I Read Books: The Baker's Boy

 

The Baker’s Boy

In the prologue Lord Baralis sneaks through the secret passages of the castle to drug and rape the queen, performs risky magic to find out if he’s impregnated her, then murders the brighter of his two servants because he might figure out what’s going on. He’s the villain!

Some years later Baralis, now Chancellor of the Four Kingdoms, poisons the king. Not fatally, but so he is unable to rule, leaving the kingdom, unofficially, in the hands of the queen. She does fairly well, despite the war with Holcus. Baralis learns that Lord Maybor plans to marry his daughter Melliande (Melli) to Prince Krylock, so he acts to try and prevent this. He also has borrowed some rare books from Archbishop Tavalisk (in a southern city state) and needs a blind scribe, someone who can copy but not read. The candidate he finds is Jack, an apprentice baker, or perhaps Baker’s Boy.

Tavalisk meanwhile has captured a knight named Tawl, having learned that he’s been given a quest by the wise man Blevin in the northern swamps. Unable to learn what the quest is (it’s to find a boy, Tawl will know who it is when he finds him), he releases him and keeps an eye on his movements. Tavalisk is comically annoying to his underling, enjoys foods, takes petty revenges, is manoeuvring to keep the knights out of the southern cities, and also realises that Baralis’s actions might just be fulfilling a prophecy.

Jack somehow learns to read, and then one day accidentally does magic. This is a sin, and in a panic he flees the castle. By chance Melli learns of the plans to marry her to Prince Krylock and also flees the castle. Lord Maybor sends men after her but is constantly distracted, mostly due to Baralis. Baralis sends men after both of them (he’s a secret sorcerer) but they’re mercenaries and things start to go wrong. Maybor, realising Baralis has tried to plot against him sends an assassin.

All this is a little confused. Baralis is constantly driving events, but they never end up as he hopes – as an example he poisons Maybor’s favourite robes, but Maybor gets wine spilled on them at an event, so takes them off before he takes a fatal dose, though he is incapacitated for a while. Baralis is unable to take advantage as that is the night the assassin attacks and Baralis panics, using too much magic to kill him, incapacitating himself at a vital juncture. Jack, Melli and Tawl keep stumbling into trouble, then out thanks to kind-hearted help from strangers. The prophecy keeps coming up but is inscrutable. The overall effect is to be equal parts intrigued and frustrated. Why am I reading this (thirty years on after first publications)? I will, of course, explain in a review of a later volume.

Read This: Fast moving, entertaining and often amusing fantasy novel
Don’t Read This: Naïve people are taken advantage of, horrible people do horrible things, nothing is explained or comes to a point