Seven Blades in Black by Sam Sykes

My rating: 3.5 of 5 stars

Category: Adult
Genre: Fantasy
Content: Lots of the F word; A brief, mostly non-descript, sex scene between two women; Revenge killings


Among humans, none have power like mages. And among mages, none have will like Sal the Cacophony. Once revered, now vagrant, she walks a wasteland scarred by generations of magical warfare. The Scar, a land torn between powerful empires, is where rogue mages go to disappear, disgraced soldiers go to die and Sal went with a blade, a gun and a list of names she intended to use both on. But vengeance is a flame swift extinguished. Betrayed by those she trusted most, her magic torn from her and awaiting execution, Sal the Cacophony has one last tale to tell before they take her head. All she has left is her name, her story and the weapon she used to carved both.

Vengeance is its own reward.


This is a fantasy that reads like a revenge western, and I knew going into it, that it would be dark and not my usual cup of tea. That being said, I actually liked this book quite a lot. Sal was a hardened person who had seen a lot of betrayal, but she was also funny, and I found myself laughing at things I never thought I would laugh at...like dead bodies stuck in wheels. It was due to the bits of humor in the book that I was able to like it as much as I did. Otherwise it would have been so dark, that I probably would have set it aside and never looked back.

The reason it's getting 3.5 instead of 4 stars from me is that I thought it was 200 pages longer than it needed to be. It started to drag at around the 400 page mark and it felt like it was never going to end; something I also said about the last book I read, that also happened to be over 600 pages long. In the future, I really need to make sure I don't schedule two long fantasy reads back to back like that. The other reason for the 3.5, is that there was an excessive amount of the F bomb thrown in. That last thing is a personal preference, that may not bother other people, but personally I prefer less of it, or even better, none at all. I also thought that the love interest was a bit too whiny over Sal, and what she chose to do with her life, not that I couldn't sympathize, but it got old after a while.

This looks to be a trilogy, but I think I'm good with stopping here.