Posted by Hello all, and welcome to our final review for the Champions League! We are coming in with our last review on the last possible day, but ya know… it’s still 12/20/2025, so I made it.
This book won SPFBO the year before I started judging, but I was still following along with that year’s contest (in fact, I think that was the year I read 100 entries), and I read all the finalists, including Where Loyalties Lie. This author has made it to the finals multiple times, so his writing is definitely worth picking up. If this review and this book doesn’t sound like your cup of tea, there are other books like
This book has a bunch of POV characters, but since they’re all sort of related to one another, it’s not difficult to follow. As far as characters, there’s Captain Drake Morass, who is trying to unite all the pirate captains under one banner and become some kind of a pirate king (good fucking luck with that, mate). We also follow some of the other captains he’s trying to convince to join him, like Keelin Stillwater and Elaina Black. Elaina Black is the daughter of the sociopathic captain Tanner Black, and her relationship with her father is probably one of the most toxic and unhealthy relationships I’ve ever read about. I mean that, too. I’ve read a lot of shit. I think my favorite character, though, is not a pirate, but an arbiter sent to protect Drake. She’s a mysterious sort of character since Arbiters have fairly strong magic, a magic that’s suited to investigations since they can compel people to answer their questions. That is to say, normally, they can compel people to answer their questions. Drake has the ability to resist her magic, and that creates a little character foil action, and I always enjoy that.
This will not be a book for folks who don’t like reading books with a lot of typical trigger warning material. I think every fourth word is “fuck” and there is a good deal of violence in every meaning of the word. If that doesn’t bother you and you like grimmer reads, this is a very well-realized world with memorable characters that lean kind of into the same reading audience as Abercrombie.
The world is just as dark as the characters, but it’s neat to read about. There’s a flotilla of connected ships that are big enough to form a little island they call Fortune’s Rest, and it’s like this debauchery island in the middle of the ocean. The ocean setting dominated throughout the book since most of the page time is spent on one ship or another, or if not on a ship, the characters are in a port city with a heavy emphasis on the ships and docks. That’s a fairly uncommon setting, at least in the books I happen to pick up, so it sets it apart from some of the other grimdark fantasies, creating a memorable book even years later. The pacing is also really on point, I was never bored, the plot never lulled, I never felt overburdened with unimportant details. I also struggle to create imagery in my head – it’s just not something that comes naturally to me, and so when I find an author who can paint scenes in my head, that’s always noteworthy.
As far as a final SPFBO champion’s rating, this lands in 8th place, in between By Blood By Salt and the Thief Who Pulled on Trouble’s Braids. I’ve said this a bunch of times, but ranking these was really difficult, as I can see good arguments for any of these books to have been crowned the ultimate winner. Personally, I think they all won for a reason.
And with that, we are done with the Champions League and not a moment too soon!
See y’all for SPBO11 🙂