My Rating: ⭐️⭐️⭐️💫
Title: Five Broken Blades (The Broken Blades, #1)
Author: Mai Corland
Narrator: Donald Chang, Greg Chun, Zion Jang, Sophie Oda, Jaine Ye, Roger Yeh
Format: audiobook (borrowed)
Pages: 352 / Audio Reading Time: 7 hours 28 minutes
Publication Date: 5/6/24
Categories: Fantasy, Series, Romance, LGBT+
It’s the season
for treason…
The king of Yusan must die.
The five most dangerous liars in the land have been mysteriously summoned to work together for a single objective: to kill the God King Joon.
He has it coming. Under his merciless immortal hand, the nobles flourish, while the poor and innocent are imprisoned, ruined…or sold.
And now each of the five blades will come for him. Each has tasted bitterness―from the hired hitman seeking atonement, a lovely assassin who seeks freedom, or even the prince banished for his cruel crimes. None can resist the sweet, icy lure of vengeance.
They can agree on murder.
They can agree on treachery.
But for these five killers―each versed in deception, lies, and betrayal―it’s not enough to forge an alliance. To survive, they’ll have to find a way to trust each other…but only one can take the crown.
Let the best liar win.
Content Warning: violence, sexism
I don’t know if it was a good idea to listen to this as an audiobook only because I can’t keep the names straight in my head. There are a bunch of characters but it did help that each chapter was in the POV of a different character. There are five blades plus one (a prince who is along for the job). Plus the chapters are short so it kept the story moving along. The narrators did such a great job, it made the listening of this audiobook enjoyable!
These five blades are tasked to kill the King of Yusan. Each of them have their own motivations in wanting to take on this job, and each has their own way of wanting to accomplish the task. Most of the story is about them meeting one another on their way to do this job, they are suspicious of one another but eventually come to trust each other and come up with a plan. But there is a twist in the end.
During this story there are three romances brewing – one a second chance romance between two guys, a prince and one of the assassins. They have a past love affair but things happen and now here they are again – the attraction is still there. Royo and Aeri was very much opposites attract and I thought they were fun, because Royo is such a grump but definitely a forced proximity situation (actually for all couples)! As for Sora and Ty, she hates him because he’s the son of the spymaster she works for, yet Ty’s always been in love with her so I thought their story was fun to watch too.
I feel like Sora’s story stood out to me the most because she’s like Poison Ivy plus she’s trying to save her sister.
Like any long story with tons of characters, it was at first hard to follow. It’s why I feel like maybe I should have read this book instead of listened to it, but the narrators did such a great job.
Final Thoughts:
I finally can knock this one off my TBR list and I already borrowed the book two in audiobook! Even though there were lots going on in the story and with lots of characters to remember, I found it entertaining and want to see what happens next in the series.
Book Links:
Goodreads | Amazon | Barnes & Noble
Past Midnight Book Reviews & More 
Is this a type of heist story?
Sort of – this group of assassins in this first book have a mission, to kill the king. Now I’m listening to the 2nd book and this one is more of a heist, where they are tasked to retrieve something.