Crucible of Chaos

3 stars, Metaphorosis reviews

Summary
Estevar Borros, overweight magistrate and dueling investigator for the King, has been called to the Isola de Sombra by its abbott. But on arrival, Estevar, already wounded in a previous duel, is first met by a mysterious representative of a local noble, and then swept to sea with his mule. Their rescue is just the first of a set of odd occurrences as he tries to determine what happened to the monks of the abbey.

Review
There are some good elements in Crucible of Chaos – the Greatcoat magistrates, the characters, how gods are created and destroyed, and an intriguing backstory.

Unfortunately, that backstory also works as a negative in some ways. I'm new to this series, and there are so many references to how the gods were killed (I assume in previous volumes) that I often wished I were reading that story rather than this one. That story sounds intriguing and novel. This one refers to intriguing novelty, and has a few interesting features, but at many points threatens to boil down to something quite mundane.

It's not that the characters or the plot points are weak in themselves. I felt that what held the story back was the prose. It's technically smooth, but very dry and often stilted. The characters speak in declamations rather than dialogue, and it rarely sounds natural. It kept me from getting as deeply involved in the story as I'd have liked. The tendency of some sentences to run on and on through convoluted loops didn't help.

For what's labeled as a prologue to a series, the book is slow to start – prologue within prologue within prologue. To its credit, the major worldbuilding is fairly smoothly done, though there are at times so many names and elements that it's hard to keep track of. There are some minor inconsistencies.

Overall, my reaction was that the prior quartet of books (ISFDB tells me there was one about Greatcoats) sounds interesting, but that the prose of this book is stiff enough to keep me from trying them out. If you're new to the world and looking for fantasy detectives, this is okay, but I think there are better options.

On the plus side, the art, layout and design, are attractive.

I received this book for free in exchange for an honest review.