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Paul Krueger

Steel Crow Saga Kindle Edition

by Paul Krueger (Author) Format: Kindle Edition

276 ratings

Editors' pick Best Science Fiction & Fantasy

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Four destinies collide in a unique fantasy world of war and wonders, where empire is won with enchanted steel and magical animal companions fight alongside their masters in battle.

NAMED ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY NPR • Tordotcom • Kirkus Reviews

A soldier with a curse
Tala lost her family to the empress’s army and has spent her life avenging them in battle. But the empress’s crimes don’t haunt her half as much as the crimes Tala has committed against the laws of magic . . . and against her own flesh and blood.

A prince with a debt
Jimuro has inherited the ashes of an empire. Now that the revolution has brought down his kingdom, he must depend on Tala to bring him home safe. But it was his army who murdered her family. Now Tala will be his redemption—or his downfall.

A detective with a grudge
Xiulan is an eccentric, pipe-smoking detective who can solve any mystery—but the biggest mystery of all is her true identity. She’s a princess in disguise, and she plans to secure her throne by presenting her father with the ultimate prize: the world’s most wanted prince.

A thief with a broken heart
Lee is a small-time criminal who lives by only one law: Leave them before they leave you. But when Princess Xiulan asks her to be her partner in crime—and offers her a magical animal companion as a reward—she can’t say no, and she soon finds she doesn’t want to leave the princess behind.

This band of rogues and royals should all be enemies, but they unite for a common purpose: to defeat an unstoppable killer who defies the laws of magic. In this battle, they will forge unexpected bonds of friendship and love that will change their lives—and begin to change the world.

Print length

505 pages
Language

English
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Publisher

Del Rey
Publication date

September 24, 2019
File size

4595 KB
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From the Publisher

Praise for Steel Crow Saga by Paul Krueger

Editorial Reviews

Review

“A heady look at postcolonial emotions, Asian cultures, and anime influences . . . a well-built magical world of warring factions.”—Library Journal (starred review)

“With a well-realized world and strong characters, many of whom are queer, Krueger's novel will feel as fast-paced and exciting as its animated influences and leave the reader longing for more. Highly recommended for any fantasy fan.”—Booklist (starred review)

“A post-colonial fantasy draws on Japanese, Chinese, Korean, and Filipino cultures for a multinational tale of political intrigue. . . . This Asian-influenced sociopolitical drama explores the complications that ensue after the war, when no one's hands are clean. Characters face the consequences of the choices they made during the conflict and consider whether it's possible to rise above deeply ingrained prejudices and forge alliances with former enemies. Such grave matters are leavened by amusing banter, solid action, and two charming nascent romances of opposites. As tasty as the mushroom adobo that appears in the book both as food and metaphor.”—Kirkus Reviews (starred review)

“Starts with a bang and never slows down . . . Think Pokémon meets The Golden Compass, with plenty of original and frightening twists along the way. . . . Krueger deftly gives each character their own point of view without losing sight of the novel’s central theme: We’re stronger together than we are alone.”—BookPage

Amazon.com Review

Editors' pick: A new magic system adds to the originality of Steel Crow Saga, but it’s the vivid characters that make it a page-turner."— Adrian Liang, Amazon Editor --This text refers to an alternate kindle_edition edition.

About the Author

Paul Krueger is a Filipino-American author. His first novel was the urban fantasy Last Call at the Nightshade Lounge. A lapsed Chicagoan, he may now be found literally herding cats in Los Angeles. --This text refers to an alternate kindle_edition edition.

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

This wasn’t Lee Yeon-Ji’s first time in a jail cell, but unless the executioner changed their mind, it was looking to be her last.

The kingdom of Shang had never expected much from women like Lee, and she’d never expected a whole lot from Shang, either. All she’d ever wanted was enough room to slip about, pulling the small jobs and scams that had always kept her stomach and her pockets . . . well, not full, but at least more than empty. That’d been easy enough to manage during the Tomodanese occupation, and she figured it should have been even easier now that the Shang kingdom was rebuilding itself. For the most part, she’d even been right.

She just hadn’t accounted for the depths to which some people would stoop to be a prick.

She didn’t bother getting to her feet as two officers appeared beyond the bars of her cell. They were a tall woman and a short man, in scarlet guard uniforms of fine Shang wool. The tall guard rattled the cell’s bars with her baton. “On your—”

“—feet?” Lee said, with a quirk of her eyebrow. It was thin and long and sharp, like the rest of her face, like the rest of her everything. “That was what you were going to say, right? Figured I’d save you some breath, considering you Shang are about to save me a lot of mine.”

“Mouth off all you want,” said the short guard. “See what kind of mercy that gets you.”

“Oh, come on,” Lee pouted. “Could you convict and execute a face like this?”

The tall guard sneered. “Get on your feet, or I’ll summon my shade and leave it in there with you. You’re just a dogf***er. I wouldn’t even get in trouble.”

There was a time when the slur dogf***er would have hurt Lee’s feelings. But for any of the thousands of Jeongsonese living in Shang, that particular slur lost its impact by their third birthday. And Lee was a good eighteen years removed from her third birthday; she barely even registered the term now.

So in the face of the woman’s threat, Lee just shrugged. “f*** it. Go ahead. If your shade’s a dog, I’d probably find a way to enjoy myself.” The thought of actually f***ing a dog made her skin crawl. But if these puffed-up Shang were dead set on seeing her as nothing more than a dogf***er, why not play the role to the hilt on her way off the stage?

The woman was unamused by Lee’s performance. “You don’t want me to do that, girl. She bites.” She held up a hand, which was missing its last two fingers.

Lee considered pointing out it was extremely unlikely that the shade had done that, since shades were supposed to contain part of their human partner’s soul, and vice versa. But rather than annoy this guard who’d just as soon do the executioner’s job for them, she sighed and stood at last. “Lead the way, Officers,” she said, and let them take her on one last walk through the Kennel.

The prison hadn’t always been called the Kennel. Under Tomodanese control, it had been called Fort Asanuma, after the daito who’d once ruled Jungshao. And before that, in the days of the first Shang kingdom, it had been called the Temple of Justice. Even now, with Tomoda defeated and Shang ascendant once more, it had just been renamed Jungshao Prison. But the locals on both sides of the bars called it the Kennel, and who was Lee to argue with custom?

Besides, in her book there were worse things to be compared to than a dog.

The Kennel’s corridors were open air, the cellblocks forming separate buildings within a larger courtyard. This meant her cell got sunlight most days, but today there were only thick gray clouds and a thin, steady drizzle. The rain collected between the slate tiles underfoot, and they sloshed faintly with each step Lee took toward her impending death.

Some of her fellow inmates sat in their cells and stared at their feet as she passed, slouching like beaten circus animals. Others shouted things at her: Obscenities. Jeers about the gibbet that awaited her. Variations on the same four slurs she’d been hearing her whole life. She found it easy to ignore them all. Her stay in the Kennel had been so brief that if she were a man, she wouldn’t have even had the time to grow decent stubble.

Right by the front gates of the prison stood a gibbet. On one end of it was a high gallows and a trapdoor; on the other, a polished wooden block whose surface was slick with rain. This was the custom in Shang: that condemned citizens would be allowed to take ownership of their death by choosing how they got to make their exit. Lee just wished Shang custom included options like “drowning yourself in soju” or “death by a thousand naked women.”

A few prison guards were there to oversee the execution. A white-robed executioner stood atop the gibbet, leaning on a huge, heavy saber. And waiting at the foot of the stairs was the strikingly handsome Magistrate How, arguably the most powerful man in the newly liberated province of Jungshao. He hadn’t been the first enemy Lee had made in her life, but apparently he was going to be the last.

Lee smiled mirthlessly to herself. He’d come to see her off personally. How thoughtful of him.

A squat woman fell into step next to her: Warden Qu. She looked oddly at home in the rain, but perhaps it only seemed that way because of her toadlike appearance. “What will it be, Lee?” she said. “The rope or the blade?”

“Don’t suppose you’d let me order off the menu?” Lee said. She kept her tone even, but her traitor heart started to race as she eyed her two choices. It’d been easy to remain cool and detached before now, hiding behind smirks, snark, and silence. But you couldn’t exactly smile your way out from under the shadow of a gibbet.

“You’re hardly the first guest to make that comment.” The warden sighed. She always referred to the inmates as guests, like they were all friends bunking together at a roadside inn. “Have you made your choice?”

Lee did the math. Escape was impossible. If she made a break for it, they’d either shoot her or sic their shades on her. And it wasn’t like she had one of her own to summon; her native Jeongson was a vassal state of Shang, and only Shang-born citizens were allowed to know the secrets of shadepacting. Not that the steelhounds had been better, the bastards. Some of the Jeongsonese had actually welcomed Tomoda when they’d first arrived on Shang’s shores, eager to see their oppressors given a taste of their own medicine. But as far as overlords went, the Tomodanese had been more of a lateral move than an upgrade.

She sighed, as if choosing the manner of her death were little more than an annoying household chore. “Sword,” she said. “Any chance he can warm it up before he swings it? My neck’s cold.”

The warden rolled her eyes, then waddled over to the gibbet to let the executioner know. Lee prepared to follow her up the stairs, but the magistrate held up a hand. “A moment,” he said in the bouncy tones typical of Shang’s public servants.

“You mind, Magistrate?” Lee said. No point in observing pleasantries now. “I’m kind of in the middle of something.”

“I just wanted to remind you,” said Magistrate How, “that everyone has their betters, and this is what happens when you test them. There’s a natural order to things, and Heaven forbids that it be upset.”

Lee shrugged. “I’ll lodge a complaint when I get there. Get right to the heart of the matter.”

Magistrate How, born pale enough, went even paler.

“What?” said Lee. “Can’t stomach a friendly chat in the rain?”

All the color had drained from the magistrate’s face. Lee could practically see the veins and capillaries in his cheeks. “How dare you!” he shrieked, then slapped her across the face. He didn’t have a lot of strength in him, but he had a lot of rings on his fingers, and they stung fiercely when they connected with her cheekbones.

The warden came running. “Magistrate How!” she said. “What—?”

“Don’t mind him,” Lee said. “The man’s just venting his spleen. I’ll have me that sword now.”

Magistrate How scoffed. “As if I’d ever allow you a clean death,” he said, his imperious tones back in full force. “Warden, executioner, you shall hang her!”

The warden shook her head. “Apologies, Magistrate,” she said. “The law’s clear: We must honor her choice of the sword.”

“I am the law,” the magistrate said, rounding on her. “I have been appointed by His Most August Personage the Crane Emperor himself. If I say I want her hanged, I will have her hanged.” Seeing him carry on, it surprised Lee how much the right kind of sneer could unmake even the handsomest face. --This text refers to an alternate kindle_edition edition.

Product details

ASIN ‏ : ‎ B07MJ3T272
Publisher ‏ : ‎ Del Rey (September 24, 2019)
Publication date ‏ : ‎ September 24, 2019
Language ‏ : ‎ English
File size ‏ : ‎ 4595 KB
Text-to-Speech ‏ : ‎ Enabled
Screen Reader ‏ : ‎ Supported
Enhanced typesetting ‏ : ‎ Enabled
X-Ray ‏ : ‎ Enabled
Word Wise ‏ : ‎ Enabled
Sticky notes ‏ : ‎ On Kindle Scribe
Print length ‏ : ‎ 505 pages

Best Sellers Rank: #708,860 in Kindle Store (See Top 100 in Kindle Store)
- #1,058 in Asian Myth & Legend
- #2,280 in LGBTQ+ Fantasy (Kindle Store)
- #2,968 in Action & Adventure Fantasy (Kindle Store)

Customer Reviews:
276 ratings

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4.5 out of 5

276 global ratings

5 star		66%
4 star		23%
3 star		7%
2 star		3%
1 star		1%

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Lolli Joy

You have to read this book! Wow!

Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on September 16, 2022

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I absolutely loved this book! I actually didn’t start reading it until three months after I purchased it, but once I started, it was difficult to put down. I would literally make lunch and prop my book on the table in front of me and eat lunch while diving deep into the pages of this book.

The story was imaginative and relatable. All the characters have such depth. I cried. I laughed. I gasped. The storytelling was just wonderful. It was refreshing to read a book with so many strong female lead characters, too. I could see this being made into an amazing movie.

I highly recommend this book!

I even got a signed copy from the author! Next on the list is Driftwood Orphans by the same author. I can’t wait!

One person found this helpful

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Amy Sykes

Krueger's second published book far exceeds the potential of his first.

Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on November 9, 2019

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When I finished Krueger's first book, Last Call at the Nightshade Lounge, the word that stuck with me was "potential": not a great book, but a solidly good one, a debut author finding his feet and showing the reader a promise of greater things to come. Steel Crow Saga is a fantastic realization of that potential, and Krueger is a breath of fresh air in the weary, post-Game of Thrones world of the epic fantasy saga.

This book will reward a careful and patient reader who takes the time to get to know the characters. It may be hard to follow at first (I admit that, as a person who's totally unfamiliar with Asian names, languages, and cultures, it took me a while to keep track of what was going on). But by the time the plot kicked into high gear, the characters' origins felt richly textured, with their backgrounds in various fantastic countries and factions providing compelling motives and pressures without falling too neatly into any tidy boxes of "Here's a person from country X where they all do Y." In fact, one of the biggest strengths of this book is watching the characters get their own cultural assumptions challenged--watching them grow and change, or not; watching them fulfill or subvert expectations, showing themselves to be strong, resilient, flawed, flexible, and always deeply human. By the end, the triumphs felt cathartic, the losses felt devastating, and the world definitely felt like a place where I wanted to spend more time. (Seriously, while this is a standalone, I hope Krueger eventually gets the chance to write more in this universe.)

This book will be a good push out of the comfort zone for many "traditional" fantasy fans, and a delightful ride for fans of Saladin Ahmed, Fonda Lee, and other authors who are doing something genuinely new and different that pushes the limits of the genre.

5 people found this helpful

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TatteredSpinner

Fun read with a lot of heart

Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on November 8, 2019

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This was a fun read with a lot of heart.

I follow the author on Twitter and was amused but not surprised to hear that the book was being described as a grown up remix of Pokemon and Avatar: The Last Airbender. And the book really lived up to it, not only with the magic gimmicks, but with the worldbuilding, for which there is only one appropriate word: rich.

Where the story did fall down a bit for me was in pacing - especially during the middle in a character POV I was less interested in (ie, anyone who was not Xiulan) - I felt like we were having to move an awful lot to not get very far. It also sometimes felt like there was just a whole lot for one book.

But the themes of trauma and healing, of forgiveness and empathy, and prejudice, of loss and finding family really gave the story an unexpected punch, especially when it all came together at the end.

And I just want to add how very much I enjoyed the running gag about Bai Junjie, and, really, just everything about Xiulan and her romance (that's some prime f/f shipping material and it's CANON). She is the small-whiny-sibling-out-to-prove-themself of MY HEART.

2 people found this helpful

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Travis Hayden

A Brilliantly Crafted Well Balanced Story

Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on December 2, 2019

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Steel Crow Saga is a terrific book that balances plot driven and character driven elements really really well. Also the Steel Crow Saga is literally a book that speaks to my inner soul. It is stocked with all my favorite tropes and elements that I love from a high fantasy story. I also really enjoy that even though there are hints of this being a series that Steel Crow Saga is in fact a self contained story. It does a wonderful job wrapping up the plot and all the characters have a clear and concise arc that comes full circle.

This story also pays homage to elements of Pokemon and Full Metal Alchemist straight to its core. Even though this is fantasy, I would also say this is very steampunk as well because the characters actually travel via train and cars to get from destination to destination. So it gives this world and story that fresh identity that is so well deserves.

Steel Crow Saga is very and highly underrated and more people need to be talking about this book. Just take my advice, take advice from other readers who have also loved this story and give it a shot and hopefully you won't be disappointed. Such a brilliant book and if this is the start of a series then I am looking forward to the sequel very much!

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LordBaggins

Book Damage / Tentative Review

Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on January 16, 2020

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Disclaimer: The first part of this review pertains solely to damage to the book. I have not read too far into the book yet, but I am enjoying the writing and story so far.

So I received the shipment on Sunday, January 12, 2020. I was in the middle of another book so I set it on my shelf and didn't think about it. Today, Wednesday, January 15, 2020, I started reading the book over my lunch break. The dust cover was bothering me in the car so I took it off. When I went to put the cover back on I noticed some damage on the back cover. The shipping box was fine, and there is no damage on the outer edges or corners of the book, so I do not think this is Amazon's fault (Prime purchase), but rather a manufacturer error. I'm not planning on returning the book, but I thought people should know that this is a potential issue.

As far as the writing, I am only a few chapters deep, but the story is keeping me engaged and I like the characters and world-building so far. I'll leave a more complete review when I finish, here and on Goodreads. I don't think that it is fair to leave three stars to a book I haven't read, but I'm hoping to raise some eyebrows in the meantime.

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Alexander McCall

If you liked Avatar The Last Airbender you'll like this

Reviewed in the United Kingdom 🇬🇧 on May 19, 2020

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This book had so much that I liked that I don't know where to begin. The characters are all well-formed and thought out, with clear goals and reasons for acting the way they do. This is really important because so many of them are working against each other. It would be really easy for a lot of the details to be lost in the confusion and for everything to spiral out of control. But the story is told so cleanly that there's no problem with following where everyone is and what they're doing.

Because this is a large and diverse cast. You've got Jimuro, prince-in-exile of a once colonial but recently severely beaten empire. You've got Tala, the jungle-fighter who helped destroy his empire and now has to see him safely home. You've got Xiulan the detective/princess who must find Jimuro to help cement her place on the throne. You've got Lee, the thief who always runs out on her partners, who must help her find him. And you've got the mysterious man in purple who seems to only want chaos. Their drama plays out against the backdrop of well thought-out nations and a varied magic system that I really love. And it all comes together with a suitably dramatic finale.

If I had to complain about something it's that all the food described sounds really delicious but I'm living with a vegetarian and can't make most of the meat recipes. However I'm going to try making mushroom adobo within the next week. And if it's half as tasty as its sounds then, like this book, I'll be left wanting more.

Cynthia

thrilling, fun, full of humour and heart

Reviewed in the United Kingdom 🇬🇧 on November 25, 2019

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I LOVE THIS BOOK SO MUCH. the anime influence is clear, and it really does feel like the perfect read for people who love fullmetal alchemist and avatar: the last airbender. AND it's gay. wonderful wonderful worldbuilding, excellent relationship dynamics that had me going starry-eyed all the time, and just some really beautiful love stories. the fight scenes in this book are very well-written - i found it very easy to picture what was going on. i laughed, i cried, i fell in love. it's a standalone that works really well, but i would love to read so much more about these characters and this world. <3

Mindy Johnson

Wonderful world building

Reviewed in Australia 🇦🇺 on October 5, 2019

Verified Purchase

I followed a recommendation on Twitter from Tade Thompson and I was not disappointed. I enjoyed the interplay of cultures and how the author worked all the threads together. I am hoping for more with these characters.

Carina Erk

A gem

Reviewed in Germany 🇩🇪 on October 13, 2019

Verified Purchase

Much better than the somewhat generic synopsis suggests, with a rich world and interesting characters. A Thoroughly enjoying read, highly recommended.

Mellotzi Robles Lizarraga

Amo la portada

Reviewed in Mexico 🇲🇽 on July 18, 2020

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