This
is a curious one. I’m used to fantasy that starts off with swords being
waved around, or a few magical thunderbolts, or perhaps some bizarre
creature putting in an appearance. This is quite different: a political
assassination, then it’s straight into an aristocratic world of balls
and hunts and elegant meals and jewels and finery, and a mother trying
to pair off her shy son with the wealthy (and beautiful) young widow
next door. With very few changes, it could be a Regency romance.
However, the beautiful widow also has a strange but intriguing ability
to start fires with her mind, and that’s enough to keep me reading on
despite the lace and robin’s egg soup.
The other big hurdle to
overcome initially is the vast (and I mean vast) array of names and
titles and estates. I felt I should be taking notes to try to keep up
with it. A map would have helped with some of the references to places,
too. It seemed as if every single character was named, and that means
title, first name, family name, estate, plus all the servants, local
officials, innkeepers, even the horses, sometimes. In the end, I just
let it wash over me, and that was easy to do, because the writing style
is nicely readable, with a generous dollop of humour, although it’s
sometimes an odd and distracting mixture of modern idiom and
old-fashioned language.
The world-building is a strange mix. On
the one hand, the background is the totally conventional one: kings,
dukes and counts, the usual array of merchants and craftsmen and
peasants, castles and towns and villages and inns in a largely
agricultural landscape. It's low-technology (no guns or steam), although
the way of life, with trips into the countryside for recreation and
elaborate entertainment for the wealthy, feels vaguely eighteenth
century. There’s nothing wrong with that, but it feels very ordinary,
somehow, as if there’s no scope for anything unexpected to happen. No
orcs or dragons or unfeasibly hairy and aggressive beasties to pop out
of the woods, nothing more threatening than a bear. The character names
don’t help, either, for although they’re not all boring traditional
(real-world) names, they’re also not distinctive enough to be memorable.
They fall very much at the John Smith end of the naming spectrum,
rather than the Drizzt Do’Urden end. Altogether it’s difficult to get
fully immersed in the fantasy world when these aspects are so
un-fantastic.
On the other hand, there are some nicely unusual
touches - such as the trained valo or vala each titled aristocrat has,
assigned on reaching adulthood, and far more than simply a servant. And
the magic, while very low-key so far, is intriguing. It seems to have
appeared out of nowhere in only a few people, and I’m very interested to
find out just why that should be. I also very much like the differences
in the way it manifests in different characters (I won’t say any more
than that). The religion, too, is nicely worked out, with eight
different ‘aspects’ and the effect that has on religious practices. This
is incorporated into the marriage ceremony too, which is very neatly
done.
One thing the author does really well is the change in
point of view. Very often authors use this as an excuse to keep two or
three sub-plots moving until everything merges at the end, but here it's
used very cleverly as a way to keep the main plot on the boil, while
also filling in background, developing characters and relationships, and
simply giving the reader a variety of perspectives. There are also a
small number of chapters taken from the point of view of a different
character altogether, where necessary, and this works well to fill in
gaps in the plot or, in one case, to introduce an important character.
Very nicely done, and even when the four main characters split up and
the points of view follow the different plot-lines, it’s still driven by
the needs of the plot rather than some arbitrary system of alternating.
The
characters didn’t quite work for me, but that’s mainly because I didn’t
much like any of them. Amira is wilful, Dardan is petulant, Katin is
grumpy and Liam - OK, Liam’s all right. Maybe that’s just my weakness
for charming young men taking over, who knows. Even though I understood
why they behaved that way (and everyone's motivations were very clear),
it didn't make them engaging, to me, anyway. But that’s just a personal
thing, they were interesting enough, particularly Katin, I think, who
has a sad background and finds herself making difficult choices. I had a
lot of sympathy for her, even while I disliked her. And there's clearly
more to Liam than meets the eye. Of the minor characters - well, let’s
just say that it pays not to get too attached to any of them. This book
has quite a horrifying death count.
The biggest problem I had
with the book is one that’s hard to put my finger on. Tone, maybe.
Superficially it starts off as a frothy and lighthearted romp, with a
strong romantic streak, a caper, basically. There’s a rather prim degree
of morality - prostitution is a great evil, the good guys are
heroically restrained before marriage (and when they do succumb, they
feel obliged to marry immediately), the Big Bad is seen to be evil
because he attempts to rape the heroine (he doesn’t get further than an
attempted kiss, actually, and then even his mother apologises
afterwards). Again, it's more like a Regency romance than anything else
at times. Yet there are moments of desperate action, with bodies piling
up in droves, much darker episodes, actions have serious consequences
and our noble heroes don’t hesitate to kill anyone who gets in their
way. There’s also some moderately graphic sex. It’s as if the book can’t
decide whether it’s frivolous and amusing entertainment, or is aiming
more for gritty realism, and ends up veering alarmingly from one to the
other, at times. But generally it gets darker and less frivolous as it
goes along, so don't be fooled by the light-hearted early chapters.
Second
problem is the length of the book. Now, big is very much the standard
in fantasy, but I have no problem with that, but all those pages have to
be filled with something. Too much of this book is padded with excess
dialogue or a detailed description of scenery or food or explanation of
exactly how something was done. It would have worked better for me with
some tightening up. Then in the second half, as our hapless main
characters are racing about looking for help, they stagger from one
estate to the next, or yet another village, and it all begins to seems
quite repetitive. There was a point where I would actually have liked a
band of marauding orcs (or maybe Vaslanders) to appear, just to relieve
the monotony of approaching yet another duke or count who might help.
Now, I fully understand why all this happened, and it's extremely
realistic, this is exactly how people would behave in these
circumstances (right, we've tried count this and duke that, let's try
baron so-and-so...). It's also a good way of demonstrating the different
reactions to this new magic, both in the aristocracy (still looking for
political advantage, for the most part) and in the common folk (varying
from uneasy acceptance to outright fear). There's also the mages
themselves, and how they deal with their new powers. All of this is
interesting and I applaud the author for covering the consequences of
the magical outbreak so thoroughly, but it did inevitably involve some
repetition. Although, to be fair, the different and wildly unpredictable
ways the various lords and ladies reacted lead to some seriously
exciting moments, it has to be said.
The plot itself is rather
good, and especially in the second half of the book, when the action
takes over from too much frivolity, things get very dramatic indeed. The
climactic battle is very well done, an extremely tense page-turner and
very realistic, with everything following logically from what has gone
before and the nature of the characters involved and their powers. Not
the slightest sign of a deus ex machina anywhere. The aftermath sets the
scene for the next book and also hints at some of the personal
consequences for those with power. The second half of the book
definitely has a more serious tone, as characters have to face up to the
reality of the new world order - the mages with their power, and how it
should be used.
I enjoyed this book a great deal, especially
the second half. The author follows the ideas of the world he created
and its magic system with impeccable logic, and isn't afraid to face up
to the consequences, good or bad. I could have done with less emphasis
on the romantic aspects, and the political machinations were impossible
to follow without a basic list of families and estates, or better still,
a map, but the action moments were terrific, genuinely exciting and
unpredictable. Overall, I found it very difficult to rate. The plot, the
magic system and the realism of people's actions and motivations would
be a four star read, but for me personally the rather ordinary nature of
the setting and some unevenness in parts of the writing keep it to
three stars. If the story moves out beyond the immediate kingdom into
the wider world in the next book and the author finds a more consistent
tone, the rest of the series will be terrific.
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