2020 SF, eighth of its series. The Mage-King of Mars has been
assassinated; Damien Montgomery takes over as Lord Regent for the
young Mage-Queen.
So some of this is escalation of scope: Damien was already
involved at a fairly high policy level, but now he's thrown into all
of it. At the same time he's desperate to avoid any appearance of
undue influence: he could spend the years of regency enriching himself
or building up a power base, but he really doesn't want to, and part
of that avoidance means not being a rallying-point for anyone who
might want an appearance of legality to cover their own takeover.
And there aren't that many people with the particular high magical
power level that he has. Which much of the time means that only he and
the queen have the capacity to do a particular dangerous thing, and
that means he still has to be the guy to do it, over the entirely
reasonable objections of bodyguards and doctors.
While there's plenty of special-ops action here, there's also a
surprising amount of polity-building. Things were already moving in
the direction of a more equitable partnership between Big Magic and
individual worlds' governments, and that has to be kept going, perhaps
especially with new rulers who have seen the failures of the old
system up close in a way that the old king didn't.
A certain question in the big plot is answered in a way that I think
most readers had been more or less expecting, and with most of the
major elements resolved I hope the series won't lose its tension; but
I don't think it will. The "everything for the good of humanity"
conspirator is well-painted both as having an actual point but also as
being a fanatic who will sacrifice everything in service of his plan
for getting to that point while never considering any alternatives.
I realise Stewart has a ridiculous book production rate, nine or more
in a year in multiple series, but he still manages to keep things
interesting, and even at the huge power levels available to some of
the principals, there's still doubt over how they'll prevail and who
else will be hurt in the process.
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.