Every once in a while a book recommendation passes beneath your nose that captures your attention. Regicide was that way. It started with a compelling cover, a blurb that promised grimdark fantasy elements, and a lack of clear romance plotline. It lived up to some of those promises and had some legitimately interesting developments, but was undercut by a dire need for another readthrough and round of proofing and edits.
Read if Looking for: Redwall for adults, morally upright protagonists in dystopian worlds, author-created illustrations, characters who happen to be gay
Avoid if You are Looking for: polished prose, multi-POV stories, deep themes or nuance, romance, books without depictions of intense racism, lots of magic
Elevator Pitch:
This is the story of Holt, a member of the ‘vermin’ beastkin whose lands were colonized by the Panthera. He now lives as a beggar, supported only by his partner, whose untimely death pushes Holt. towards new connections with the underground resistance and old traditions of his people.
However, this is Holt’s story told after he’s become an infamous legend. An elder shares the ‘real’ story of Holt to others of his kind. They live underground, still firmly under the paw of the Pantheran government, meaning you know from the very beginning that the ending of the story wouldn’t be a happy one.
What Worked for Me
I think this book is going to work well for people who like classic fantasy protagonists. Holt isn’t a farmer, but otherwise fits the down-on-your-luck young man who finds himself thrust into a grand destiny perfectly. He’s kind, caring, optimistic, hard working, and everything else that you’d expect from a traditional epic fantasy story (which was initially jarring for me because I was anticipating grimdark). He’s in an oppressive government with a tyrannical king and an underground resistance. It hits a lot of classic beats, which creates a delicious contrast with the context that, at the end of the story, the world is still ruled by dystopian racist lions.
Another highlight was the illustrations! They were created by the author and helped a lot with picturing characters. Because the entire world operates outside traditional fantasy species, you don’t have an instinctive understanding of what they look like. It was a great element that really made this book standout, and I appreciated how the author balanced illustrating dynamic climactic moments with more cosy and quiet story beats.
If you want a trope-filled heroic fantasy where the protagonist doesn’t necessarily end up saving the world, I think this is a really solid option.
What Didn’t Work for Me
The biggest issue for me with this book was the editing. There were lots of formatting and grammar errors, odd phrasing that could have been cleaned up, and weird jumps in narrative that had me rereading paragraphs to figure out what context I missed. It was jarring enough that it was a significant negative, while normally I note proofreading errors mostly for those whom they’re a deal-breaker. I just wish the author would have set this book down for a month, come back with fresh eyes and done a tight set of revisions before publishing.
I also thought there was some weird thematic dissonance. The premise is an interesting one: traditionally published stories push hard against happy endings. There’s a bit of the conceit of Kingkiller Chronicles in this book: a legendary figure who caused great harm and upheaval actually wasn’t such a bad guy and here’s his story in retrospect to set the record straight. The narrator went to great pains to point out that Holt was just an ordinary guy who happened to stumble into this adventure. And I liked the ending, describing how Holt’s actions, while idealistic had a tangibly and lastingly negative consequences for the people he was. trying to hard to help. However, I thought Holt was actually the least important person in the whole story, despite his dramatic role in it’s climax. The clerics and underground resistance had so much more impact on the direction of history, and I wish the thematic weight would have been thrown in that direction: that Holt is merely the stand-in to represent the efforts and actions of a vastly larger machine than he ever knew he was a part of.
Finally, Holt had some major main-character energy that bugged me. This is probably a stupid complaint considering how tropey this story ended up being for most of the journey. However, there were too many moments where the actions of others involving Holt in the regicide plot made little sense. Why are they trusting key tasks of infiltrating official residences to a beggar with no real experience with burglary? This, plus Holt’s relentless naivety and innocence clashed with the grimdark vibes of the setting, cover, and blurb. There was just a mismatch of expectations and reality of the story I think. It didn’t help that so much of the story was spent on Holt’s backstory, while the actual thieving and regicide-ing bits felt fairly cramped into the back half without a natural build up. While line edits would have made this book quite good, I think more drastic revisions would have been needed to push this story into something deeply compelling.
Conclusion: a heroic fantasy where the hero doesn’t win, plagued by editing errors and some awkward plotting decisions
- Characters: 3
- Worldbuilding: 4
- Craft: 1
- Themes: 2
- Enjoyment: 3
Marked for Plot 