All I knew about The Gryphon King earlier than stepping into was that it was promised to have (queer) sword-wielding feminine knights on winged, man-eating horses, and that was truthfully sufficient to know I wanted this in my life. Seems, that’s solely one of many many (many!) points that make this darkish, epic, political fantasy so splendidly intriguing and breathtakingly good. In a method, it jogs my memory of a mash-up of all the most effective components of She Who Grew to become the Solar, The Priory of the Orange Tree, and The Metropolis of Brass, besides it’s additionally utterly its personal factor and really not like something I’ve ever learn.

We’re transported into an enormous, complicated and masterfully crafted (queer-normative!!) fantasy world impressed by Turkic/Kurdish cultures that’s as lovely as it’s brutal. After which it’s obtained all essentially the most morally grey characters who you possibly can like to hate and hate to like, cutthroat political intrigue and navy scheming, all types of legendary monsters like gryphons, sea horses, pegasi, ghouls, and djinn roaming (or terrorizing) the lands, a lethal blood illness with a mysterious impact on the spirit, and simply essentially the most scrumptious sprint of sloooow-burn queer romance that had my coronary heart beating extra time; I do know, virtually sounds too good to be true, however I promise you it’s not!

Now, the early chapters of The Gryphon King felt a bit disjointed to me due to some timeskips, the overwhelming depth of the historical past and complexities of the tense political panorama, and the heavy give attention to motion, however the intrigue issue simply had me turning pages like loopy anyway. After which, across the 25% mark, I actually discovered my footing as all of the items began to click on into place, and I used to be utterly hooked from there on out.

Each my scarred and dangerously bold Bataar and my hot-headed, crafty warrior princess Nohra have been simply unbelievable characters to observe (even when I generally wished to strangle them for his or her actions), and I cherished seeing the event of their harmful dynamic as their paths grew ever extra inextricably intertwined over the course of the story. Generally I discovered it a bit laborious to actually perceive their feelings, motivations and actions, however as a substitute of it feeling like weak character work, it virtually felt like that was intentional; they’re simply so realistically flawed and frustratingly human, and everyone knows that human feelings don’t make logical sense on a regular basis.

Among the facet solid did admittedly pale a bit compared to these two powerhouse principal characters (particularly since we’re coping with so many gamers on the board), however there have been a couple of facet characters who completely stole my coronary heart. For me, my bisexual queen Qaira was the largest spotlight, and I ate up each scene that she was in, be that along with her household with Bataar or with our beautiful chaos queer Nohra (hi there sapphic tensionnnnn!!). However then Darya, Tarken and plenty of the badass Harpy Knights additionally actually obtained their time to shine, and I cherished digging into all of the sophisticated and fantastically sophisticated relationships on the core of this story, be they platonic, rivalrous, pleasant, familial, romantic, or one thing altogether extra complicated in between all of it.

It was precisely the lethal schemes and harmful video games that these characters have been taking part in with one another that saved me absolutely engaged, even in moments the place the (navy) motion was a bit too intense for my preferences. See, as expert as Omer is at writing pulse-pounding battle scenes or lethal monster assaults, I personally suppose all of the extra quiet moments when characters are combating silent battles in their very own minds or are wielding their phrases as weapons towards one another are absolutely the standout scenes in The Gryphon King, and I’d have cherished to see extra of these to create a good deeper emotional connection and funding.

Finally, The Gryphon King was simply an absolute rollercoaster of a narrative that excited, delighted and freaked me the hell out with every new flip of the web page, and I can’t wait to see what Omer has in retailer in the remainder of The Chaos Constallation; I’ll wager it’s going to be chaos, and I’m SO prepared for it. If this debut is something to go off of, then I’ve no doubts that Omer goes to be an writer to observe. What a wild experience, extremely suggest.

Thanks to NetGalley and Titan Books for offering me with an eARC in change for an sincere evaluate. All opinions are my very own. The Gryphon King is scheduled for launch on July 8, 2025