RogerBW's Blog

2011 fantasy. The civil war is over, and Lord Protector Cranmer is in charge… but seems strangely unwilling to go about the business of ruling. Meanwhile the last of the Royal Guard finds a dead woman by the side of the road…

Disclaimer: Nick is a friend; we game together and co-host a film podcast. I did not pay for this book. He knows I'm going to give it an honest review.

Much of the setting is straightforward genre fantasy: there are elves, and orcs, and dwarves, and magic, and such like. (There's a reason for that, which I shan't go into.) But there were also the Ancients, who used to bestride the world like gods, but who suddenly vanished five hundred years ago leaving only a few incomprehensible relics. It seems that what Cranmer (not obviously connected to the character of the same name in Soul Purpose and Past Tense) really wants is connected with them in some way.

This isn't a long book, but it's an odd mixture. The ideas are great: not original, even in 2011, but well-explored, especially the psychological impact of learning that everything about your world is a lie. But the characters, well, there's the Betrayed Hero (and I find it hard to take the name "Dazlar" seriously even in fantasyland), there's the Manic Pixie Dying Girl, there's the Hero's Old Buddy Who Betrayed Him… I found it difficult to care about any of them. (The copy I read also suffered from very poor editing, but I don't know whether that's true of the final published version.) And yet they all turn out to be interesting people too… it just takes a while.

Given that the core ideas have been done before but could reasonably stand a bit more exploration, I think I'd have preferred greater depth of characterisation and less "we need to go here and get the thing" action. But I'm starting from a mental place where the standard fantasy setting is a thing that puts me off, not a familiar embrace.