2010 steampunk fantasy, first of its series. Amaranthe Lokdon is a cop
in the Empire's capital city, struggling against sex prejudice. While
she's dealing with a robbery, the young Emperor has a chance
conversation with her, and next thing she knows the General of the
Armies is sending her out alone on a job to kill Sicarius, the most
dangerous assassin ever known…
Which the astute reader, if not Amaranthe herself, will
immediately recognise as a suicide mission. Soon enough she's talked
with Sicarius instead of killing or being killed by him, she's worked
out who's poisoning the Emperor, there's a bounty on her head, and
she's gathering a motley crew to… counterfeit the Imperial currency?
Well, it's certainly a very agile book. It's all about the "what
fun" of living in a steampunk world, and while there may be occasional
labourers and urchins about the place, they're not interesting. Look
over there, here's the General's secret biowarfare lab! A magical
monster is stalking the streets at night! (Oh yes, there's magic by
the way.) Here's a cool scene with Amaranthe's old schoolmate who's
now running one of the city's biggest gangs! Sicarius broods, and is
hawt! Apparently if we convince the bad guys there's a large-scale
counterfeiting operation they'll give up all their evil ways because
they care about their money, and then they'll, ooh look here's the
emperor again.
There is an ongoing plot, but this felt very much like the pilot
episode of a television series: it's here primarily to show us what
each of the principals is like and introduce us to the sort of thing
they're going to be doing. And like a lot of modern television it's
more concerned with showing us how cool and impressive its characters
are (particularly the two leads) than it is with anything else. I
like competent characters doing difficult things well, but this
never quite takes on that feeling; even though Amaranthe succeeds at
basically everything she tries, there's always a narrative sense of
her messing up and just barely prevailing, which isn't borne out by
the actual actions…
I mean, it's not objectionable in itself, but in six months I'll have
no idea of who any of these people were.
Comments on this post are now closed. If you have particular grounds for adding a late comment, comment on a more recent post quoting the URL of this one.