A Dance of Cloaks

David Dalglish admits to idolizing George R.R. Martin in the afterword, and it's pretty obvious when you see how very mean he is to his characters. Honestly, this book was pretty heavy on the rape, torture, and murder for me and not really my cuppa. Still there are a couple of things I really enjoyed.

Firstly, I liked the variety of female archetypes. Most of the female characters were a little flat, but they still ran the good-evil and weak-strong gambit, which is nice. It's nice to have a fantasy book with so many female characters. The Faceless Women were some of my favorites, and I was disappointed that this book didn't go more into depth with them and that two of them died so suddenly in the middle. Is Veldaria going to fulfill her vow? You vowed, Veldaria. While we're at it, Kayla's death was pretty damn anti-climactic too.

I liked the lack of “good” people in the book too. There's lots of people you like, but who still do pretty awful things just to save their own skin or buy someone else a bit of time or even just distracting others. Nobody, with the exception of Delysia and her Gran, is really a decent human being. That's the Martin tribute the book gets right. The fourteen year old "king" is another nice touch. I wasn't expecting it, and I wish he'd gotten a bit more screen time.

On the negative side, I think the book was overly ambitious. There's a lot of plot lines in not a lot of pages, and some of them go no where. The magic system isn't given enough attention to be credible. Characters treat it as so normal and lots of people have “a little magic,” but the rules of the system are never established, and that bugs me. I love a good theology based magic system, but the Karak and Asshur dynamic is give so little attention and the archetypes are so clearly “Bad God/Good God” that I found it a bit of a cheat.

Then there's Aaron. His transformation should have been what kept me interested, but I had a hard time believing it. Kayla saving him seems to be the turning point, but with a kid so groomed for violence... maybe it's the teacher in me who sees kids from much less awful positions never able to fully escape the trauma induced by their early lives, but I just... don't buy it. If Thren was grooming a monster able to murder his own brother at age eight, a monster he would have groomed.

I guess my overall impression was “okay.” I'm not sure I'll continue the series, but if I do I hope it delves a bit more into some of the characters who got the short end of the stick and a little less into the politics.