Originally posted on Small Review 
 Let's be honest here 
 I initially picked up this series because I thought the guy on the cover looked hot. Yes, that IS how I select my books. Mostly. 
 His smaller companion on the right wasn't too bad either, but, really, it was that rugged man on the left with, count them, three swords that caught my eye. 
 Oh, and it was also billed as an epic fantasy series that promised battles, thieves, court intrigue, mercenaries, assassinations, questing, conspiracy and all that good stuff. So that caught my attention, too. 
 Did it live up? 
 Did it ever! My gosh, this is one of those Leave Me Babbling books where it's just too good to not insert squees between mostly-incoherent gushing. 
 This is definitely the type of series that gets better as it goes along. I finished the first book (which ends pretty well as a standalone) and a tiny part of me considered moving on to something else because, while I totally loved it, the characters felt a tiny bit...distant? Not entirely alive? 
 They were great, but, you know me, I'm a character girl and these characters were maybe 90% of the way there. 
 But I didn't wait and I don't recommend doing anything silly like waiting. Pick up the next book in the series as soon as you finish the first (added convenience, they're sold as omnibus editions! So the next book is already in your hands!). I did that, and I'm so glad I did that because the characters totally grew on me. 
 Also, all those things about the plot that I thought were plain old surface level fantasy fare turned out to be twisty turny stuff that took on a whole new level of meaning once I started connecting all the dots later on. 
 Oh Hadrian 
 And that guy on the cover? He totally lived up! Talk about swoon fest. It wasn't the type of swooning where he had sizzling romantic scenes ('cause, honestly, his ultimate love declaration scene was kinda embarrassing--totally cute, but also totally embarrassing. BUT, yay for slow burn romance!). No, I swooned because of the type of man he is, which is a MANLY man. Not alpha man, but more like knight paragon kinda man. 
 There's even this scene in, oh, book five? Four? Six? Something like that, where he's pretending to be a knight and the real knights sneer at him because he's all common and stuff but it's Hadrian who actually embodies all the qualities of nobleness, steadfastness, honor, virtue, kindness, humility, etc. and the "real" knights are just big meanies. 
 It's all very heavy handed, but it's also SO TRUE that I didn't mind because by that point I was already donning my Hadrian cheerleading outfit and breaking out the pom poms every chance I got. 
 Ok fine, do you prefer the rogue wounded bad boy with a hidden tenderness? 
 Well lucky you, that's the little guy on the cover. Don't worry, he's not little in, erm, real life? Book life? Whatever, the cover is totally miscast, because Royce is a badass assassin who does BAD things to even badder people and doesn't bat an eye. 
 BUT, he has a not-so-secret relationship that makes him melt into a puddle of total besotted mush. Also, he's allowed himself to stop being so closed off and let Hadrian in as his best pal. 
 So you know what that means, right? LOTS of brothers-in-arms bonding! I LOVE brothers-in-arms bonding. It's fantastic. They do all sorts of cool things like pulling off amazing thefts that no one else could do or fighting in battles or engaging in secret missions and quests and bantering all the while because they have a kind of platonic man version of the hate-turned-love relationship going on that adds about a bizillion points to everything. 
 Did I say quests and battles? 
 YES! Also, court conflict and intrigue, assassinations (and not just by Royce's hand), mysteries, deposing kings, sieges, explosions, magic, duels, scary creatures, ship voyages, jungle battles, charming street urchins, villainous political factions, pretender queens, romances, kick butt women (TOTAL kick butt women!), double crosses, misdirection, and ALL sorts of other fabulous stuff. 
 It's pretty much an explosion of everything I want, all packaged in three, ok, BIG books (but all with swoony covers). 
 And a note on that size? I WANT MORE. Seriously. These books aren't long enough. Sure, they're LONG. I consider anything over 300 pages a LONG book, and there are six books here, each well over 300 pages. And yet, I'm not satisfied. 
 Oh sure, everything wraps up fine, in the end. But I'm not ready to let go of these characters or this world. I think I read everything in a little over a month and a half, and it only took that long because halfway through I realized I loved it so much I needed to start "making it last." 
 Otherwise, this was the kind of series where my main motivation for waking up in the morning was so I could start reading and it was only my super strict fear of lying that kept me from using a coveted sick day to call out of work so I wouldn't have to stop reading. 
 I've only really mentioned Hadrian and Royce, but this is an epic fantasy, so you know there's a requisite character guide because there are so many side characters (there are also maps, obviously). And, being a more traditional epic fantasy, a lot of those side characters get narrative time so I was able to fall in love with them even more. 
 I'd start listing my favorites (other than the obvious) but I'd end up with basically the character guide, and that thing is PAGES long. So I'm not even going to try. I'll just say that by the end of the series, all the characters felt like real people and, months later, I'm STILL not ready to let them go. 
 The near-non-stop action interspersed with character growth and tense peril helped make the pages fly by, too. 
 I guess EVERYTHING these days 
 I feel so jaded lately. I used to be super dense and never guess endings and I loved that because who needs to be a smarty pants if it ruins the surprise? But lately I've been guessing all the endings and that's just no fun. 
 But not with this series! I think I've now firmly cemented my status as loony book lady in my new job's library because I read this series during my lunch breaks there and I swear I tried, but I couldn't stop myself from exclaiming out loud and otherwise talking to my books. 
 I mean, it's just, all this STUFF happened! And I didn't see ANY of it coming! It was amazing! There were all these twists and turns and I wasn't expecting any of it! Oh my, oh my gosh, NO NO NO, YES YES YES!! and similar phrases made up my more regular outbursts. 
 Also, I would just periodically exclaim, "My gosh I LOVE this series!" for no reason in particular other than just the general accumulation of awesomeness that I couldn't contain in non-verbal ways anymore. 
 At one point a student even asked me if I was ok. Thankfully she must have been a reader herself because after I sputtered out a, "yeah, I'm fine, it's just, my book" she just nodded kind of knowingly and smiled. So she's probably totally a kindred spirit reader. 
 Or she thinks I'm nuts. 
 Bottom line 
 Do you love fantasy series? Brothers in arms? Romance? Action? Peril? Mystery? Court intrigue? Quests? Intriguing characters? Double crosses? Unexpected twists? Well, WHAT ARE YOU WAITING FOR?!? 
 Michael J. Sullivan, welcome to my auto-buy list. 
 Explanation of rating system: Star Rating Key 
 Originally posted on Small Review