I feel like I must preface this with a notice that high fantasy is not my usual jam. Like, not even a little bit. Watching “Game of Thrones” was my fantasy limit. However, I loved Victoria Aveyard’s Red Queen series, and was thoroughly excited to follow her into a new “sandbox”, as she calls it.

I got more excited about Realm Breaker several months back when Entertainment Weekly shared a sneak peek and I’m not sure if it was in that article or on Victoria’s instagram, but there was a section of dialogue that caught my attention.

“There are breakers of castles, breakers of chains, breakers of kings and kingdoms,” she said, her voice iron.
“Which am I?”
Power surged through her veins, delicious and seductive. She wanted more, she needed more. “You are a realm breaker, [character name omitted]. You would crack this world apart and build an empire from its ruins.”

The way she painted the concept of a realm breaker in that short snippet intrigued me. Victoria described it as Lord of the Rings meets Guardians of the Galaxy in the way of, what happens when the A-team doesn’t win. It sounds delightful. However, upon reading the book, it took a while to get to that level of excitement for what I found on the page.

I really struggled to get into the story. Not only is the world “spindle” repeated at an annoying level, the prologue failed to capture my interest due to my aforementioned lack of partiality toward the fantasy genre. The first third or so of the book is pretty slow paced, which in the grand scheme of this is the first of three parts to the series, it makes sense that there will be less action in this one. That’s not to say there is zero action in Realm Breaker. It’s just more in the vein of building the world and assembling the team of main characters.

Victoria’s elevator pitch holds true to the vibe of Realm Breaker. It follows a squire who is the lone survivor of an epic battle and his efforts to save the world from the villain introduced in that scene. The squire meets and joins forces with a pirate’s daughter, an assassin, an immortal, a quirky witch, a bounty hunter, and a guy who handles forgeries. It’s quite a wacky and endearing bunch.

The two characters that ended up sucking me into the story were Corayne, the pirate’s daughter and Sorasa, the assassin. They are sassy, fierce, determined women with complex backstories. Those kinds of characters are my jam, so I found myself eagerly awaiting their next chapters. Ok, yes, I looked ahead to see how much longer until the story switched back to their perspective.

I won’t say much more because I don’t want to give any of the twists away, which, since it’s a Victoria Aveyard novel, you know they are coming. One was so delightful, I literally said, “Ohh, I see you Victoria,” OUT LOUD… like a nerd.

It’s also littered with delightful little lines throughout, including comments about red hair and commentary on society. Look for gems like this:

“Only men can speak all day and think themselves silent.”

My advice to Realm Breaker readers is to keep in mind that this is the first book in a trilogy and it’s really just setting the stage for big drama down the line. If you go into this with high expectations, it might not meet them just yet. I have faith this will be a great series when all is said and done, and give Realm Breaker four stars.

Order your copy of Realm Breaker here.