic, but the heart and soul of the universe the author has created in the Erdemen Honor Series breaths refreshing life into a genre that has recently become cynical and vulgar. C.J. Brightley's epic tale pits the young, untested prince Hakan against the elements, a treacherous army, political betrayal, and most importantly his own self-doubt.

His guide, Kemen Sendoa --an outcast former soldier of an unwelcome race throughout his own kingdom-- narrates our story as a brilliantly noble yet flawed protagonist. His ponderous teaching shows us the culture and history of Erdemen from his reserved perspective and causes us to fall in love with this medieval world through his eyes. He loves his country, he fights for his prince, and he sacrifices everything he can for both - never once regretting his decisions. The journey doesn't veer in any unpredictable directions, yet doesn't fall to the cliches of flashbacks or melodrama either. Kemen Sendoa is the mentor any martial arts student or young entrepreneur wishes he had growing up. He's an Arthurian Mr. Miyagi, and getting an entire story from his inner monologue is riveting and vivid. It's really a wonder how well crafted this character is.

Hakan, our "Hero of a Thousand Faces" is guided to his rightful destiny, pushed further and further by our narrator, and over the course of the 300 pages truly grows with a well developed, if not well known, arc. It's rare that the "Daniel-San" or Luke Skywalker character isn't the filter for this kind of story, and I really believe that is what makes this book so unexpectedly wonderful.

For what little scenes of action are included in this story, they are incredibly well written, and I do hope they are more prevalent in the sequels. The King's Sword may be full of some basic Hero's Journey cliches, but the political intrigue, Hakan's unexpected strengths, and a lack of cynicism more than make up for the lack of surprises in the plot. Maybe it's the "retro" style of it, but I dig The King's Sword for what it is, and look forward to reading Brightley's next book in the series.

Amazon Reviewer:

The story is not told from Hakan's viewpoint, but Kemen's. The grizzled, world-weary soldier is usually the one-dimensional foil to the hero, but here we are allowed to be inside that character's head, and the result is a refreshing blend of honor, kindness, self-discipline and self-depreciation.