One of the main ways lesser books fail is in their inability to convey character motivation. Many fail simply in the characters in general, surely, but even those that come very close to perfecting a character will fall by the wayside for not exploring or developing motivation. A character whose actions are not explained (or explainable) is a character unknown. Dave Duncan has made a career doing everything possible to avoid that particular failing. So insistent is Duncan on this point he has built it into his plots. Luckily, his books succeed in most every other way as well.

‘The Gilded Chain’ is the first book in a series known as ‘The King’s Blades’, and it follows the life of one man from early adolescence to old age. At every stage of the game, if there’s anything we know, it’s why the characters do what they do. Not only do we know their motivations, they’re intelligent, interesting characters, and their motivations make sense.

More impressive, perhaps, Duncan’s works are the very model of how an author can convey his messages without bogging down the story, or falling to preaching his point. The main focus of the book is loyalty, and Duncan looks at it from every imaginable angle, and a few that aren’t. By the end we’ve seen the good, bad, and ugly possibilities of loyalty, and like Socrates dismantling definitions of virtues, Duncan pokes holes in many ideas of loyalty and exactly what it means.

‘The Gilded Chain’ follows the life of a man named Durendal. In his early teens, Durendal enters the world of the King’s Blades. The King’s Blades are the King’s super-elite swordsmen, and upon graduation to the real world they are magically bound to someone. Many are bound to the King himself to serve as his bodyguard, but the King distributes them as he sees fit, and often Blades are bound to other nobles, or whoever else has the King’s favor. The magical bond they go through leaves them utterly loyal to their wards, and they have no choice but to defend their ward against anyone and anything.

Durendal grows up to be the best Blade in at least a generation, proving again and again that he is unmatchable at swordplay. Unfortunately, he finds himself being bound to a weasel of a lesser noble, and almost immediately various views of loyalty come into conflict.

‘The Gilded Chain’ is the sort of book that makes it difficult to describe the plot without giving things away. There aren’t exactly any mind-blowing surprises, but there are a lot of twists. A fairly large portion of the middle finds Durendal on a five-year quest to a land so far away many people don’t believe it exists, and much of the rest has Durendal very close to the King, and intimately involved in court intrigue. Not surprising then, that the plot should not be given away.

Make no mistake, the plot is an excellent one. Duncan abandons the standard outlines of the fantasy genre in order to send his readers on a true adventure. You may be able to guess what’s coming next at certain points (it’s not a mystery), but if you are it will be because after being introduced to the way Duncan’s mind is working, you will have similarly abandoned the traditional mold.

But, the plot’s not the thing here, it’s the characters, and the genre revitalizing adventure. It’s also, perhaps, the entire group of characters that are the King’s Blades. A society of elite warriors is not exactly a novel idea, but rarely (if ever) have we been exposed to their inner-workings (or at least their inner-mental-workings), or been allowed to see so many facets of life in such a society. Through Durendal we learn what it means to be a Blade, from new recruit, to newly bound, to aging legend.


Duncan’s style is that of a storyteller trying to outrun the reader. His descriptions are excellent, but they are short and precise. He moves along, perhaps knowing that he’s crafted a page-turner, defying you to catch up to him. Once past the introduction, there is no point at which you can put the book down. Even still, he somehow manages to say far more than the number of pages imply.

In the end, Duncan is merely waxing philosophic on the subject of loyalty, but you’ll never be distracted by that, and won’t even notice it until you reflect on the story. Someone has asked Duncan to define loyalty, and talk about it’s importance, and Duncan has said, ‘Let me tell you a story.’ Lost in that story, the debate never starts up again until it’s over.

‘The Gilded Chain’ is a remarkably vivid, intense, almost exotic fantasy that doesn’t merely pull you along, it ties you to a horse and takes off at full gallop. Rare indeed is that character you will come to know more fully than Durendal. Rarer yet is the character you will want to know more.



Recommended: Yes