#Review - The Trials of Empire by Richard Swan

The Trials of Empire (Empire of the Wolf, 3)

Richard Swan

Orbit, 8 February 2024
Available as: HB, 544pp,  audio, e   
Source: Advance copy
ISBN(HB): 9780356516479

I'm grateful to Orbit for giving me access to an advance e-copy of The Trials of Empire to consider for review.

Well, here is the end of the Empire of the Wolf trilogy. 

And. It. Has. Been. A. JOURNEY. 

Not only for Helena, Sir Konrad and the rest - though they have both travelled endlessly, and developed across the books - but also for the reader, as Swan, like a magician, has revealed ever deeper layers of story to us. 

To recap, in Justice of Kings we pretty much had straight fantasy - Judge Sir Konrad Vonvault and his small party of retainers travelling the Empire and administering justice. Yes, Vonvault had access to one or two magical powers, used to help establish the truth in his more tricky cases. Yes, there were machinations from the religious order the Templars, who seemed a bit too zealous for everyone's good, leading to outright, if limited, rebellion. But overall - except for a couple of incidents  - this seemed like a military-oriented fantasy. 

Then in The Tyranny of Faith things got weirder, with cosmic horror overtones, and some episodes taking place is a sort of netherworld - but the accent was still very much on the threat to the Empire. (From the framing of the story as the memoirs of Helena Sedanka in her old age, we already knew that it did in fact fall, the issue would be how and when).

Now in The Trials of Empire - WHAT???

Again, here, Swan seems to be pivoting this trilogy, which is now clearly about the danger of those dark magics, an existential peril to the universe from... well, I think it's probably safer not to name that entity, you never know if it might be listening? We still see the coils of politics and religious fanaticism, which are centred on the militant priest Bartholemew Claver. Fortuitously I recently read Three Fires by Denise Mina, an account of the renaissance priest Girolamo Savonarola - a man who really did take over governance of a city (Renaissance Florence) and imposed his own authoritarian rule, designed to usher in a literal City of God. The parallels between this figure and Claver - both starting out as sincere, if austere, churchmen, both denouncing the religious authorities as lax, both playing on popular disquiet with the civil powers and on prejudice, both eventually corrupted by power - are striking and I think show how Swan has really got under the skin of his rather unattractive antihero and the potential route to power of such a person. (The parallels with modern politics also write themselves).

In Florence, however, there was no Vanvault. 

There was no Helena. 

Both play crucial roles here, indeed Helena probably the greater one. There is a concern throughout this book that Vonvault himself will be tried beyond what he can bear and fall victim to the dark magicks which alone, it seems, can provide a means of fighting back against Claver. And indeed we see him make some evil choices and cosy up to some dubious allies. At the same time Helena has to walk her own path, and faces her own darkness. I'd felt throughout this series that she might be capable of a lot, and it's wonderful here to see her come into her own as it were, not as an adjunct to Vonvault but as a player in her own right. And not as an improbable result of a moment's choice, but as the culmination of a process of gruelling challenge has tested and strengthened her, if at some cost (at one moment in this book Helena is chained to an executioner's block, the axe about to fall, and that's rather the least of the dangers she faces in this story).

If we see Helena face danger, we also see her develop as a person, see her juggle her attraction to Vonvault and her concern for ethics and principles - something she learned from him - and grow up in the process. As well as that, she's learned to be a redoubtable fighter. All this may however not be enough when she has to confront that darkness, which she must of course do alone, the more so as Vonvault seems to have gone astray himself.

The later part of the book therefore crystallises some moral dilemmas when, confronted by seemingly inevitable defeat and unstoppable evil, the two need to consider what is and is not justifiable. And what is and is not justice.

Readable from first page to last, exciting, with twists, surprises and betrayals, this final volume of Swan's trilogy finishes the story in grand style.

For more information about The Trials of Empire, see the publisher's website here.