Rating: ★★★★☆
Genre: Fantasy
Publisher: Orbit
Publication Date: April 3, 2018
Disclaimer: I received a free eARC copy of this from NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.
A massive battle of wits, one within a kingdom and one between kingdoms, where the loser forfeits their life and no one truly wins.
The Anakim to the north are known as monsters, demons, and fallen angels by their southern opponents, so when what looks like a green snake appears in the sky, the Suthern king is convinced it’s an omen that they should invade in order to please God. So sure of their victory, the Anakim are taken by surprise to find the Sutherners have laid a trapped, one that wipes out many of their soldiers and results in the death of their king, the Black Lord. For the first time in centuries, they’re forced to retreat, under order of the new Black Lord, Roper, who suddenly inherited the position upon his father’s death.
Not everyone is so thrilled with the young, inexperienced upstart, though. Uvoren, Master of the Guard, sees his chance to supplant the rule. After all, he’s popular among the Anakim, and Roper is an upstart with no experience in battle, where favor is won and lost among the Anakim. If Roper intends to take his rightful place as Black Lord, he’ll have to earn it—and fast. And it won’t be easy.
But civil war isn’t the only threat on the horizon for the Anakim. The Sutherners have their own upstart. Not exactly young, but from a lowly and ignoble birth, Bellamus intends to do whatever it takes to earn his status in society. His specialty is information, and as he’s made himself the expert on Anakim, it seems only fitting that he should be the one to lead the Sutherners to victory over the northern tribe once and for all.
Only one person can win this battle of wits, but at what cost?
☙ Strategy and sabotage and stabbiness and supplanting and all the other great S words (and other letters, probably, too). I’m not into high fantasy in general as a whole, but I do love me some political games, and this book is just rife with it. Everyone has an angle they’re working, and brute force won’t win it for them. They have to be cunning and always one step ahead. Sure, some of the tactics used weren’t all that surprising and I had predicted them, but they were smart and effective. The game of one-upmanship is everything I could have hoped for and then some.
☙ Keturah and Roper make one heck of a power couple. While women aren’t allowed to fight in the army, it’s clear that they’re not just passive bystanders, either, or not in this case. Keturah has her own game going on behind the scenes. She’s cunning and manipulative and knows just the right strings to pull. She takes her role seriously, and she’s damn good at it. I actually really liked the way this worked out, because despite the Anakim society having traditional male/female roles, there are strong women in this that for sure aren’t just innocent bystanders.
☙ I’m just a teensy bit in love with Pryce. Missing ear and all. Sure, he’s cantankerous and stubborn, but he’s fiercely loyal to the people he feels worthy of such fealty. He’s a beast not just in his interactions with people but on the battlefield, yet he knows his place. His cockiness and arrogance isn’t misguided; he’s talented and he knows it, but he also knows the limits. I really liked the way his character grew through this.
☙ Everyone should have a Gray in their life. He’s the father figure most people dream of. He’s insistent that Roper will either succeed or fail on his own, but he doesn’t withhold his advice and attempts to guide him, either. Nor does he shy away from speaking his truth, even when it’s a harsh one. He’s just a brilliant character, and comes out with the best advice and stories. What’s not to love? “And there is nothing to fear about death, because when you reach it—when you have no choice—you can accept it.”
☙ I’m really interested in Bellamus and the game he’s playing and where it’ll take him. I actually want to know more about his backstory, really, since I’m sure there’s got to be some good stuff in there. He’s such a deep character, and we get to see a lot of character growth and realization in him in this book, but I want to know more about his past. He’s smart and cunning and somehow manages to survive, like a roach. He seems like a worthy adversary for Roper, and I look forward to seeing what he does in the next books.
☙ The author has a degree in biological anthropology, and it shows. The differences between the cultures and groups is fabulously done. They each have their own religions and beliefs and ways of approaching life, which makes it pretty nigh on impossible for them to actually understand each other. It’s even touched on in the book that as much as Bellamus believes he knows about the Anakim, he still doesn’t understand some of the most vital information that’s just embedded in who they are. There’s a stark contrast between the Sutherners, who live relatively normal human lifespans and are always moving, fluid, and in love with gold, and the Anakim, who can live for easily two hundred years and bond with the environment and the area they inhabit, to the point where they would rather die than resettle somewhere else. I thought the cultures were marvelously done, and I got a really good sense of those two groups. I actually look forward to learning more about the Unhierea, which I assume will come in the later books.
☙ The ending was the perfect setup for book two. Which obviously there’s going to be a book two, as this is book one. There’s a bit of a cliffhanger, but nothing where you’ll be beating the author over the head with his own book for making you wait. The epilogue is a nice touch to create intrigue for the next book, but it’s also not unexpected. I mean, it was foreshadowed throughout the book, so when it got there, I was more like, “Oh, yes, that. Well, this is about to get interesting.” Like I said, nothing in this book happens without consequences.
☙ Uvoren is awful. There are times where I thought, oh, look, he has a chance to redeem himself slightly because he’s a garbage person but at least he might have this thing going for him. But no. Every time, he unfailingly proved me wrong. He’s not even worth wasting words on because grrr. That is all I have to say about that.
☙ As great as the cultural aspect was, the worldbuilding is a bit lacking. Especially for a high fantasy. There’s maps, so that’s helpful, but beyond that, I don’t have a great sense of the world they’re living in. The map shows that where this takes place is obviously an island, albeit a decent sized one. There’s also mention of the Sutherners having arrived on boats, basically, and settled there, so that hints at a larger world. But beyond that, this feels like it takes place in a microcosm. The races are so vastly different (the Anakim at around seven feet with bone plates under their skin and the Sutherners, who seem to basically be like normal humans as we know them) yet I have no sense of why this is or how it came to be. Maybe the hows and whys aren’t as important, but it feels so much like an alien vs. human concept that I really was looking for more of a grounding in what this world as a whole actually is.
☙ I actually have absolutely no idea what Anakim look like. Which is problematic, given that I read the whole thing. Well, mostly. I confess, I may have skipped some descriptions when it became too much, so I very well might have missed something rather important. I’m not sure if they’re supposed to be just really tall human-like creatures with bone plates or if they look entirely different or what. I guess I pictured them as not entirely human-looking. Though, apparently, it’s possible for Sutherners and Anakim to reproduce, sort of, so I guess they should be at least sort of human-ish. I just really don’t know.
☙ Yeah, about that skimming thing … I did that quite a bit. There were some fantastic and important descriptions, but there were also times when it became overbearing. I feel like this is a symptom of high fantasy in general, which is why I tend not to read a lot of it, because ultimately, I just don’t care that much. I can conjure up the image of a fort just fine without three pages describing the buildings and exactly what it looked like. It may not be exactly what the author imagined, but it gets the job done. The battles also dragged on in some places and became a bit repetitive. I came for the political mind games, not the war, so those parts really just didn’t interest me and couldn’t hold my attention.
Even though I don’t read a lot of high fantasy, I picked this up specifically for the political aspect. As I said, I love a good game of wits. I have to say, I wasn’t disappointed. I easily found myself taking sides, shaking the book, lecturing characters, and altogether getting embroiled in the war itself. All in all, this was a good book. Not great, but good, and enough so where I’ll definitely be reading the rest of the series. Just be aware that it’s slow (as most things regarding war and politics are) and there are likely to be places that will be skimmed.
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