This Book Review Contains Massive Spoilers in the Review, specifically because there’s barely much to talk about in this book.

Any person who claimed this book was good or decent can never be trusted to make a book review ever again. This book was extraordinary in how awful it really was. There is simply no excuse at all and I’m not being hyperbolic; don’t waste your money. Everything about this book is forgettable from start to finish and the spelling mistakes exist throughout the entirety of this short book.

Just look at this part near the end of the book and think of all the positive booktube reviews that this book was wrongfully given:

The three of them stood there in silence heartbeat after heartbeat. The station had never been this quiet before. The three of them were the only life left in the building. It was the Annointed who broke the silence first, its voice no louder than a whisper and yet somehow booming off of every wall. The sound consumed her mind with its twisted glee at the hunt’s end.

Greene, Daniel B. BREACH OF PEACE (LAWFUL TIMES Book 1) (p. 90). Kindle Edition.

I finally finished this book after forgetting about it for… five years. I kept forgetting to pick it back up because I genuinely kept forgetting it existed since the setting, characters, plot, and so on were all forgettable.

The primary failing of this book is that it is an overglorified extended prologue with no subtext at all. You’re basically spending money on the prologue of another story; it’s like buying the demo version of a book. I spent $3.99 to purchase the ebook version of Breach of Peace on April 30^th, 2021. There’s honestly barely anything to talk about, because it’s three major scenes setting up Khlid losing her home life and that’s it. This Youtuber was right that there’s no deeper meaning; you would think Daniel B. Greene, who reads so many fantasy books, would learn from example and provide more depth in his characters, but nope. The beginning started off strong with investigating a brutal and disturbing murder of a family, if you ignore the typos. However, it seemed like the cast of police officers completely forgot about solving the murder; Khlid and her husband Samuel suspect a fellow officer by the name of Chapman of being part of a rebellion. They believe Chapman has connections to the rebellion whom they assumed was part of the brutal murders, Khlid followed Chapman’s advice without much reason to and she pulled rank on her husband named Samuel to do it, she hoped to find the supposed rebels, and then they investigate a facility where supreme government enforcers slaughter an entire precinct’s worth of Police officers that mistakenly thought they were attacking a rebel hideout. That is honestly the entire plot. However, this entire scenario fails to answer . . . why didn’t these high-esteem enforcers have protocols set-up to stop any police raids on secret black sites? They’re dictators controlling the entire setting in a totalitarian-style fantasy world, but they don’t have any protocols like that? There was no message from the top to tell them to call it off? Does that make sense?

After she barely escapes, Khlid crashes into a brothel without realizing it in a desperate attempt to escape. Why did some random brothel decide to help a fleeing Khlid without understanding her circumstances?

“Go to the lost and found. Get everyone an unclaimed cloak. Then bring two in here for us.”

“Yes, ma’am.” And with that—all while sporting an extraordinary erection—Brev bounded from the room yelling out orders.

The Mother turned back to Khlid. “We have a fifty-fifty chance he’ll remember the cloaks for us.” She paused, observing her for a moment. “I don’t know what happened to you tonight, but I know every police precinct in the city. The closest is six blocks away.”

Khlid focused enough to realize she was a lot more than six blocks from Seventh Precinct headquarters. “No.” she managed, filled with the weight of what she had seen tonight. “It has to be the Seventh Precinct. I must make it to the Seventh.”

The Mother began to protest, then seemed to realize something, closing her mouth. She bent down to look Khlid directly in the eyes. “It’s like that, is it?”

Greene, Daniel B. . BREACH OF PEACE (LAWFUL TIMES Book 1) (p. 85). Kindle Edition.

That entire portion of the story after Khlid broke into their brothel, especially this scene, made no sense at all. Why would they randomly choose to put their lives on the line to help some random police woman when faced with the threat of death by one of the highest-ranking enforcers? Why didn’t they immediately stop and surrender Khlid? I didn’t get any real sense of what the characters were, except for maybe Sam and the Police Chief. Khlid just seems like she’s going through the motions; there was a bit of curiosity with her pursuing Chapman’s lead, but then it was just her reacting to scenarios. The brothel characters don’t really make any sense at all and there’s not enough information communicated about them, even in the extra ending at the end of the book, to explain why they tried to betray the tyrannical leader of their country. The risk is not just them being slaughtered, but their entire family being wiped out. So, why did they all risk their lives like that, especially the matron of the brothel? There was no set-up or foreshadowing for them either.

This was a trashfire. I was going to make a joke review and claim it was better than Sanderson just to get a reaction, but it wasn’t worth it. I’d just feel like a jerk and an idiot.

This book was completely unremarkable to the extent that it’s trashfire. I’d give it a 1.5 / 5 so about a 2 / 10.