A fresh take on the reluctant hero trope, Andrew Knighton's Forged for Destiny, the first volume in a planned trilogy, is brimming with complex characters and shades of morality.
Raul knows that Prisca and Valens aren't his birth parents, but he is happy learning strength and fighting from Valens and studying history with Prisca. After Raul stumbles across a prophecy involving a symbol that matches his birthmark, Prisca tells him he is the son of the queen who died two decades earlier when the Empire of Estis fell to invaders from Dunholm. The birthmark means he is destined to save his country from the invaders, who rule with cruelty and suppress reading and magic. But while Raul wants to save innocent people, he doesn't want to participate in the killing and destruction that Prisca insists is necessary. Readers know something Raul doesn't, though: he was an orphan, chosen at random and branded by Prisca with the prophecy's symbol in a plan to regain control of Estis. But the more he learns of reality, the more he doubts his ma's divining and his destiny as a hero.
Moving between several characters' perspectives, Forged for Destiny balances intense scenes of fighting and violence with equally intense moments of quiet reflection. Knighton turns the usual archetypes of high fantasy on their heads, questioning the very definition of heroism and villainy in a thrilling novel about a young man's growing understanding of political and moral complexity. --Dainy Bernstein, freelance reviewer