A Broken Blade (The Halfling Saga)

Melissa Blair
Union Square & Co., 2021
435 pages
ISBN: 9781454947875
$23.99
Reviewed by Grace Penner

Melissa Blair’s debut novel transports us into the land of Elverath where Elves, Mortals, Halflings, and Dark Fae live in reluctant harmony. Keera Kingsown is an alleged Halfling and the King’s Blade, his finest assassin, who ensures order in the kingdom.

“I had long ago accepted that I would never know my true lineage. The only reason I had taken into the Order at all, the only proof I had of my Mortal lineage, was my blood. Its amber color was the sign of Halflings. The mixed breeds of Elves and men.”

King Aemon, and his two sons, Prince Damian and Prince Killian, rule over Elverath and the Shades to ensure all Halflings are put in their place and Fae stay in Aralinth. The Shades are Halflings, trained by birth to be the kingdom’s greatest spies and assassins. They are given missions to execute traitors, including their own blood.

Keera is given the job of hunting the Shadow, her declared enemy, and returning with his head. The Shadow, Riventh (Riven) Numenthira, is working against the King, and Keera to ensure all people in the kingdom are free despite their lineage.

However, Riven is unaware of Keera’s true mission, smuggling Halflings to safety and branding her skin with the names of the dead. When it’s revealed their motives align, Riven and Keera quickly come together to kill the King and become lovers in the process.

Blair masterfully builds a world of her own while hinting at Keera’s lineage and Prince Killian’s ulterior motives, suggesting something is amiss. Blair also tells the story solely from Keera’s point of view, with only a bonus chapter at the end in Riven’s. Blair shows us Keera’s alcoholism, the murders she’s committed, and the death of her best friend and lover, Brenna.

“I always thought the pain of those scars was my punishment. What I deserved for what Damian did to her. But now, I wondered if it was my unwillingness to let go. Like the pain kept Brenna alive somehow, kept me thinking of her always.”

Although Blair brings Keera and Riven together too quickly, leaving readers unconvinced of their newfound trust, she slowly builds their romance. The end of the book is a cliffhanger  – is Riven loyal to Keera and their cause, and how is the Crown involved in this mission? This book is one to recommend to other romance-fantasy readers with three others in the series.

Melissa Blair (she/her/kwe) is a Anishinaabe-kwe writer who released the fourth and final book in this series in January 2025. She has a degree in Applied Linguistics and Discourse Studies and writes Indigenous and Queer fiction, feminist literature, and non-fiction. She is currently splitting her time between her home in Treaty 9 in Northern Ontario and the unceded territory of the Algonquin Anishinaabeg in Ottawa, Canada.