Book Review | The Combat Codes

Hello and welcome to my stop on the blog tour for The Combat Codes by Alexander Darwin. Huge thank you to Orbit Books and Black Crow PR for having me on the tour!

Hundreds of years ago on a planet once ravaged by war, the nations swore an armistice never to use weapons of mass destruction again. Today, battle-hardened warriors known as Grievar Knights train to represent their nations’ interests in brutal hand-to-hand combat. 

Murray Pearson was once a famed Knight until he suffered a loss that crippled his nation – but now he’s on the hunt to find and train the next champion.

Below, in the Underground’s brutal combat rings, an orphaned boy called Cego is making a name for himself. Murray believes he has what it takes to make it in the planet’s most prestigious combat school – but he has to fight his way out of the Underground first. -Waterstones

Huge thank you to Black Crow Books and Orbit UK for having me on The Combat Codes book tour!

This is quite a dark MMA-inspired fantasy novel with very well choreographed fight scenes! I was intrigued by the description of this novel, and really wanted to see what the author’s own expertise in mixed martial arts would add to a fantasy novel. It definitely shone through in the many fight scenes!

I enjoyed this novel, despite its almost 500 pages, it really flew past, the pace is breakneck throughout. The plot moves very quickly, and we don’t have to wait long to get into the cage fighting that the blurb promises us.

I really liked the tournament element of the novel. It reminded me of Naomi Novak’s A Deadly Education and The Hunger Games, the mix of characters competing against each other in a tournament but also living in a boarding school of sorts.

The only element of the novel I was a little disappointed with was the lack of female characters. This novel is packed full of males, all of whom start to feel a little similar after a while, and could’ve done with a few females (or non-binary folk) to really distinguish between everyone.

Overall I liked this novel, it’s an interesting start to a trilogy, and I am intrigued to see where the plot goes next! If you like dark fantasies with a lot of fight scenes this could be the one for you!

Huge thank you again to Black Crow PR and Orbit UK for having me on The Combat Codes blog tour.

Buy The Combat Codes from Waterstones or Bookshop.org

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