The Quill to Live favorite author, Sebastian de Castell, has a weird little project going on that I am a big fan of. de Castell is the author of many books at this point, but his original major series was the fantastic Greatcoats Quartet. Now, many years later, de Castell is writing a sequel series of sorts called The Court of Shadows about the next generation of his characters. However, instead of writing a direct sequel series, he has been putting out interesting standalone novels that follow key plot threads from the first series but can be read independently. This month, we are getting the third entry in the sequel saga, Our Lady of Blades, and it is a book that I have a lot of opinions about.
Do you like court intrigue? Political drama? Revenge stories? High society forays and deadly duels? Well, today’s book might be right for you. Rijou’s notorious Court of Blades is as corrupt as it is cutthroat, destroying lives with impunity. Now the city’s all-powerful Ascendant Houses have started a game for the throne that is leaving bodies in the streets. Within this closed game of known players, a mysterious duellist has burst onto the scene. They call her Lady Consequence, and she is stirring up a lot of trouble.
But Lady Consequence has an origin within the deadly court of Rijou. Told in two timelines, we also follow her start in the story of Natazia, a child rescued from the hellish mines of the city and brought to a noble house to train to be a duelist. Originally adopted as a pawn, Natazia forms an unlikely and intense relationship with her perfect older sister and her golden-hearted younger brother. When the machinations of the court tear her found family apart, Natazia embarks on a decade-long quest for vengeance that will run the streets red.
Our Lady of Blades is a multifaceted book with a very unique place in my heart. It has some very high highs, to the point where I thought this might be my book of the year at multiple points during my read. Yet it also has some strange and interesting issues that feel like an elephant in the room, hard to ignore. Let’s start with the positives.
The plot and narrative of the book are extremely gripping, and as always, de Castell has a real talent for bringing a place and people to life through his bold and passionate authorial voice. There is a lot of very clever use of perspective in the dual timelines to breathe fresh life into a classic revenge story setup, and I got very invested in the stakes of the story very quickly. The cast is delightful. This includes the protagonist, antagonists, and the side characters across the board. It is an extremely woman-forward story, with the majority of the narrative focusing on complex relationships (friendships, rivalries, sisterhoods) among complex women. The power players, the doers of violence for both good and evil, are almost exclusively women. Meanwhile, the dames in distress are all men. It is a book that plays with traditional ideas of court power structures in an impish manner, and it gives the entire book an intoxicating atmosphere that pulls you in and has you seeking more.
There is a very good juxtaposition of laugh-out-loud humor and brutal violence that enhances both elements. There are some genuinely surprising reveals and clever payoffs that make the entire book something extremely hard to talk about. It is a story I am dying for my fellow reviewers to get to, as I want to see their reactions to the curtain drops and to talk about what they took away from the major themes and ideas.
The themes are where things move into more of a mixed bag. One of the major motifs of the story surrounds the idea of duels, and each “part” of the book follows a dueling manual from a different house for a different kind of duel for various situations. The motif is very cute, but it felt very surface-level compared to how integrated other past motifs in de Castell’s books have been. Some of the duel concepts felt beautifully represented in the plots of their sections, but others felt like a bit of a stretch and not as well planned out. On the other hand, sisterhood is a huge theme across the entire story, and I thought this was beautifully executed. How is sisterhood defined? How does the recognition of shared struggles change the nature of the relationship between two women? What do we owe our siblings, and how do we forge each other in the fire of youth? de Castell cleverly plays with ideas of sisterhood, including both blood bonds and the bonds women share in the face of the difficulties of being women in a larger society. It is an area of fantasy stories I am begging authors to explore more, and I had a wonderful time watching these girls figure out their found family. Sibling bonds are also explored to an interesting degree, and while I think de Castell did a great job with exploring sibling bonds, it was his deep dives into the main women of the cast (and their relationships with each other) that I enjoyed the most.
Let’s move into some of the problems I had with this story. First, we have the antagonists. There are two antagonists in the story: First, Spada, an elite female duelist who has a history with both sisters and represents the pinnacle of what they both hope to achieve. Second, Castilis, a manipulative man from a lesser house born without empathy, will stop at nothing to seize power in the court. Spada is a phenomenal villain with a rich personality that felt real and like it was brilliantly integrated into the larger story. Castilis, who is arguably the “bigger” villain, just kinda sucks. He is a feelingless sociopath with a penchant for sexual violence who felt completely over the top and like he lacked critical grounding in the world. I loved most of this book, but there is a very odd section between about 70-90% that takes a very weird turn that I was very much not a fan of. There is a heavy brainwashing element that I didn’t like, and I don’t think it adds much to the larger story. Luckily, the story swerves back into an absolutely baller ending.
The reveals in the story are brilliant, but de Castell feels overly proud in his writing of how clever he was, and it detracts from the long-term impact of the twist. More concretely, the book feels like it was primarily written to hype up and showcase certain pivotal key reveals in the story, and it feels like it is missing some of the slower exploratory moments that allow you to digest and think about the big reveals. Finally, the younger brother in the story is the key character who drives our protagonist’s motives, but while adorable, he is barely in the narrative and feels more like a magical McGuffin than an actual person. On the one hand, in such a powerful woman-led story, it is sorta nice to have him to the side and tucked out of the way, but given his importance to multiple character motivations, I would have liked to see him have a little more depth, especially when it feels like he is literally the only shallow character.
All of this comes together to say that Our Lady of Blades was certainly one of the most interesting reads of 2026 so far. Although I have a few gripes, it will likely still place high on our yearly best-of list. Our Lady of Blades has a lot of personality and tons to say, and it represents an ever-growing and delightful second generation of Greatcoat novels that I gleefully recommend. Go check them out!
Rating: Our Lady of Blades – 9.0/10
-Andrew
An ARC of this book was provided to me by the publisher in exchange for an honest review. The thoughts on this book are my own.
