April Book Update

The last five books I read in 2024

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1. Kushiel’s Justice

Imriel is in love with his cousin* Sidonie. This is a problem – not romantically as Terre D’Ange is the realm of Elua whose precept is Love As Thou Wilt. It’s political; Sidonie is the Dauphine, the heir to the throne and Imriel the son of the greatest traitor to the realm. Imriel wants to do the right thing, to do his duty.

His duty is to marry Dorelei mab Breiada, the niece of Sidonie’s father Drustan, the Cruarch of Alba (Fantasy England, or perhaps Pictland, Celtland, to Terre D’Ange’s Fantasy France). Because of the matrilineal nature of inheritance there, Dorelei’s sons will be heirs to Talorcan, Drustan’s nephew and heir. With this, and the marriage of Drustan’s other daughter Alais to Talorcan, the links between the kingdoms will continue for another generation.

Alais and Imriel are tutored in Alban lore (and law); the four peoples and their history. It turns out there is a secret fifth people the Maghuin Dhonn, the people of the brown bear, shapechanging magicians who may have killed their totemic animal. When Imriel travels to Alba he is confronted by a member of the Maghuin Dhonn. When he thinks of Sidonie and spills his seed on the ground, one of them uses it to cast a spell on him.

They have seen the future and it is a terrible one. Imriel and Dorelei’s son will destroy the magic and traditions of Alba. The Maghuin Dhonn trick Imriel, by breaking their oaths which will take the magic from those who swore it, and they kill the pregnant Dorelei.

A Prince Of Alba, Imriel leads a party of justice, or perhaps revenge, after the leader of the Maghuin Dhonn. Yet there is a glint of hope in his grief and rage; no longer bound to Dorelei, perhaps he and Sidonie can be together? But before that he must hunt down a man who can be a bear, who has fled across strange and hostile lands.

The series returns to Alba, getting deeper into the culture there. Which is a mishmash of old Celtic legends (Imriel proves himself with a cattle raid). Again though Imriel finds himself at the mercy of larger forces, tricked and trapped in the first half, then in the second reacting to the events on the manhunt. This takes place against the backdrop of Vralia (Fantasy Russia), the newly Yeshuite nation, having a civil war that cements it’s transformation, something that Imriel has little to think or say about. It’s an odd one for sure.

Read This: Imriel continues to be tossed around by fate, torn between desire, destiny and duty
Don’t Read This: Pregnant wife gets killed to motivate a roaring rampage of revenge and also clear the way for another lover

* Imriel's father was the brother of Sidonie's great-grandfather 

2. Toadstones

This, as the cover tells us, is a collection of weird stories by Eric Williams. What is weird fiction? Well a first approximation has it close to horror, often overlapping. In many cases something impinges on the expected, either mundane reality or a conventional genre situation, something unexpected, from outside normality. Something strange, something weird, something that cannot be explained or contained by the story it finds itself in.

As with any genre description this is inadequate, yet will at least give the newcomer some bearings.

The strategy of many of these stories is that someone is going about, doing their job and something strange happens. And then as they try to work with the strangeness, it gets stranger still. So a police detective is called to a shooting that takes place at the first showing of a previously lost film – a shooting that synced up with a gun firing in the scene. A procurer of relics for New Spain unearths a mummified body. Unable to get the price he wants he sets sail with it and dark mutiny and theft occur on the ship. A housekeeper for a scholar finds herself nominated to keep watch after he dies. A motel manager rents a room to a beautiful woman who pays in cash, but decides he wants more. Explorers of forbidden places hike to a false town set up for nuclear tests.

In some of these the story develops much as we might expect, given that weird fiction is adjacent to horror, the thrill being the inevitable threat that envelops the characters (often first person narrators). In others something else occurs, something oblique and odd, a creature or force making a knight’s move across reality, touching down unexpectedly for now.

The collection, like the stories, is a mix of familiar and odd. In some it is the familiar that is fascinating, the strange inscrutable. In others the usual is dull until interrupted. And interrupted it will be, because that is the nature of the weird.

Read This: Excellent collection of strange tales
Don’t Read This: Many horrible endings, also some horrible middles and starts

3. The Accusers

Falco is back in Rome and back in business. While absent in Britain clients went elsewhere so he and his partners – his brothers-in-law – need work. Working for Silius, a notorious informer from Nero’s time, they get some depositions from out of the city for a corruption case. Silius succeeds, but the senator he convicted commits suicide to avoid paying the damages.

Silius gets Falco to look into this, to find any way that he can claim his money. At first appearances it seems clear, the senator announced his decision to kill himself, got pills from the apothecary, took them, then his wife brought seven unimpeachable witnesses. Yet the witnesses did not see the events, were not informed in advance. Silius takes the information and accuses one of the senator’s daughters of murder.

In a spectacular court case Silius is defeated by another notorious lawyer, Paccius. Then however the two get together and accuse the son of murder, looking to drain the family dry. Hororius, formerly Silius’s assistant, is outraged by this turnabout. Falco, convinced there is more to the case than meets the eye agrees to investigate.

A twisty turny story, with evidence important, though equally so the legal manoeuvring. The complex, slightly ad hoc nature of the Roman legal system in which the magistrates can make important decisions on how and under what rules trials take place is a new turn for the series. Some of Falco’s personal and family stuff moves on, and occasionally provides contrast to the mixed features of the family at the heart of the case.

Read This: Pacy legal detective story with many interesting moments and setpieces
Don’t Read This: Murder, the law and 1^st Century Rome are not for you

4. Morningstar

Owen Odell is a bard approaching the end of his life. A nobleman comes, wanting to hear the stories of the Morningstar, the hero who freed the highlands from the Angostins, who defeated the Vampire Lords, the one Owen was a companion to. Owen refuses, the songs are well known, the tales well told.

In part because it’s not a story of heroism. Jarek Mace was out for himself, a rogue who Owen first meets escaping from a woman’s bedroom, avoiding her husband. As the Angostin army comes into the Highlands they meet up with locals who are plundering the dead. Forced to fight, Owen, who knows some magic, conjures up the Morningstar, the Forest Lord, to intimidate raiders.

Inevitably Jarek Mace finds himself being chased by Angostins and supported by those resisting them. People forced into banditry turning into an army. By linking up with a group of colourful characters, most of them both flawed and sympathetic, he travels the land, inspiring people to fight, often against his will. Every effort to escape makes him more of a hero.

A wizard is accompanying the Angostin King and he is searching for artefacts. Owen recognises the evil and tries to prevent him, which pulls in Jarek Mace. Inevitably, again, he will have to fight the reborn Vampire Kings, like the great hero of the Highlands a thousand years ago.

Gemmell reinvents his classic reluctant hero fantasy, by showing how Owen pushes Jarek and no matter how Jarek tries he can’t help but walk the path. And in the end finding something to believe in, to become a legend.

Read This: Darkly funny heroic fantasy
Don’t Read This: The appalling Jarek Mace skates through on luck and charm

5. Six Of Crows

In Ketterdam one of the ruling oligarchs learns of a drug that enhances and addicts magic users (the Grisha, after which Bardugo's books' setting is named, the Grishaverse). The inventor is imprisoned in the Ice Court in Fjerda, a virulently anti-Grisha nation. The oligarch hires notorious rising criminal Kaz Brekker to rescue the inventor and bring him to Ketterdam.

It's a heist! Kaz puts together a team – the six of the title – with various skills, and also dark secrets and complex back stories (mostly teenagers too). The Ice Court is impregnable. Yet Kaz has a former Grisha-Hunter with him and the Ice Court is their headquarters and barracks. As well as being a prison, a palace and the home of the embassies. There’s always a way in for prisoners. The question is, is there a way out?

And they’re not the only crew after the inventor.

This is a brisk, tense and occasionally clever fantasy heist story. The various characters have to deal with the questions, secrets and dangers. Their feelings and histories are nearly as risky to them as the guards.

Read This: A mismatched team have to get over their distrust and also the walls of the Ice Court
Don’t Read This: A lot of things don’t get revealed or explained until after they’ve happened, which works better on TV than in a book