2018 modern fantasy, first in a planned series spun off from the main
Kate Daniels series. Hugh d'Ambray was the warlord of the demigod
Roland, but was cast out for failure; he'd be crawling into a bottle,
but his men need him. Elara Harper leads an outcast community that
needs soldiers, and could offer shelter and employment. But both of
them are known for betraying their allies. How can they make this
alliance look credible to their enemies?
Yup, it's that old romance trope the forced marriage, because in
spite of its occasional technological trappings this is a world in
which public demonstrations of personal loyalty are an important way
of getting stuff done.
Hugh was, of course, one of the major enemies in the main Kate Daniels
narrative, and has to be rehabilitated into something like heroism;
he's still not a nice person, and his reputation for being a
bloody-handed butcher is more inconvenient than usefully terrifying,
but there's an effective description of how someone who has trained
himself never to think disloyal thoughts can start to expand into
being fully human again.
Elara is more of an enigma, and most of the questions about her and
her people aren't answered in this volume, but the same basic pattern
of power and temptation is there; this is something of an Andrews
theme, the hero/ine who's reluctant to fix an immediate problem with
brute power because that would just make bigger problems worse, so
they have to be clever instead.
There's effective sniping between the pair, and if I'm not entirely
convinced by their reasons for not admitting that they're falling for
each other, they're at least plausible in context (each of them has
reasons to regard this as a weakness). The constant sniping would get
tedious, except that there is that undercurrent of affection, and
pulling in a third direction an acceptance that whatever they think of
each other they both know they have to work together to keep their
people alive. This is a very hard balance to get right, and once again
the Ilona Andrews collective has managed it.
And of course there's an external threat, which can be hidden from for
a while, but sooner or later it's going to come down to a big battle
against overwhelming odds. The battlefield technology of this world
doesn't always make much sense, but hey, it's magic, and at least it's
consistent about what it can achieve; and the battle scenes are
effectively written to combine tension with a clear depiction of
what's going on where.
Bring the cows.
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