The Silverblood Promise (The Last Legacy book 1) by James Logan (book review)
‘The Silverblood Promise’ is a debut novel by James Logan and makes for an engaging read. Can the disgraced heir to an ancient noble house quit his life of drinking and gambling to solve the mystery of his father’s murder? It takes six hundred pages to find out but they are good fun.
Lukan Gardova, a fairly wealthy young man, messed up his life when he killed Georgio Castori in a duel. He was kicked out of the Parvan Academy and the powerful Castoris took most of the Gardova family wealth in compensation. Lord Gardova, Lukan’s father, had been distant ever since the death of his wife when Lukan was eleven and spent most of his days studying ancient lore about the long vanished Phaeron civilisation, reputedly destroyed by sorcery a thousand years ago. They left magical artefacts scattered about the continent, which are a key ingredient in the story. Incidentally, the geography of Lukan’s world is perfectly clear throughout, with southern lands being hotter and countries having different cultures, food and drink, but there is no map provided. I thought a map was de rigueur in epic fantasy novels. It didn’t matter because the text made the setting plain enough and most of the story happened in one city but, even so, maps are nice.
Lukan is wasting his life away when Shafia, his father’s old steward, turns up to tell him that Lord Gardova has been murdered in his study. He left behind one clue, a scrap of paper with three words scrawled on it in his own blood: ‘Lukan, Saphrona, Zandrusa’. Saphrona is a wealthy city ruled by merchant princes far to the south of Parva and Lukan must go there and find out who or what Zandrusa is and what connection it has to his father. Cutting his hand while holding a silver ring, he makes a silverblood promise to track down the killer and sets off to Saphrona.
Initially, the book is structured like a murder mystery in that one clue leads to another and there’s a trail of skulduggery to follow. In Saphrona, rather too luckily, Lukan falls in with a petty thief called Flea, a clever girl who knows the city inside out and helps a lot. Finding Zandrusa gets him involved in a complex plot involving powerful people, including the Saphrona Inquisition. No one expects the Saphrona Inquisition! Its three deadliest weapons are fear, surprise and ruthless efficiency. The stakes keep rising. It’s a real page-turner.
There’s some social conscience thrown in because the nice merchant princes of Saphrona want to improve the lot of the poor and the workers, while the bad guys are dead against such nonsense. This adds a bit of relevance and is not unhistorical because there have always been some among the elites who advocated fairness.
‘The Silverblood Promise’ is a modern book by a relatively young author and there were a few things that struck me as different from classic fantasy. One was the equality of women, which is great but didn’t exist in medieval societies. Here, they are pretty much interchangeable in their social roles with men, so the story features plenty of female warriors. Very right on, but I’m not sure if it’s realistic given that in sports, the genders are mostly kept separate. Can a woman fight a man? Well, in fencing, which is the nearest thing we have to sword-fighting, they can apparently, except at the very top levels. If you ignore the fact that the people in the story are supposed to be among the best, you can let this slide. In other roles, like sorcery and commerce, the physical differences don’t matter. However, because unknown characters, hooded or in shadow, could be either sex, ‘they’ is frequently used to refer to one person. Totally acceptable, of course, but it can make a sentence confusing.
There are a few little things I didn’t like. One was the constant ‘banter’, mostly between Lukan and Flea, which was like a kids’ Disney film. It served to highlight their friendship and was amusing in places but there was a bit too much of it. If the author put it in hoping for a Disney film deal and why not? It’s surprising that he included a few references to sex and genitalia, which sit oddly with the general tone of the book and might have been avoided. Lukan’s repeated use of the phrase ‘No pressure, then’ also jarred.
These little niggles probably only apply to a few grumpy old readers like me and even then they are far outweighed by the positive aspects of the novel. ‘The Silverblood Promise’ is a fast-paced, twisty, adventure story with a great plot, a nice hero and sidekick, dastardly villains and fantastic monsters that will keep you entertained from the first page to the last. I had a pleasant week reading it and heartily congratulate James Logan on a successful debut. The amount of work necessary to write even the first draft of a six-hundred-page book, never mind editing and polishing, boggles my mind. I look forward to its six-hundred-page sequel, ‘The Blackfire Blade’, which is out soon.
Eamonn Murphy
October 2025
(pub: Quercus, 2024. 592 page hardback, 2024. Price: £20.00 (UK). ISBN: 978-1-52943-282-4)
check out websites: www.quercus.co.uk and www.jamesloganauthor.com
