A secret affair. A disfiguring punishment. A burning need for revenge.

Kyrra d’Aliente has a bad reputation and an arm made of metal.

Cast out of the safe and luxurious world of silk to which she was born, played as a pawn in a game of feuding Houses, Kyrra navigates a dangerous world of mercenaries, spies, and smugglers while disguising herself as a man. 

War destroyed her family and the man she loved. 

Vengeance is within her grasp. 

But is she willing to pay its price?

At this point, I can’t even hazard a guess at how many authors I’m following on Twitter. But it’s a lot. Like, a lot a lot. There’s something that’s incredibly cool to me about following them through the process of writing & editing & submitting their books. The cover reveals. The panic. The buildup to the release day. It’s just a great way to get a sense of how much of themselves truly goes into the whole process.

Angela Boord’s journey to self-publishing her debut novel, Fortune’s Fool, was years in the making! This was a story she was working on all the way back in the early 2000’s, but she had to set it aside when raising a family took precedence over writing. But lucky for the fantasy community, she recently was able to finish the book, self-publish it, AND enter it in the current SPFBO!

Fortune’s Fool is a massive, sprawling, and gorgeous novel. At around 700 pages, the first book in the Eterean Empire series is one that demands quite a bit of time, but rewards the reader with an incredibly character-driven & unique experience. Seemingly Italian-influenced, Fortune’s Fool tells the story of Kyrra d’Aliente. She’s the only daughter in one of the major Houses in the story, Aliente. There’s a lot of scheming and back-stabbing that goes on between the Houses in this world, and Kyrra is used as a political pawn, set up, and ultimately disfigured & banished from her House. She loses her last name, and becomes a servant of House Aliente, working to produce silk.

She somewhat reluctantly befriends a man named Arsenault. He’s a gavaro, a mercenary of sorts, hired to protect House Aliente from outside attacks or interference from the other Houses. He takes a keen interest in Kyrra, and although there’s something incredibly mysterious about him, there are times when it seems like Arsenault is the only person Kyrra can trust.

The story bounces back & forth between two different time periods: during the immediate fallout from Kyrra’s banishment, and then many years later, after Kyrra has carved out a totally new identity for herself, and lives the much more dangerous lifestyle of a gavaro. This works really well in this book, and Boord cleverly withholds just enough information from the reader, pushing the story forward as the two timelines get closer to converging.

It’s hard to succinctly capture a 700 page book in a review, and this is a book with a lot of locations, characters, Houses, and history to keep track of! I think the fact that the book is entirely from Kyrra’s POV is a huge benefit in terms of trying to grasp the full scope of this world.

Angela Boord has created something really special with Fortune’s Fool. She does an amazing job of immersing the reader in this world, filling it with little details that make things feel incredibly vivid. The approach to magic in Fortune’s Fool is also quite unique, and restrained in such a way that it really stands out. There’s definitely some explosive & unexpected moments of violence in Fortune’s Fool, but this book is much more focused on characters than action. There’s romance, betrayal, heartbreak, revenge…all told in a sweeping & epic tale that’s beautifully written.

I’d be remiss to not mention the BEAUTIFUL cover illustration by John Anthony Di Giovanni and the striking cover design by Shawn King. Both of them are creating absolutely iconic fantasy covers right now!

Huge thanks to Angela for sending me a copy!! Best of luck in the SPFBO!!!