Lord of Secrets by Breanna Teintze

Outlaw wizard Corcoran Gray has enough problems. He’s friendless, penniless and on the run from the tyrannical Mages’ Guild – and with the search for his imprisoned grandfather looking hopeless, his situation can’t get much worse.

So when a fugitive drops into his lap – literally – and gets them both arrested, it’s the last straw – until Gray realises that runaway slave Brix could be the key to his grandfather’s release. All he has to do is break out of prison, break into an ancient underground temple and avoid killing himself with his own magic in the process.

In theory, it’s simple enough. But as secrets unfold and loyalties shift, Gray discovers something with the power to change the nature of life and death itself.

Now Gray must find a way to protect the people he loves, but it could cost him everything, even his soul . . .

I received this ARC from the Publisher via Netgalley for an honest review and can confirm all opinions are my own.

This has got to be one of the best debuts I’ve read in a long time. I blazed through this book in a matter of days and was thoroughly hooked by the plot and characters.

Corcoran Grey is an easy character to like. He is hilarious, most of the time without trying, passionate and despite what he tells you, an extremely good guy. Hes a character with great disability representation, and I love how Teintze didn’t shy away from the ugly side of his disability, he describes his pain and limitations in detail, making you slightly more able to empathise with his character.

On his journey to find and rescue his grandfather Grey, quite literally, stumbles into Brix, a slave girl who is on the run from the guild for stealing from one of their temple’s. He quickly realises that Brix may be his only hope in rescuing his grandfather, and so they form an uneasy alliance. I really enjoyed reading the relationship between these two, and seeing it progress from people who barely tolerated each other to something more. Brix doesn’t let Grey get away with any of his “shit” and calls him out more than once. I truly believe that through the book she manages to make him into a slightly better person. That being said “Romance” doesn’t feature heavily and if i’m being honest it was a breath of fresh air, you could tell the characters cared for each other without massive declarations of love, or mass amounts of sex. It was a pleasant change and made their relationship all the more relatable for me.

The World-building in this book was unique as you see it through Greys eyes, rather than having a dump of historical data, like you get in some other books. You learned about magic through Grey and once we meet Jaern we learn more about Grey’s and the worlds history. This book contains a fresh magic system and though I found it slightly confusing and overdone at the beginning of the book, the more I read the more it fit into the general plot and story-telling so that it felt natural. One thing I liked was that the magic had limitations, so often in books now “Wizards” have little or no limitations when casting spells, but I felt that the limitations made it seem more plausible (yes I know i’m talking about wizards and spells) , every time Grey cast a spell he poisoned himself and his recovery time depended on the strength and difficulty of the spell.

The storyline was brilliantly thought out and written, there were no “slow” parts of the book, and I felt that every little fact that we learnt added something to the overall plot. I enjoyed everything about this book the characters, the fresh magic system and the plot. It was brilliantly witty and at times had me laughing out loud. I will definitely be reading the next in the series, and the only downside is that I have to wait so long for it. This is an amazing debut and because of that I am giving it 5/5 stars. Perfect for fans of Sebatien De Castells Greatcoats series.