In a world of thirteen human races, from the common Firstbloods through the bronze-scaled Jasuru and enigmatic Drowned and more, unrest is normal. There's
always a crown in contention or a trade route threatened or a treaty violated. But the latest squabblings over the future of the Severed Throne at the heart
of Antea may inadvertently be the trigger of an age-ending event, the return of a goddess who may be older than the long-extinct dragons themselves. All it
will take is the right people in the right places... or the wrong people in the wrong places.
Half-Cinnae girl Cithrin was raised by bankers after her parents died, learning the trade inside and out, but she's never been entrusted with any business -
until the bank's wealth needs to be smuggled out of the ancient city of Vanai before foreign troops invade, and Cithrin's the only one available for the job.
She's determined to earn the trust of the man she's come to see as her father, but the journey will bring dangers she could never have anticipated... and
opportunities beyond her dreams.
Captain Marcus Wester was once a legend on the battlefield, but now manages a small, nondescript group of mercenaries on minor contracts. At least, he used
to, until his underlings were locked up, set to be forced into defending a city doomed to fall. Unless Marcus and his second, the Treglu priest-turned-soldier
Yardem, want the same fate, he needs bodies to fill out his contract - and a chance encounter with a troupe of actors just may offer the answer. Only what
started as a simple job guarding a small caravan quickly becomes much more complicated, and one of the actors is more than he first appears.
Dawson Kalliam used to be best friends with King Simeon of the Severed Throne, but relations have grown strained of late. The world is changing in ways Dawson
can't accept, and new forces are rising in the courts - forces that may spell the doom of Simeon and his young heir. With his influence fading, he must take
desperate measures - but even those may not be enough to save Antea from war.
Minor lordling Geder Palliako never expected to amount to much, and never really cared. So long as he can chase ideas through old books, he's content enough...
but he has obligations to his betters, which send him out on campaign as the laughingstock of his peers. Tricked, humiliated, reminded at every turn of his
inadequacies, he will soon find himself utterly destroyed by machinations he doesn't understand - or remade into an unpredictable new power who might shake
the very world to its foundations.
Review
There's something decadently comforting about a good epic fantasy: the feeling of falling into a bright new world full of magic and wonder and danger,
immersing in larger-than-life characters and events where good still has an outside chance of triumphing ultimately over evil (unlike reality, too often.)
They're the warm-blanket-and-hot-cocoa-by-the-fire equivalent of stories, a sensory indulgence to be savored. I've been in a mood for that comfort, and this
book has been lurking in my reading pile for a while.
Did it give me that nice, warm feeling?
Yes and no.
On the plus side, Abraham presents some nice, shiny epic fantasy ideas, both familiar (myriad cities and kingdoms and races, deep history riddled with
mysteries, royal courts split by infighting factions under a weakening king, hints of magic and danger) and unique (a goddess whose worshipers have literal
spiders in their blood, a world and races engineered by extinct dragons.) He also presents the sort of characters that don't often get the limelight in epics,
notably a banker and an awkwardly bookish noble ill at ease with courtly intrigues (at least, one who does not suddenly emerge as a savvy player in games -
martial or otherwise - after a few missteps, or becomes a disposable subplot.) Battles exist on the fringes, but aren't the main story drivers.
On the minus side... I never came to truly enjoy spending time with the characters, and thus had a somewhat dimmed view of the wider world they inhabited.
Cithrin's banking angle may be different, but underneath that she's yet another underage girl who often needs men to get her out of self-inflicted problems.
Marcus is forever rescuing her from herself, with a growing sense of attachment that can't seem to decide if it's fatherly or... not fatherly, made even more
uncomfortable by Cithrin's younger-than-advertised appearance that heightens the existing age and experience gap between them. (Am I the only one tired of that
little trope/cliche?) And the nobles were just plain unpleasant to be around more often than not; while I understood where they were coming from (in their
in-world contexts), I didn't particularly enjoy my time with them. Prologue aside, the story also takes its own sweet time baiting the hook for the greater
series arc, the threat that will ultimately (in theory) drive the narrative on a course that only multiple books can contain.
After finishing, I was left with distinctly mixed feelings. Parts of The Dragon's Path definitely intrigued, but I don't foresee myself returning to
this series, save finding sequels at steep, steep discounts - and a book that fails to hook me into a sequel is a book that has, on some level, failed, in my
opinion. There are other epic fantasies waiting in the pile, other chances to wrap myself in their familiar comforts and unfamiliar worlds; I'm not sure if I
need to come back to this one.
Long, long ago, the grand Empire ruled with the force of the andats: abstract concepts, given tangible form and enslaved by men known as poets, that
could turn solid stone soft as butter or leave lands barren as sand or perform other world-changing feats with a single thought. But cataclysmic
infighting led to collapse and swathes of desolation that still mark the world. Today’s Khaiem are but a shadow of their former majesty, but still hold
the increasingly-elusive andat in thrall, fueling industry and acting as deterrent even to the warlike Galts... but, just as the Empire itself
succumbed, so, too, will the cities of the Khaiem, because, for all the powers of the andats, the Khaiem and their subjects are still blindly, fallibly
human.
This was originally published in four volumes: A Shadow in Summer: As a boy, Khai Machi’s youngest son Otah was sent to the school of the Dai-Kvo, master poet. If Otah endures the brutal
education, he will become a poet and someday have the honor and burden of binding an andat. If he fails, he will be branded and go forth to find his way
in the world, no longer a contender for his father’s throne and thus spared the traditional fratricidal violence of succession. But Otah does the
unthinkable: disgusted by the horrible things done to him, and which he is compelled to do to others, in the Dai-Kvo's service, he walks away, refusing
both the brand and the poet’s robes. Years later, his life as an anonymous indentured laborer in the great port city of Saraykeht is disrupted when a
foreign house plots against the local Khai’s poet and the andat known as Seedless. What initially seems a bid to disrupt Saraykeht’s dominance of the
lucrative cotton industry has ramifications that could lead to the fall of all Khaiem and the last vestiges of the lost Empire. A Betrayal in Winter: As the aging Khai Machi lays dying, his sons prepare to murder each other. The last one standing will inherit the
black throne, a tradition dating back to the Empire. But from the start, someone seems to be playing against even the minimal rules of these violent
transitions... and the obvious culprit to blame is Machi’s outcast fourth son, who already flouted all respect for tradition: Otah. Though he has been
hiding under an assumed name, entirely uninterested in ruling anything, he realizes he must return to the home city that cast him out, lest he endanger
those he loves most when they hunt him down for crimes he didn't commit. Returning will almost certainly mean his death, especially when the only man who
believes him innocent of the charges against him is a failed poet in poor standing whom he last saw in the final golden days of Saraykeht when both were
in love with the same woman: Maati. An Autumn War: Now Khai of the city of Machi, Otah is determined not to follow the bloody traditions that led to the slaughter of the rest
of his family... a determination that sets him at odds with pretty much every ally and even his own subjects. After all, the cities of the Khaiem are
built on foundations of tradition as much as stone. But a greater threat looms on the horizon: Galt has not ceased its ambition to strip the Khaiem of
their powerful and dangerous andat (and, not incidentally, help themselves to the vast wealth of their otherwise-defenseless treasuries.) And, thanks to
an ambitious and relentless scholar-turned-general, they stand poised to do just that. The Price of Spring: Otah Machi, the boy who once turned his back on the poets and his heritage, is now the Emperor, but of a doomed
people. Poet Maati’s failed attempt to bind a new andat left every girl and woman in his realm barren... and every boy and man of the invading Galtic
nation sterile. To save both nations, he proposes an exchange, even offering his only son Darat to a Galtic high councilor’s daughter. But the disgraced
Maati still yearns to make amends for his errors and reclaim the independence and glory of the Khaiem. He has, in defiance of Otah and every tradition
dating back to the first Empire, begun training girls and women in the ways of the poets, in the hopes that one of them will succeed where he failed.
His efforts could destroy the fragile future Otah is trying to build, just as Otah's own ambitions risk alienating those closest to him.
Review
If I’m being honest, I probably would’ve stopped reading after the first volume had I encountered these titles individually. While the concepts were
interesting and the setting well-described and -thought out, I didn’t really like anyone in it, and didn’t care about the fates of them or their various
nations. But, since I already had the whole quartert, I decided to read on... and, in doing so, figured out what was going on. Abraham had not written
four stories that were part of a larger series. Rather, he had written one long story that happened to be published in four volumes. The reason the
first book felt unsatisfying was because it was an incomplete thought.
Abraham crafts an original epic fantasy world less dependent on chosen heroes and grand battles against the hordes of evil and more about the cultural
and economic clashes and struggles that ultimately determine the fates of empires. In the first book, the andat known as Seedless is essentially being
used as a magical cotton gin in a world with minimal widespread machinery, giving Saraykeht an unbeatable economic edge against other trade ports...
but andats are unreliable and becoming harder and harder to keep enslaved, leaving the cities of the Khaiem vulnerable to the ruthlessness and ingenuity
of rivals. They don’t even have standing armies, so sure that the andat can protect them from any foe. Khai Saraykeht laughs away a man who tries to
warn them of the threat posed by Galt’s steam-powered war wagons, but the reader can read the writing on the wall, and soon enough so can Otah and his
companions. (It’s not quite proper to call them “friends”; the culture they live in, the formalities, class divisions, and traditions that Otah
flagrantly flouts, the different visions of what the world and the future should be, do not quite allow for true friendship, but they come to share
common goals and learn to respect one another, even when they're embittered enemies.) This is ultimately a tale of a world in transition, moving away
from powerful yet fickle forces of enslaved magic, away from old bloodthirsty traditions, and toward a new vision built by human minds and hands, a
world of steam engines and unified nations. For such a world to come to pass, there must be sacrifices, and the harder a nation clings to obsolete
ways, the more is destroyed by time's inevitable march.
As an epic, there are, of course, many characters, but the central one is Otah Machi. We meet him as a young boy enduring the brutality of the poet's
school, finding the courage to defy both life-paths laid out for him by others: the way of the poet, enslaver of an andat, and the way of the Khai,
murderer of family in the name of power. He aspires to disappear in the wider world, but learns the hard way, more than once, that it's impossible to
outrun one's own destiny. Against his will, he finds himself drawn back into politics, into the circle of the poets whom he'd fled, into the dangers of
the andats and the threat of Galt. He makes friends and, too often, must sacrifice them in the name of the greater good, or at least what he believes to
be the greater good. He often faces decisions where there is no good answer. He finds love and loses it, finds hope and loses that, and thus ultimately
rises to reforge the lost Empire and usher in a new future, even knowing he will never truly see the fruits of his long life's labors. Otah makes for
an interesting and complex, but not always likeable, main character. The same could be said for the rest of the cast; even when I didn't like or agree
with them, their tales were compelling enough to keep me turning pages.
If I have any real issues with the story, it's how some matters of gender were handled, particularly those that were never quite resolved. The whole
also felt a little longer than it needed to be, and for all its length I kept feeling there were some things that just fell by the wayside that ought
to have been properly addressed for closure. On the balance, though, I enjoyed this story. It's a different take on epic fantasy; while there were
battles and matters of succession and other familiar staples, it was ultimately more about the politics, the negotiations and treaties made and
broken, set in an original world with richly realized cultures.
