Jordan

Despite being written for children, these books continue to unfold at a great pace which keeps them interesting despite me no longer being 13. This is one of the books I remembered quite vividly as I always used to imagine going to Vampire Mountain myself. Neat lore for the series which we've not had a great deal of, but also many cool characters introduced along with some more set-up and foreshadowing.

Here we follow multiple perspectives; Miko, the bastard princess of an empire. Rah, the exiled captain of a wandering people. Cassandra, assassin, whore, and host to some form of entity and power. Two of these perspectives (Miko and Cassandra) are interesting enough from the off to have lead a solo book. I disliked Rah's initial chapters as his character didn't feel like it acted with the principles and honour he spoke of – and he speaks constantly of principles and honour.

Despite my initial dislike of Rah, I'd say this book is full of strong characters (even without having read the preceding Vengeance Trilogy), with political machinations, both known and unknown, casting shadows over everyone's words and actions, leaving you guessing at people's true motivations and allegiances. I'd potentially even argue that not having read the previous trilogy strengthened the book in some way as I assume some of the accusations being thrown around were events in those books.

We're fairly quickly seeing cross-over amongst the main perspective characters, while not initially directly meeting, supporting cast members cross paths, the same names are mentioned, machinations are spoken about from multiple sides. Multiple perspectives can be a strength and a failing depending on how they're weaved together and here it's a treat. Rather than constantly yearning to move back to another perspective, there's always something interesting happening in each.

If I had to point to any factor in the book that I didn't like, it would be the way that sometimes action scenes were glossed over a bit. These tend to be the bigger battles and it makes some sense that they're less important than the direct conflicts between named characters, but still felt a bit weird for a battle to be done in a couple of lines.

Overall there was little I didn't like about this book as it provides a great opening state of affairs to be resolved in the rest of the quadrilogy and mysteries yet to reveal.

Here we follow the same perspectives as the first book, with one addition; Miko, the now-deposed Empress on the run. Rah, the twice-exiled devout of the Levanti culture. Cassandra, failed assassin, whore, host and prisoner. We are joined by Dishiva, follower of Gideon and the new Levanti Empire. We start in the wake of the fall of the Ts'ai Empire and the rise of the Levanti Kisian Empire.

I struggled a little bit with Rah's actions and words not meeting in the first book and he opens up a bit better here. His perspective becomes one of the more interesting ones this time around due to effectively being directly opposed to the new Emperor; Gideon. Conversely, Cassandra falls to being much less interesting initially for effectively the same reasons we seen with Rah. She has failed to live up to even half of what she's said and spends a lot of time just being dragged along on other people's agendas, all the while being separated from the main action as she finally meets the Witchdoctor, whom she believes can help with her issue of hosting another entity. This promises to be interesting in time to come, but suffered a bit of a lull here. Miko poses the most interesting perspective, as she comes off of the losing of not only a battle, but her Empire. Left to retreat with only a single bodyguard and seek allies in now-hostile territory where the political landscape is equally as treacherous. Dishiva is an interesting one, as she brings to the fold a second perspective on the Levanti, people who had originally seemed victims of this whole affair, now suddenly among the prime powers. Dishiva has to deal with how much of the Levanti culture Gideon is willing to throw away “for the best interest of his people” and ask herself whether the cost is worth it.

The best part of this book is the exploration of not only cultures, but the blending of cultures and how much compromise of your own cultures and beliefs is the correct amount to make when we see new societies rise from the mix of existing ones. We have Rah on the one side holding tight to his original beliefs, but softening to some degree when confronted with Miko. Miko mirroring Rah. Gideon who seems to be making absolutely any compromise required to keep power. Dishiva in the middle completely unsure, but certain that other cultures are poisoning Levanti tradition.

If I had to point at one weakness for this book, it would be Cassandra's viewpoint which I felt was one of the stronger elements in the first book. We get some revelations on what she is and why she holds two personalities, but while every other viewpoint in the book has now fully converged, Cassandra's still mostly away on the side not really meshing completely with the rest of the story and slowly unfolding what is actually happening there.

Overall this was a great read and promises more with the remaining books in the series so long as they stick the landing.