The Black Coast: Book One of the God-King Chronicles

By Mike Brooks

The start of an unmissable series filled with war-dragons, armoured knights, sea-faring raiders, dangerous magic and crowd-pleasing battle scenes.

War Dragons. Fearsome Raiders. A Daemonic Warlord on the Rise.

When the citizens of Black Keep see ships on the horizon, terror takes them because they know who is coming: for generations, the keep has been raided by the fearsome clanspeople of Tjakorsha. Saddling their war dragons, Black Keep's warriors rush to defend their home only to discover that the clanspeople have not come to pillage at all. Driven from their own land by a daemonic despot who prophesises the end of the world, the raiders come in search of a new home . . .
Meanwhile the wider continent of Narida is lurching toward war. Black Keep is about to be caught in the crossfire - if only its new mismatched society can survive.

The start of an unmissable fantasy series.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 1781088241
• ISBN13: 9781781088241
• Release Date: March 2021
• Publisher: Solaris
• Length: 640 Pages
• Weight: 1.06 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.7" x 5.1" x 7.8"

Customer Reviews

It's big but it's worth it

First off, I love this book! It's the biggest book I've read in a long time, and it was quite intimidating to look at. It being 600+ pages, it made my other books quite small looking in comparison. A little ways into reading it, I was no longer intimidated but delighted that the book was big, as I was enjoying every page of it.  The book has multiple POVs of characters and a few stories going on in it in different parts of the world, but the main chunk of the book focuses on 2 cultures coming together and struggling but ultimately finding ways to live alongside each other, the Naridians and the Tjakorshi.  There's so much to unpack that this book tackles: there's misogyny, homophobia, xenophobia, and classism. It sounds like a lot, I know, but it's all written in a way that feels real; it doesn't try to shy away from any of it. There isn't any character and their beliefs that are without their flaws; everyone has their own, and it makes the character growth feel very fulfilling when they do come around. There is this interesting way that the Naridians refer to themselves in the book; they don't say "I" or "me," as that doesn't tell the status of themselves to who they're speaking with; they instead say "this lord," "this sister," "this servant," "this captain," etc. It all comes across as very formal and has an air of superiority when they're talking to someone who doesn't speak as they do. There is also another culture called the Alaban that has 6 genders in their language; they're different levels of masculine/feminine and some neutral/agender that are differentiated by the letter accents of their pronouns. It took a bit of getting used to reading their sections, and I admittedly had to look up how to pronounce some accented letters, as I don't use them really. I imagine this will come up more in the second and third books, as this Alaban plot was very secondary but still clearly important in this first book. I would strongly recommend this book if you're looking for a good fantasy book to get sucked into. I would also recommend that you read this author, Mike Brooks's, other books. I jumped into this book after thoroughly enjoying his sci-fi novels and Warhammer books