• Author: Daniel B. Greene
• Series: The Lawful Times #0.5
• Genre: Fantasy/Murder Mystery
• No. of pages: 140
• Dates read: 26.04.21 – 27.04.21
• Star Rating: 2 stars

Plot: When an imperial family is found butchered, Officers of God are called to investigate. Evidence points to a rebel group trying to stab fear into the very heart of the empire. Inspector Khlid begins a harrowing hunt for those responsible, but when a larger conspiracy comes to light, she struggles to trust even the officers around her.

So, I am a really big fan of this author. I found him on YouTube a couple of years ago and he is the reason I started reading adult fantasy. As at that point, I had only been reading YA fantasy and murder mysteries. He inspired me to try new things specifically Brandon Sanderson and the Wheel of Time series, both of which I am now big fans of. So, I was super excited to dive in and read his debut. I really wanted to love this book.

But sadly, this book just didn’t work out for me.

The main thing here is that I felt writing a novella might of not have been the best choice. Quite a lot of my reasons for not loving this book come from the fact that I just wanted more from the story. More world building, more character development and more plot development and I felt that in choosing to write a novella it really restricted what you could do.

The writing itself wasn’t too bad. At times it felt a bit clunky but overall I think he did a good job. The writing of the gore and moments of intense emotions I really liked and thought was done well. The pacing was a bit of a mis-match between super fast or quite slow. But I didn’t really have an issue with it.

The characters I couldn’t connect to. This is down to the fact that Greene just didn’t give himself enough room to flesh out these characters and explore them a bit more. Because of this, I just didn’t really care about what happened to them. While I liked Khlid, she was the best of the characters, I just felt that what we got wasn’t enough for me to have any emotional connection to them.

The plot itself felt quite convenient and for a mystery I didn’t enjoy the investigation side of it. All of the answers arrived to the character without her having to do much of anything at all. It was literally just given to her. There was a lot of just telling us things rather than showing as well. While I liked the plot as an idea, I wish we had more time to learn about the intricacies of each aspect of the mystery, the evidence, the suspects, the theories. It all felt quite rushed. Again, I think this comes down to Greene just not giving himself enough room to flesh out the mystery.

I also heard that this novella was to introduce readers to the world of The Lawful Times series but I have to be honest in the fact that I didn’t learn loads about the world and how it functions. What I did get I really liked but it was few and far between. There were mentions here and there about politics and how the country is made up with allegiances etc. but for an introduction into this world. I don’t think it hit the mark.

The next book I’ll be reviewing is The Decagon House Murders by Yukito Ayatsuji.