Giula

Finished Five Broken Blades and I'm still untangling who actually lied to whom.

Five of the most dangerous liars in Yusan get summoned to kill an immortal king. Simple enough on paper. But Corland builds a cast where everyone is hiding something, from the hitman chasing atonement to the assassin chasing freedom, and the real tension isn't the assassination. It's whether any of them can trust the people they're bleeding alongside.

What I loved most was how the book never lets vengeance feel clean. Each blade carries their own private wound into this mission, and Corland makes space for all of it without slowing the plot down. It's fast, political, and sly in a way that rewards paying close attention to every POV shift.

Then the ending pulls the rug out completely. The whole plot was never what it seemed, and I'm still recalibrating who I was actually rooting for.

A delicious, twisty start to a trilogy. I'm already bracing myself for Four Ruined Realms.

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