I always love to read debut books and I’ve had Black as Diamond on my TBR ever since I heard about it! I love the idea of saving the world! Keep reading this book review of Black as Diamond for my full thoughts.
Summary
Like the rest of the winged eresh keyel, warrior Asaru has spent his life fighting the remnants of a long-dead enemy. When his brother’s squadron disappears from a border keep, Asaru travels into the human realm to investigate, only to become ensnared by a fatal – and unbreakable – curse that could wipe out his people.
When he inadvertently commits a terrible crime, Asaru is thrown into the path of Wren, an emotionally tortured former healer playing with dangerous magic. Bound to one another by a spell gone wrong, and on the run from freelance killers, they set out to find the Chronicler, keeper of the eresh keyel’s history who could bring them answers, redemption, and the cure to Asaru’s curse. But the truths they uncover about the past have the power to break the world into pieces, ending human civilization and settling its remnants into something entirely new.
Review
The character intrigue in Black as Diamond is immediately compelling. The idea of being a warrior, but also cursed, we are wondering how our characters can continue on their path. And this idea of discovering and uncovering the truth is the most captivating theme of Black as Diamond for me. I love a good, the world is not what we think, as the cost to examining and revealing the truth is often steep, relentless, and thankless. Do we become hard as diamonds, do we let this process harden us into something glittering and reflective, or do circumstances make us that way? At the beginning, I had a difficult time with the multiple POV framework though.
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There’s so much at play in this world and this flitting between characters combined with the intrigue felt like there were holes for me in some spots. In some ways I wanted the pace to slow down and just take a few more moments to give me some more information. To develop more before we moved onto a new character or more action. I love the framework of what we see here, but I just struggled to put it together. Find Black as Diamond on Goodreads, Storygraph, Bookshop.org & Blackwells.