Novel: The King's Blood
Author: Daniel Abraham
Synopsis: Everything goes wrong.
Rating: Like 3 of 5?
Longer synopsis, with spoilers:
This series suffers from a lack of Cythrin, the young banker. Her plot -- that of a girl raised by a bank coming into her own with full knowledge of how banking works -- is the B plot, in support of the A plot.
What's the A plot? Oh, right. Religious Zealots who can sense lies and whose voice makes you believe them are taking over the world. They are using a fool to conquer kingdom after kingdom, as he made a really easy mark.
And that's great, and maybe even a little bit novel ... but give me more of the girl banker. Give me her making loans to brewers and caravans. That's what I want to see.
There's another support plot showing up -- the enemy of the zealots is going after a sword that can maybe end them. Yawn. I'm not particularly invested in the zealots in the first place, so I don't really care about finding a magic sword to fight them.
I'm enjoying these, so I'll probably read the next one. Abraham is good at telling an epic tale, and maybe the next one'll be more about economics.
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Normal swords don't kill them hard enough?
ReplyDeleteRyan Good magic sword is to kill the goddess of the zealots. But, yes, why they aren't going after the head priest as a start is kinda lost on me.
ReplyDeleteAre the good guys in this likable?
ReplyDeleteCithrin is!
ReplyDeleteAs is common for Abraham (writer of The Expanse), the eye point characters aren't necessarily good. We've got:
Cithrin : young banker coming of age, filled with the ambition to run her bank and use that position to make the world better.
Marcus: weary Marcus Wester, killer of kings. Working for Cythrin as her head guard
Geder: Was a baronet, now uplifted through politics. He's in the pocket of the priests
Dawson: Conservative noble, more concered with being noble than with his family's welfare.
Clara: Dawson's wife, totally awesome.
Kit: Enemy of the priests. In the first book, he was the leader of a band of players, and totally incognito. Now, he's on a quest to find the Sword. He was more interesting when he was an actor.
So ... a couple are likeable.