2024 fantasy mystery. A high-ranking Imperial officer has been
murdered, in a particularly grotesque way. But why was he even staying
at a house belonging to one of the richest families in the Empire? And
what does this have to do with the breach in the Wall? Dinias Kol,
apprentice Investigator to the great but eccentric Ana Dolabra,
investigates…
I've been aware of Bennett for a while (Foundryside has been
sitting on my Kobo unread), but not felt the inclination actually to
read any before. There is so much fantasy that I don't get on with,
for various reasons, that I have tended to return to established
series rather than tackle something new. But I'm very glad to say that
I greatly enjoyed this book.
Part of it is a mystery in the pattern of Nero Wolfe: Kol, who's the
viewpoint character, goes out and observes things, while Dolabra, who
spends most of her time in a blindfold, makes the connections. There
are multiple interlocking plots and corruptions, and significant doubt
about loyalties all round.
But this is also a high-biotech world in which almost everyone has
some form of augmentation: Kol's is that he remembers everything and
can recount it precisely. Others have been given abilities for mental
calculation, exact spatial awareness, language acquisition and
translation, and so on. And the source of that high biotech is the
leviathans that come ashore every wet season to hurl themselves
against the defensive walls, and have to be fought off. (And if you
find yourself thinking "if they always try to go along the same path,
why not just leave a strip a few miles wide through the centre of your
empire", well, at least I didn't think of it until after I'd
finished.)
This Empire has its problems and peculations but more or less works,
and is mostly focused on the massive coordinated effort necessary to
construct and improve the walls and the bombards, and to sustain what
must clearly be a very substantial economic drain. But everyone we
meet is part of that system, so they don't regard it as worthy of
comment, and one puts together the reality from passing remarks. (And
yet, I suspect a reader less experienced at this process could at
least avoid being lost; these are people with miraculous powers, but
they are still people.)
One problem with mysteries in other worlds is that the reader has to
be aware of the things that are possible, without their being made too
obvious. But the method of murder (murders, it soon transpires) is
not really in doubt; the questions are more who could and would have
done it, to these victims, in this way, at this time and place.
It's not as deep as it would like you to think it is, but it is good
fun.