Review - Mortedant's Peril by RJ Barker

Mortedant's Peril (The Trials of Irody Hasp, 1)

RJ Barker
Tor/ Pan Macmillan, 
Available as: HB, 432pp, audio, e   
Source: Advance e-copy
ISBN(HB): 9781035064274

I'm grateful to the publisher for giving me access to an advance e-copy of Mortedant's Peril to consider for review.

Meet Irody Hasp, Mortedant for hire.

In the city of Elbay, Mortedants aren't the power they used to be.

These celebrants - part confessor, part psychopomp - were once greatly respected for their ability to probe the last thoughts of the dead, reconciling lifelong quarrels, bringing peace to the dying... and locating hidden money and valuables. That last, however, has brought them down somewhat, as they're now suspected of profiting from a fraudulent trade. 

Hasp is a marginal figure even among this disdained group, shunned by his peers for his poor birth and questionable past. He scrapes a living. It's sufficient, however, for him to indulge his alchemical hobbies, probing the work of the spurriers, a more favoured trade, who create marvellous living devices. It's illegal for a Mortedant to engage in such work, so Hasp benefits from his obscurity.

Hasp's quiet life changes, though, when he's called out to attend to a city employee who has died suddenly.

Somebody doesn't want a Mortedant at this death, and pretty soon Hasp finds himself accused of murder and scheduled to hang (and worse - believe me, it is worse) - unless he can prove himself innocent in three days. With the city building up to its annual festival, nobody is interested in the troubles of a penniless Mortedant - except for his guard, Whisper, a woman of the sea-people, who he's been forced to accept (to prevent him fleeing injustice) and a young urchin, Mirial, who has her own reasons for sticking close to him.

Across those three days, Hasp must ransack the secrets of Elbay or suffer the consequences. 

Of course, nobody wants those secrets to come to light...

I loved this book. It has great - what's the right word? - verve. Elbay is a teeming, complex society, a city built on rigid social hierarchy but that also seems to be sitting on something older - older magic, older technology, a VERY old but curiously absent governor, the Roundhorn - and to conceal powers, barely held in check, that regularly scorch the ring of ground outside the walls. Hasp's explorations provide an excellent gazetteer. He really knows his way around, and Mirial knows hers even better. Clearly the first of a series, Mortedant's Peril shows us all sorts of locations and possibilities from the very highest point of the Dome to the depths of the citycore which I'm sure we'll learn more about in due course. It also details the convoluted social hierarchy, based both on wealth and on inherited distinctions, that keeps the poor in the lower tiers - and hints at strange, other-worldly powers. No, Elbay isn't your standard fantasy city. Nor is the society that flourishes inside. 

Hasp himself is an intriguing character. I started this book thoroughly disliking him. He is self-obsessed, arrogant, prone to dismiss everyone and everything around him as worthless, especially those outside Elbay (Hasp has never left the city) as barbarians - so Whisper is referred to in the earlier part of the book (by Hasp) as "it" until she gradually, grudgingly earns his trust until, when she's threatened and in danger he's beside himself. Hasp has, as becomes clear, though suffered loss and is perhaps still smarting from that (he'd never admit it) but he can and does change and shows himself brave, resourceful and determined.

It seems, after all, that there is more at stake than the life of one Mortedant, and Hasp's beloved Elbay (see the fuss he makes when he has to go beyond the walls, briefly) may itself be at risk.

More than just a series opener, Mortedant's Peril is a tense, gripping story of a race against time, as the chapters count down to Hasp's flaying and hanging. In his desperate search up and down Elbay's steep slopes there seems very little, really, that he can do to save his neck. Yet he carries on, refusing to give in.

This is, I'd say, a characteristically RJ Barker book, exploring a strange world through the eye of a flawed and marginalised character, taking the limitations of that (Hasp's poverty, his outcastness, his previous bad choices) and making them into real plusses.

Great fun, but more than that, Mortedant's Peril is fantasy with real heart.

For more information about Mortedant's Peril, see the publisher's website here.

#Blogtour - #Fathomfolk by Eliza Chan

Fathomfolk

Eliza Chan

Orbit, 27 February 2024,
Available as: HB, 420pp, audio, e
Source: Advance copy
ISBN(HB): 9780356522395

I'm grateful to Nazia at Orbit for sending me a copy of Fathomfolk to consider for review, and for inviting me to join the book's blogtour.

I have been known to describe books as "immersive". In the case of Fathomfolk, the term really comes into its own because it is, literally, about immersion. Most obviously, there's immersion in water - in the world of Fathomfolk, the waters have risen and most land has been drowned. Humans coexist with sentient sea creatures - the marine peoples of multiple cultures' myths and legends, from East Asian water dragons to mermaids to kelpies to sea witches,  and many actual marine species too. All these are united by their ability to "water weave" - manipulate the water magically - and some also have the ability to shapeshift.

But there are other sorts of immersion here - immersion in different cultures, immersion in work and family and also, romantic immersion in another person. All of these mix, and not always comfortably. If you think the magic of the sea people all sounds wonderful and magical, well it is, but still all is not well. The inundation of the land was the outcome of war between humans and sea peoples, and the latter - the fathomfolk or just Folk - came off worse in this. They are oppressed by humans, who are polluting the oceans and dominating the Folk, treating then as lesser mortals subjects to constraints and controls and prejudices. In the city of Tiankawi, where most of the action in the book takes place, we see the patterns of coexistence in a prejudiced society played out. The focus is on Kai, a sea dragon ambassador from one of the Folk havens and on his partner Mira, a siren and poster girl for diversity. Mira has recently been promoted tocaptain of police but increasingly, as this book proceeds, suffers the tensions and paradoxes of being distrusted by both the dominant society and by the Folk. Mira therefore endures immersion in another sense, genuinely neither a person of the sea nor or the land.

Others in the story also play ambiguous roles, though it would be wrong to say too much about them because spoilers. But we see dilemmas both in the "opposition" to the dominant humans (through a somewhat self regarding sect of revolutionaries) and in those who seek coexistence, as well as those who simply put themselves first. There are also city politics inn play, as well as secrets of going back to Tiankawi's foundation. At times it seems as though everyone's playing a part, everyone's putting on an act. This affects the relationship between Kai and Mira, undermining who they are and exposing issues of privilege and accommodation (Kai, as a dragon, is seen as being at the peak of Folk society which of course has its own hierarchies and prejudices).

Eliza Chan deftly weaves together these multiple strands of the story, gradually expanding the scope form the personal and the immediate to the cosmic and delivering some real shocks as she does, not least in the last few pages which show a narrative that's really going places. 

While the configuration of the world in this story is different form our own, it's easy to see the book as a glimpse of a future affected by global heating, as well as a commentary on prejudice, race and migration  (in a devastating scene, a ship full of sea asylum seekers arrives at the city's docks). It's written in a loosely East Asian setting (albeit, as a I said, the geography is unrecognisably different) which applies both to the human aspects and the Folk.

Eliza Chan portrays the diverse and complex city of Tiankawi as a truly vast and multilayered place, creating distinct and parallel cultures both above and below water and convincingly bringing both to life. This above water/ below water concept feels like it ought not to work yet by the end of the story  it feels completely natural. The city's peopled by vivid and credible characters, with even the villains having their sympathetic side (such as being driven by family ambition, rather than simple love of power). I thought one or two of the secondary characters such as bookish Eun might have had more attention, but I think it's clear there are more books coming so hopefully they will get that at some stage. 

All in all a beguiling and, yes, properly immersive novel. I'd recommend!

For more information about Fathomfolk, see the publisher's website here - and of course the other stops on the blogtour which you can see listed on the poster below. 

You can buy Fathomfolk from your local high street bookshop or online from Bookshop UK, Hive Books, Blackwell's, Foyle's, WH Smith, Waterstones or Amazon.

#Review - Her Fierce Creatures by Maria Lewis

Her Fierce Creatures (Supernatural Sisters)
Maria Lewis
Piatkus, 4 October 2022
Available as: PB, 390pp, e
ISBN(PB): 9780349427263 

I'm grateful to Piatkus and especially to Nazia for an advance copy of Her Fierce Creatures to consider for review.

When I read Lewis's first book in the sequence, Who's Afraid?, I was a little wary. Werewolves? But it was soon clear this wasn't your typical UF, introducing Tommi Grayson, who has a foot in both the supernatural and mundane camps. Successive stories followed Tommi's further adventures as well as introducing a succession of women who are members of different supernatural peoples - a sprite, a medium, a banshee - and their world - oppressed by an authority known as the Treize.

Now the time is coming to turn on the Treize and the stakes are suddenly higher. Her Fierce Creatures is Lewis's necessary final volume in the Supernatural Sistersbut, gosh, how difficult this must have been to write! Unlike the previous books it has too maintain the viewpoints of all four women - Tommi herself, Dreckly (the sprite), Caspet (medium) and Sadie (the banshee). While they have appeared in each other's stories before, those were generally minor, walk-on appearances and each had a full book (or more) in which to develop (my favourite of those being Dreckly in The Rose Daughter, living her life through the long 20th century, encountering all manner of prejudice and adversity and coming out on top).

Here, there is more of a team-up with the need to keep track of parallel events taking place around the world, at the same time as tying off stories, romances, rivalries and foes. That inevitably makes Her Fierce Creatures a slightly different type of story - but Lewis delivers a perfect completion to her saga, resisting any temptation to make this one endless kick-ass battle and allowing each woman some space. For me, that really pays off. These are not just characters, they are friends we've come to know, women whose stories and struggles have struck a chord, and they deserve an opportunity to reflect on that as they await the end.

And this isn't just a story of endings, it also contains new beginnings. Sadia is pregnant - VERY pregnant - with the triplets who may be the hope for the supernatural world. And revolutions are, as we know, built on hope. In making one of the story threads here focus on the challenges and rewards of pregnancy and childbirth, Lewis is still I think - even after seven books in this series - saying something important and new here about that experience. I think it a glorious way to end.

For more information about Hew Fierce Creatures, see the publisher's website here.

#Review - Residuum by Dominic Dulley

Cover by www.headdesign.co.uk

Residuum (The Long Game, 3)
Dominic Dulley
Jo Fletcher Books, 18 February 2021

Available as: PB, 497pp, e

Source: Advance e-copy

ISBN: 9781529410747

I'm grateful to Jo Fletcher Books for an advance e-copy of Residuum via NetGalley.

Residuum is the third part of The Long Game, after Shattermoon and Morhelion. (Note - there are spoilers here for those previous books).  SFF being what it is, I suppose that means it may be the final part of a trilogy - or perhaps not, there are some intriguing threads here and I hope there will be more books.  What's undeniable is that Orry (Aurelia) Kent, the hero here, definitely deserves a break, after losing her father to space pirate Cordelia Roag, losing her ship, hooking up with morose loner Mender, and helping the Imperator out of several nasty scrapes.

And at the start that's just what she's doing, relaxing with her brother Ethan on the pleasure planet, Halcyon.

However it isn't long before Orry's in trouble again, fomenting revolution and on the run from the Arbiters. Whereas in previous books Orry and Ethan were in control (kind of), running some grift or other largely with personal gain in mind and only reluctantly getting drawn into Galactic politics, here trouble comes looking for them and the book is essentially a series of heists and escapes as they attempt to turn the tables on whoever - whatever - has them in its sights. They'll make some strange friends on the way (perhaps...) and get deeper into the mysteries hinted at in the previous books: the fate of the race known as the Departed and its sought-after tech, the militaristic Kadirans, and the secrets kept by Roag.

It's a fast and furious story, matching Orry and co's talents (we must also include Quondam, the renegade Kadiran, and Dainty Jane, the sentient ship) against increasingly deadly environments, from a planet infested by rogue, human-eating tech to a waterworld run by cephalopod warlords. That means that an aspect I loved before, something I'd tentatively describe as a sense of cosiness, is lacking. What I mean by this is the situation of the small crew on a small ship, isolated and slightly bored on their long journeys but capable, between them, of dealing with pretty much anything that comes along. The more frantic pace here diminishes that, meaning less time spent on the travels and generally interacting and less attention given to the remarkable ship, Dainty Jane. (She does, though, have some excellent scenes of her own).

However that didn't actually diminish my enjoyment of the book. In a sense Orry has grown rather, though these stories, going from having to step up in Shattermoon after the attack by Roag and her father's death to someone who can drop in confidently on Fleet Admirals and demand support. She's also developed something of a moral core, looking rather disdainfully at the Ascendancy and its Ruuz aristocrats (hence the opening scenes on Halcyon). Watching her engage with a series of challenges, leading up to a true Galaxy-menacing threat, was enthralling, making for an addictive book that simply demanded I keep turning its pages. It's all I might have wishes for as a fulfilment for The Long Game (as I said, I hope there is more to come). The writing is also, as in the previous books, smart and on-point and the characters, with whom we're now pretty familiar, engaging and fun to be with.

I'd recommend Residuum, although it really needs to be read in sequence. (But then, if you haven't read the first two books you shouldn't be down here at the end of this review).

For more information about Residuum, see the Jo Fletcher Books website here.

 

#Blogtour #Review - The Bone Shard Daughter by Andrea Stewart

The Bone Shard Daughter (The Drowning Empire, 1)
Andrea Stewart
Orbit, 8 September 2020
Available as: HB, 435pp, e, audio
Source: ARC
ISBN: 9780356514925

I'm grateful to Nazia at Orbit for an advance copy of The Bone Shard Daughter to consider for review and to Tracy Fenton of Compulsive Readers for inviting me to take part in the tour.

Well.

The Bone Shard Daughter has just everything you need in your fantasy. There are complex, relatable characters, a world so well developed and portrayed that you can just luxuriate in it (seriously - I want to skip lockdown and go and stay on a floating island) and an enthralling plot that will seize you from the first page.

There are in fact, four plots. FOUR!

First we meet Lin, cloistered daughter of the Emperor, but seemingly a failed daughter because she's lost her memory and can't learn his bone shard magic.

Then Jovis, who at first seems the kind of rogue who abounds in fantasy - a thief, smuggler and chancer on the run from the authorities and from crime gang the Ioph Carn. But Jovis proves to have depths and motivations to him and to be embarked on a quest of his own.

There's also the mysterious young woman Sand, trapped on a remote island and also suffering memory loss.

And finally, Phalue. What can I say about Phalue? She's a headstrong young woman, a fighter and a lover (not above wearing her armour specifically to impress her partner Ranami), a bit confused, idealistic - and the indulged daughter of her island's Governor.

Stewart's approach is to spin highly engaging and fast-paced stories for all four protagonists, using the light each of these casts on different aspects of the invented world to fill out the overall picture. It means the book takes off right away, with little or no hiatus when it switches focus between the four (always a risk when they are many points of view) as we come from each strand into the next with an enlarged sense of what is going on. And equally there is something for everyone here: palace intrigue, revolutionaries seeking to free an oppressed peasantry, romance, a cruel emperor (his "constructs" - artificial beasts who acts as spies or agents - are powered by bone shards taken from children when they come of age. The life-force of the constructs drains the originator of the shard of life and vigour until they eventually die). And much, much more (FLOATING ISLANDS!)

Each of the four central characters has their own mystery (or mysteries) and it's pretty clear that not everything is as it seems. The apparently stable order guaranteed by the Emperor may be about to crumble, with other powers crowding into the islands, causing disasters and change. We will see, I'm sure, in future books exactly how Lin, Jovis, Phalue and Sand fit in with that and how - whether - they reconcile their different quests and needs. Meanwhile, The Bone Shard Daughter offers us some wonderful relationships - Lin with her prickly, reclusive father (who has brought in a foster son to jostle with her for the throne), Phalue and Ranami, two women obviously in love but constantly bickering about politics and much else, Jovis, absorbed in his endless quest yet constantly going out of his way to save people (and animals!) Perhaps they fill a gap in his life, make up for a loss, or perhaps they help him fend off some awful truth about whatever he's looking for? And Sand, who we see least of, but who achieves a lot despite her exile to a remote island.

Put simply, The Bone Shard Daughter is the strongest start to a fantasy trilogy I've read for a long time, and I'll watch out keenly for the next part because these characters really speak to me - as well as the background of floating islands migrating under wind and tide in the endless ocean. Put this one to the top of your reading pile.

For more information about The Bone Shard Daughter, see the publisher's website here (as well as dropping in on the blog tour stops listed in the poster below!)

You can buy the book from your local hughstreet bookshop, or online from Hive Books, Blackwell's, Foyles, WH Smith, Waterstones or Amazon.

Review - Prime Deceptions by Valerie Valdes

Cover by Julie Dillon

Prime Deceptions (Chilling Effect, 2)
Valerie Valdes
Orbit, 17 September 2020
Available as: PB, 436pp, e
Source: Advance e-copy via NetGalley
ISBN: 9780356514437

I'm grateful to Orbit for a free advance e-copy of Prime Deceptions via NetGalley.

In this sequel to Chilling Effect, we're given another chance to sign up with Captain Eva Innocente and her crew aboard the space freighter/ smuggler/ gunrunner La Sirena Negra ('a small ship whose business was composed entirely of side hustles') for another series of madcap adventures. This time, having spent several months prodding the dangerous beast that is The Fridge criminal collective, Eva accepts a commission to track down Josh, scientist brother to her engineer (and retired bank robber) Sue ('I really like your arm cannon. Is that modular?') Having worked for The Fridge, Josh's knowledge of the powerful, banned, ancient Proarkhe tech is considered useful and needed for a Very Secret project.

And at one level that's all you need to know. Eva, co-captain Pink, Min, Vakar and the rest - not to forget the pack of psychic cats who have taken up residence on La Sirena Negra - set about their quest with gusto, beginning with a visit to a perpetual fan con and proceeding to a bot-fighting arena where Eva reencounters one of her least favourite humans, 'Miles fucking Erck', the man who begins every sentence with 'Well, actually...' It's all rather fun, rather genial mayhem, punctuated by speculation about what's really going on, passion between crewmembers and attempts (largely unsuccessful) to keep the cats in line.

But then things get... a bit darker.

You'll recall from Chilling Effect (and you really should read it first) the impact of Eva keeping secrets. Well, she still has one zinger of a secret - and it's to do with the most shameful episode of her life, something she did while working as a mercenary.

Something that won her the title Hero of Garilia...

...or, depending who you're talking to, Butcher of Garilia.

Now, she's going back to Garilia - the one place in the universe Eva really, really wanted never to see again.

Changing the tone of the book to several moods darker, Valdes takes Eva to places and events in her memory she'd hoped to leave buried ('Action meant control, and control was something Eva needed, even if it was an illusion.') And it's not just all in the past: what she did has consequences now both for the inhabitants of Garilia and possibly for the wider universe. Eva has to come to terms with her memories quickly.

Oh, and her mother's turned up as well, also on some super-secret mission.

I loved the family dynamics between Regina and Eva (and also between Eva and her sister Mari). It's genuinely - and generously - portrayed: it would be easy to have Regina come over as a clichéd scary mother and to a degree she is. But this is a complex and deep relationship which also takes in the secrets (again) that Eva kept from her mum when working for her father, and the history between the two sister. There is genuine emotional force here, well realised and at times, rather touching.

It would be easy, I think, to take some of this darkness and family stuff as just slowing the pace down and putting off the fights. Don't fall into that mistake! There is much, much more here than just a breadcrumb trail between hectic combat sequences, and everything has its place and its time in a story that takes in PTSD, moral dilemmas, and guilt as well as silly banter between friends, trust, and, yes, a great sense of wonder and fun (messing up a target's navigation stems by convincing them that they're installing a false software update? A straight faced remark that 'The fourth wall had apparently been broken recently').

This is an unmissable followup to Chilling Effect and, due to some Galaxy-shaking events, sets the next volume up as being pretty epic too, I think.

For more information about Prime Deceptions, see the publisher's website here.

Review: A Declaration of the Rights of Magicians by HG Parry

Cover design by
Lisa Marie Pompilio

A Declaration of the Rights of Magicians

HG Parry

Orbit, 25 June 2020

Available as: PB, 516pp, e

Read as: PB advance copy

ISBN: 9780356514703

Snap verdict: It's complicated...

(CW for mention of enslavement and enslaved people).

I'm grateful to the publisher for an advance copy of A Declaration of the Rights Of Magicians.

Following up The Unlikely Escape of Uriah Heap, which saw literary characters escape their bindings to cause trouble in New Zealand, Parry's A Declaration of the Rights Of Magicians focuses on a very different kind of mayhem in late 18th century West Africa, France, Britain and the Caribbean.

It's an absorbing and at times harrowing historical fantasy. Parry imagines a whole overlay of magical oppression that reinforces the racial and cultural oppression of the period, and integrates it all into a history which well reflects - to this non-historian reader - the atmosphere, personalities and events of the time. It is very well done, making for an intriguing and, ultimately, engaging narrative. This is a book I enjoyed reading, although I do have some reservations - which I'll come to shortly. 

First, though, what is going on in A Declaration of the Rights Of Magicians? 

Well, to begin with, a young (six years old) girl is kidnapped in West Africa, enslaved, and trafficked to the Caribbean. She comes to be known as Fina, although that's the name her enslavers give her, not her real name.

A few years later, in Europe, magic is forbidden to Commoners. Nevertheless a young French boy, Camille Desmoulins, summons shadows and finds himself in trouble with the magical authorities. Provincial lawyer Maximilien Robespierre seeks to defend a young Commoner accused of a trivial act of magic. Barrister William Pitt does the same in London. We are also introduced to William Wilberforce, a young Englishman and a friend of Pitt, who is seeking a purpose in life. Perhaps he will join the Knights Templar who enforce the anti-magic laws?

Fina, landed in Jamaica, is subjected to magical control on a planation and to decades of backbreaking physical toil. Meanwhile the relationship between Wilberforce and Pitt develops as the former takes up the cause of ending slavery and the latter becomes Prime Minister. Robespierre rises through the ranks of revolutionaries as France teeters on the brink. Things come to a crisis as enslaved Africans in the French colony of Saint-Domingue rise in revolt, France declares itself a Republic and frees its magicians, and war with the United Kingdom looms - a war which will challenge all the constraints on magic that currently obtain in Europe.

As I have said, I enjoyed this book which is engaging and informative. Wilberforce and Pitt, on the one hand, and Robespierre, Desmoulins, Danton and the rest on the other, are of course real characters and as far as I am aware their "history" presented here in considerable detail is accurate (up to a factor of magic, obviously). Similarly while Fina is, I assume, an invested character, what happens to her is clearly representative of a wider catastrophe for Africa and its people (again, setting aside the magic).

It's impossible to ignore the fact that the book comes with almost spooky timing, being published only a few weeks after the toppling in Bristol of a notorious enslaver's statue during a Black Lives Matter protest (and amidst wider ongoing protest and debate). That makes it very of the moment, something that might not stand out so much if it was less rare for fantasy to deal with real world issues like this (it is getting less rare, but not yet so much that a book like this won't attract some attention for that reason). It's good to see a fantasy novel that avoids being another "Regency magic" story, engaging instead with the unpleasant realities of the period. I also enjoyed the focus given to the slave rebellions which are fully acknowledged as a source of freedom, as well as Wilberforce's Parliamentary efforts. 

However, I would qualify this a bit, for a couple of reasons. 

First, Pitt, Wilberforce, Robespierre et al get a lot more attention than Fina and her comrades. So there is exhaustive focus on the developments in the Parliamentary campaign against slavery, including lengthy (generally late night, well oiled) political and philosophical discussions between Pitt and Wilberforce, and equally detailed material on Robespierre's politics and actions. 

Meanwhile Fina's story - which covers some twenty years in contrast to a handful of years for the others - gets rather brief updates. It clicked with me about halfway through the book that this is because the book is primarily about the evolving relationship - politically and as friends - between Pitt and Wilberforce and about how these very different men cooperate to tackle slavery. It's a sign of how good Parry's writing is that the lengthy discussions between them are actually very, very interesting and the characters and humanity of the two men come fully alive. I have no idea how true they are to the reality, but as an able, energetic and principled Prime Minister, Parry's William Pitt certainly shines in contrast to more recent holders of the office, and Wilberforce's religious motivation is given respect and space to develop. The strain of realpolitik on this relationship and its eventual fracture is also a powerful theme. (Pitt as Prime Minister must pay attention to the practicalities and wider while Wilberforce, as a freewheeling idealist, need not). However, this does mean that while Fina and her comrades and their rebellion are in the end key to the story, it in in no way centred on them. 

There is also the place of the magic. Magic features here in several ways. As there are harsh laws in Europe against "commoners" using magic, and harsh punishments for breaking those laws, the position  of magicians as an oppressed group adds a new factor to, especially, the pre-revolutionary situation in France. Accordingly, when the Republic is declared it is "The French Republic of Magicians" (though most of the citizens are not actually magicians). 

Similarly, magic is used to control Fina and the other enslaved people, who are forced to consume an alchemical compound that robs them of their will (this is in addition to the chains and whips that feature in historical slavery). But in neither case is the outcome very different from the historical one (oppression stokes a bloody revolution in France and a harsh and exploitative slave trade in Africa and the Caribbean). For much of the book the magic is, in a sense, superfluous. While well thought out, it doesn't seem to be adding anything essential to the story or making a difference to it, except in the detail. 

In the end, it turns out that isn't quite right and I came to understand why parry has added magic to this version of the 18th century. it is there for a reason, rather than simply to drive a kind of "What if...?" game, and it does affect the fates of Fina, Pitt, Wilberforce, Robespierre and the rest. Moreover in the final few pages of the book (but almost not until then) we see that it will affect the future of San Domingue and of Europe. That's tantalising, though, because the story closes almost as soon as this is established. I think I smell a possible sequel and I hope that comes, because I really want to see how things play out and how characters who have been established so vividly might go forward into what looks like a much more magically-shaped world.

Overall, this is a powerful book with powerful themes. It wasn't perhaps quite the book I had expected but in discovering what it actually was I had a very enjoyable read.

For more information about the book, see the publisher's website here.

Review - Iron Gold by Pierce Brown

Iron Gold (Red Rising 4)
Pierce Brown
Hodder & Stoughton, 16 January 2018
HB, 626pp

I'm SO grateful to Hodder for an advance proof of this book.

If you have been reading my reviews for a while (oh, who am I kidding...) you'll know that I simply adored Pierce Brown's Red Rising trilogy (Red Rising, Golden Son, Morning Star) which describe the career of Darrow (The Reaper), a downtrodden slave from the mines of Mars who joins the rebellion and helps to overthrow the rule of the hateful, oppressive Golds.

The earlier trilogy is notable for its visceral, brutal descriptions of battle; for the tension in Darrow, who is originally set on vengeance but is also more than half in love with the life he could have among the Golds (whose society he infiltrates in order to destroy); for its depiction of Darrow's dark side (he is, not to mince words, a war criminal) and for numerous betrayals, reversals of fortune and a mounting body count that sees many beloved characters murdered, assassinated or simply killed on the battlefields of Mars, Venus and Luna.

It is a magnificent achievement, ending only when the Society of the Golds was overthrown and a new world could arise. Iron Gold picks up the story ten years later, and I was at first nervous that a continuation could only be an anticlimax.

And, yes, this is in many ways a less romantic tale, infused with the compromises and failures of any demokratic* society seeking to replace a tyranny. (The copy I've been given contains a Howler Directive, forbidding any disclosure of plot details. I don't want the agents of the Republic to hunt me down, so I won't be more specific about these.) Darrow is haunted by what he's done, and hamstrung by the messy politics of a new Republic. Shadows of Julius Ceasar here, perhaps, as a military strongman clashes with the civilian order he has sworn to uphold - heightened by the fact that Darrow established that civilian order.

But "less romantic" doesn't mean "less readable". The heady stuff of rebellion, of "breaking the chains" may be absent but in its place is a more sober, perhaps more grown up, vibe. The story is of a whole with those earlier books. This is the same Darrow with the same drives and, as before, we feel for him, for his dilemmas, his shortcomings. More, knowing how Brown puts his characters - and Darrow especially - through the wringer, we fear for him: for what may become of him and for what he may become.

It's the same potent mix that Brown has served up before, yet still fresh and with a whole new cast of characters whose stories run parallel with Darrow's. An embittered ex soldier on Luna. A pair of exiled nobles in the Rim of the Solar system, caught up in politics of the exotic Golds who live out there. A Red woman, freed from the mines of Mars only to face new perils. All of these narratives are in first person, as is Darrow's, creating a very demokratic (as it were) picture of the new world Darrow has made rather than one focussed on a single viewpoint. And they allow Brown to experiment with slightly different styles: for example, the ex soldier inhabits a noirish world, popping pills to kill his empathy as he walks a narrow line between time bosses and his former comrades.

In short, my fears were proved wrong. Brown has avoided writing a mere potboiler, an equivalent of the Star Wars prequel trilogy, by widening his scope to address new issues, new complexities, and the torments of new characters. And all without jeopardising the raw power of the original trilogy, the feeling of almost playful violence, the sense of the Heroic (in a Beowulf or Homeric style) which infuses Brown's work at its best. It's that mode which shows us just how compelling the Gold myth is to Darrow and of course to the Golds themselves. Amidst the chaos and suffering of "democraky" who wouldn't yearn for order, for strength, for freedom from having to take decisions? I don't think I've read another recent author who shows us the insidious nature of authoritarianism - and the lessons are if anything more sharp here than in the first three books. I won't make facile comparisons with the current political situation but this does also give the book a sense of urgency, of relevance. (And indeed a couple of times Darrow's Howlers explicitly refer to the Society forces as "fascists").

In short: if you loved Red Rising/ Golden Sun/ Morning Star then Iron Gold is just as good, and benefits from a bit more philosophical and political oomph. If you haven't read those books yet, I'd strongly suggest you read them first since while this book is relatively self-contained, reading it first will spoil details of the plots of the others which develop in a nicely layered way and are worth discovering little by little. When you've done that you ought to read Iron Gold immediately though.

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*The spelling Brown uses throughout, embodying the sneering Gold view that they are made to rule and that a polity which consults the lower Colours is a thing to be crushed.