The smoothest and most intoxicating vintage of revenge served with a twist.

There are themes as old as time and revenge is genuinely among the most delicious of these themes. When you combine revenge with the masterful writing of Sebastien de Castell, you know you are in for a banger of a book. Our Lady of the Blades, set in the world of Sebastien de Castell’s Greatcoats series, is one such book, even if the revenge tour goes down some unconventional routes. I am thankful to Sebastien de Castell and Quercus/ Arcadia for my review copy.

As I was reading this book, there was a fantastic football match between Bayern Munich and PSG underway in the Champions League semifinals. It was a thrilling game that ended up 5-4 in favor of Paris, but what stood out to me was the sheer quality of the game. You had some of the most talented, intelligent, and thrilling players in the world giving us a breathtaking display. The scoreline was a reflection of how both teams were committed to the attack and not willing to become boring in pursuit of their victory, and often attempted to outmaneuver their opponents using brains, technique, and physicality. This is a version of football played at the highest level of the game – Our Lady of Blades operates at that level where it is not just the lead operating at a devious level, but an opponent willing to match up to that level of deviousness.

“I was a prisoner serving out a sentence. The prison is gone. The sentence remains”

A revenge drama usually takes on the form of the wronged party controlling the narrative by being clever and usually having more information than the party on whom they intend to wreak havoc. The Count of Monte Cristo had Edmond Dantes spending nine years building himself up as the mysterious Count, gathering intelligence and hatching his plans before he reappeared in the lives of those who wronged him. His enemies are oblivious to who he is and display a certain amount of justified naivete and foolishness, allowing him to manipulate events to claim revenge. Our Lady of Blades hews to certain elements of the Monte Cristo storyline by giving the protagonist seven years to strike back, but in this case, the key antagonist is quite clever and maybe even more devious than what our lead expects. This brings me back to the earlier comparison of that fantastic football game. A revenge story is thrilling when enemies play along the way the story dictates – in this case, that doesn’t happen. Which means the carefully thought-out plan doesn’t survive beyond first contact with the enemy. Rather than an exhilarating viewpoint of the revenge, we get a cagey cat-and-mouse game played with extreme cleverness and desperation, with implications just beyond a simple grab for power.

“The fortunes of aristocratic families have always risen and fallen with the tides of Rijou’s never-ending intrigues”

Infighting and corruption plagues Rijou’s noble houses, and with talks of indentured labor in the air, Lady Consequence strides in, a new player in the games that the various noble houses play. However, Lady Consequence isn’t a new player – she’s here to avenge the destruction of her family by saving her young, idealistic brother and restoring her house to its original glory. What Lady Consequence, however, finds is something even more sinister and unnerving at play, which may even be beyond her skills and planning. And sometimes, the enemy in front might not be the true enemy at all.

“This was a city of elegant intrigues and brutal vendettas, where grievances passed down like diseases, until no one remembered how it began – only how it must end”

I made the heady comparison to The Count of Monte Cristo earlier, and there are interesting parallels that the author draws to it. It is set in the same world as his previous Greatcoats series, which was inspired by The Three Musketeers. Sebastien de Castell embeds his own indelible stamp on each of his books while working out of the skeleton of the classics. There is flamboyance and flourish in his writing to make things resonate in that setting while providing a lot of pain and pathos for the leads, physically, mentally, and emotionally. You could pretty much say that Sebastien de Castell is the closest to a modern Guy Gavriel Kay and he demonstrates that in spades through skillful writing and masterful plotting.

“I’m a young woman of homicidal intentions blessed with an instinct for deception and a thirst for intrigue. Let’s get me married off to someone equally horrible, shall we?”

The book starts off with some clever, charming wordplay, swordplay and other shenanigans to begin with as Lady Consequence makes a grand entry and starts to cannily work her way among the various players – all in line with the classical revenge storyline but with the flair and charm of a master at work. This is also where we have Lady Consequence be all clever and knowing, accompanied by that hint of smugness and arrogance of a person who has it all planned out, until it starts to go all wrong. The revenge storyline is also accompanied by alternate chapters of flashbacks detailing the events of the past that led up to this.

“Duels are won and lost betwixt the ticks of a clock. Tempo divides measure, reach subtracts from distance”

The masterful storytelling lulls and sets you up for a massive sweep of the rug at around the midpoint of the book. The second half slows down the pace a little bit and gets more psychological and desperate while revealing the ultimate villainy at work. This is Sebastien de Castell trying his best to mess with your head, and some of the flashback portions are just not easy to read – it gets all squeamish and disturbing even as we realize the depths of suffering and pain that our characters go through. All of this comes to a head in a finale that is quite devastating and painful in a typical de Castell manner. If you have read the Greatcoats series, you just know how low these characters are going to get dragged to, and the desperate choices they have to make. The finale does all of that, but it is much quieter than what the first half of the book set us up to. In the hands of any other author, it may feel disjointed, but de Castell’s writing is so smooth that it flows beautifully. The smoothness extends to the dueling and fencing moments as well. The Greatcoats had some fabulous swordplay moments, and with a title like Our Lady of Blades, you would expect more of the same, and the author provides intense, graceful, and balletic moments of violence and action.

“I would like to say it was out of love. But it was probably out of necessity. Perhaps those are the same thing sometimes”

Family and sisterhood are elements that Sebastien de Castell explores fantastically well. To say anything more would spoil one of the genuinely fabulous narratives of the book. It is a fascinating arc that goes through its trials, tribulations, and frictions before becoming something fragile but true. While the revenge plot is what drives the narrative, the beating heart of the book is this fractured yet resilient family that is broken in many ways. All this set amidst some interesting worldbuilding on the Court of Blades and the politicking within the noble families.

“Let this be a reminder to any son or daughter of House Vauquelin who sets foot inside a dueling circle expecting to fence their opponent: a fencing match is like a chess game, won by strategy as much as talent. But a duel? A duel is a magic trick. That’s why the dead man always looks so surprised”

Our Lady of Blades is Sebastien de Castell operating at his very best, crafting a revenge tale that treads down some familiar paths before becoming an intense, disturbing, and disquieting book. It features an alternating narrative flipping between the present and a heart-wrenching flashback that takes many twists and turns. While stylistically the book seems like three books in one – the swashbuckling, flirtatious first half, the desperate, unnerving second half, and the painful, trauma-laden flashback sequences – de Castell weaves the tapestry of his story seamlessly to bring it all together in an emotionally crushing finale. The expectations bar for every Sebastien de Castell book has been further raised, and I wait to see the next classic literary work that will serve as his inspiration to continue in this world of the Greatcoats

Our Lady of Blades is due for release 14th May – you can pre-order your copy on Bookshop.org