panguitch's Full Review: Greg Keyes - The Charnel Prince: Continuing the Sa...
Greg Keyes began The Briar King with a sequence of portraits introducing disparate characters. Each was interesting, but it wasn't until the connections between them became apparent that I grew engaged. By the end of the book I was wonderstruck, ready to declare The Kingdoms of Thorn and Bone the best epic fantasy series being written today. In a feat of self-control I decided to wait until reading more before handing out any blue ribbons. I burned through book two, The Charnel Prince, in a matter of days and haven't found anything to change my mind yet.
The Set Up
The Kingdom of Crotheny is in disarray. The king, his brother, and two of his daughters are dead, the third is missing, and Queen Muriele must vie with ambitious nobles, foreign empires, and an overbearing church to try and govern through her simple-minded son. The Briar King, a power from another age, stalks the King's Forest, where entire villages are descending into madness.
Muriele's own bodyguards have attempted to assassinate her twice, still she chooses to send the one man she fully trusts, Sir Neil MeqVren, to search for her missing daughter Anne. The princess had secretly been sent to the Coven of Saint Cer, but Neil discovers it destroyed, the Sisters slain. Anne did escape, and in the company of Cazio da Chiovattio she tries to find her way home pursued by unholy agents.
Meanwhile the unlikely duo of Aspar White, gruff forester, and Stephen Darige, failed monk, are charged by the Praifec Hespero to find and kill the Briar King using a relic the church has preserved for centuries.
The Delivery
Keyes's ability to turn a phrase has not diminished, but the pace of The Charnel Prince and the diversity of its action hardly leaves time to appreciate the prose. Much more of the map is covered in The Charnel Prince, and most of the main characters are on the road.
These characters remain interesting, but in some cases they devolve from personalities to actors. While I enjoyed Aspar White as the crotchety loner in The Briar King, here he begins to remind me of Wolverine from X-Men. Stephen Darige has also lost his endearing innocence, although he could yet become more dynamically interesting, much as Anne has transformed from a self-absorbed teenager into a young woman of grit and guilt.
Thankfully, Neil and Cazio retain their differing charms, even if each is a bit beaten down. Muriele becomes very sympathetic and gains an odd new champion to replace Neil. Leoff Ackenzal is a composer, at odds with the church for his radical musical theories. His absentminded preoccupation with his art makes him seem old and out of touch, but he proves to be more than an accidental hero.
An enriching ambiguity is introduced in relation to the Briar King, and the hands that ultimately guide events become both plainer and more obscure. By the end it's clear that both the heroes and their antagonists believe that they are fighting to save the world. Although there's no question whom the reader is rooting for, this irony is uncommonly delicious.
The Recommendation
It may be a reflection of the lingering power of The Briar King that I enjoyed The Charnel Prince as much as I did. This second book does, upon reflection, exhibit certain tendencies I find tired, such as a crypto-fascist church exerting dominion. And the intriguing mystique of the greffyn, barely realized in The Briar King, is completely absent from the new monsters. Most importantly, the focus has shifted from characterization to plotting.
Notwithstanding, I loved The Charnel Prince. It offers the sweeping scope and cataclysmic action of epic fantasy, with the strength of writing that only the best of that genre can boast. At the same time it has so far avoided the typical pitfalls: its cast of characters has not grown unwieldy and the story continues to head in a definite, if unpredictable, direction. So many fantasy series loose their way. Here's keeping my fingers crossed that Keyes can live up to what he's begun.
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