Of Sword & Silver by January Bell
A Conqueror’s Kingdom #1
Fantasy
Kindle Unlimited

Review by Angela

I’ve enjoyed this author’s science fiction romances, which are available on Kindle Unlimited. So, I was pretty excited to learn she was dipping her toes into the fantasy genre with a new series.

Of Sword & Silver is pretty ambitious– with a feisty, misunderstood heroine, a mysterious male main protagonist, and worldbuilding with extensive gods, goddess, and historical backstory. The female main character is Kyrie, who is a thief, mischief maker, and a disciple of the goddess Sola. She visits her best friend Lara after stealing and drinking from a cursed chalice. Which is when Lara, a patron of Nakush who can see the future, says her death is imminent and the only chance she has is to break out someone named The Sword from prison.

This begins a road trip adventure full of mystery and mayhem.

The Sword is big, grumpy, and apparently being imprisoned for killing an entire village of Sola followers. He’s understandably leery about one of the goddess’s silver tongue patrons breaking him out of jail. But he soon realizes that the gods are playing a game of sorts, and Kyrie is his destiny.

I really enjoyed this debut fantasy. Not so much the cliffhanger at the end, but the story itself was compulsively readable. The worldbuilding is well done, extensive but not overwhelming. I liked the female main character, Kyrie right from the start. She’s a smartass, hiding her feelings and emotions behind banter and jokes. The Sword is an enigma, but you will guess his identity about half the way through and may or may not be correct. Theirs is a slow burn romance, but I never got bored or eager for them to finally get together. They had chemistry and the slowness of their building relationship really worked for the story.

I was a little irritated by the cliffhanger ending. Like give a girl some warning! But I’m hooked now and will absolutely be reading the next book in the series.

Final grade- B