The Radiant King

• Author: David Dalglish
• Genre: Fantasy
• Publication Date: March 4, 2025
• Publisher: Orbit
• Series: Astral Kingdoms #1

Thank you to Orbit and Oliver Wehner for sending me an ARC of this book in exchange for an honest review.

Six immortal siblings.

Five sworn to peace.

One demands a throne.

Radiance, the mysterious power of life and creation, is theirs to command. Yet, these deathless siblings have vowed to sit upon no thrones, to wear no crowns, and to no longer teach humanity the gifts of radiance.

Now, after centuries of peace, one brother, Eder, rejects their vow, anoints himself the voice of a god, and spreads a new, cruel faith across the land.

Faron cannot allow such indiscretion. Returning from a self-imposed exile, he swears to crush Eder’s kingdom with his other siblings. But to overthrow a nation, they will need more than one another. They will need an army and a ruler who can take the throne their own vow forbids. And so, they pledge themselves to the fanatical Bastard Princess, a woman with incredible powers.

But Eder’s conquest is not what it seems, and it will take more than a holy war to stop an immortal who has heard the desperate plea of a god.

I only discovered David Dalglish books a few years ago, with the Vagrant Gods series, and he won his title as one of my favorite fantasy authors. Going into this, I had high expectations for this book, and I wasn’t let down at all. I listened to this as a hybrid experience, switching back and forth between the print and the audiobook version. 

The audiobook is narrated by Jonathan Waters and Krystal Hammond. Both narrators did a fantastic job of voicing the characters and bringing this vivid world to life. And while it is always wonderful to discover two awesome new narrators, there were so many other things that I loved about this book.

For starters, the book begins with a heck of a scene, and it quickly caught my attention. Several of the siblings are undertaking a task, and as it is completed, we learn a little about the relationships between the siblings. The scene then shifts to Faron returning from a self-imposed time out, except when you’re immortal, the time outs aren’t measured in minutes but in decades. From there, we immediately jump into action, and seeing how everything unfolds. 

This is a book that falls under the subgenre of grimdark, full of gore and icky things—there’s two scenes involving bugs that had me feeling itchy, but they went by quickly. Even with having to introduce an entire new world and cast of characters, it never felt like he was info dumping or overwhelming me with too much information that I can’t synthesize all at once. 

This is a fast-paced story, and it centers around six immortal siblings. Despite their vow not to take crowns or rule kingdoms, that is exactly what Eder does, leading the other siblings to have to work together to bring him down. Except you know it isn’t going to be that easy, because then there wouldn’t be a story.

Dalglish excels at creating fantasy worlds merged with the overpowering influence of religion. I could see how wonderfully he wove these aspects together in this book, just like in the Vagrant Gods series. It retained the elements of religious fantasy and oppression, although everything still felt fresh and unique. 

As for the characters, there’s a big range of personalities and experiences between the six siblings. There are some that we get to know better than others, and I didn’t feel the same about all of them—some were likable and others were not likable at all. Of course I found myself cheering on my favorites, although who I liked best changed over the course of the book. There is one scene involving Sariel that had a John Wick feel to it, and was so worth every second of the action, even if it made me feel especially morally gray.

One of my favorite things about this book was the way that I didn’t ever know what to expect. Just when I felt like I had a good handle on what was happening, Dalglish would throw in the most unexpected plot twist, keeping me on my toes and constantly guessing. Even with all of these twists, it wasn’t difficult to follow the action and the character changes. I enjoyed getting to know each of the siblings and watching how they all interact with each other. The action was consistently fast, and there is a major cliffhanger ending that had me hoping that the next book is coming out as soon as possible, because I need to know what happens next!

You might like this book as much as I did if you:

• Enjoy gritty, gory, grimdark fantasy.
• Like complex, political fantasies. 
• Are enchanted by morally gray characters.
• Can’t miss a book full of unpredictable plot twists.

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