2008 fantasy, the second in the Dhulyn and Parno series. They're on
the winning side of a battle against an aggressive kingdom, and
they've captured the crown prince; and that's only the start of their
troubles.
The Significant Capitals are back, but altogether this book holds
together rather better than the last one. There are more stock fantasy
elements than last time, in particular an actual magician; but they
aren't over-used, because Malan has an actual story to tell, of
treachery and manipulation and the sort of evil person who doesn't
think of themselves as evil, just hard-done-by.
All right, some of it feels invented for the moment: the unbreakable
Mercenary Brother rule that prisoners they take are immediately
released rather than ransomed, for example, seems as though it might
have unfortunate results. The sole survivor of the band of travelling
not-Roma-honest manages to rise above stereotype, but stereotype is
where she starts, in part because we've never heard of these people
before.
We get court intrigue again, but it's less convoluted than last time
and works rather better. (Though I do wonder slightly why this
kingdom, which doesn't seem to do a lot of torture or executions in
the usual way of things, has a permanent dedicated staff of
torturer-executioners.)
At the same time there's a bit more on Dhulyn's history before she
became a mercenary; Parno comes off second-best, though there's a
little back-story for him as well.
After a number of recent books that have felt like hard work for
little reward, this is very little work for a moderate reward, and a
distinct improvement on my memories of the first one (which wasn't bad
in itself).
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