Since time before memory, mortal men and women have lived in Rhuneland, the wild lands beyond the river, forbidden
to cross into the lusher, green realm of the Fhrey - the beings that have long been worshiped as gods, and who in
turn see humans as despicable animals. It was only desperation that led Raithe and his father to cross the waters in
search of better lands to homestead, the older man counting on good will earned fighting in one of the Fhrey's
occasional wars... but things go terribly wrong, and soon there are two dead bodies on the ground: one Raithe's
father, and one a Fhrey lord. With those deaths ends many human lifetimes of relative peace between the races, and
even as Raithe and a former slave of the fallen lord flee into the wilderness, the repercussions spread.
In the fortified hill settlement of Dhal Rhen, the widow Persephone was once the most powerful woman, second chair
at the side of her chieftain husband... a husband who is now dead, slain by a vicious brown bear prowling the
forests, a bear that already killed her last surviving son. Displaced from her home by the new chieftain and his
ambitious wife, who wastes no time spreading dark rumors about Persephone, her future couldn't be much worse - but
the young seer from the woods, Suri, comes bearing grim news. Dark times are coming, the seer warns, terrible
threats that may well end not only Dhal Rhen but humanity's tenuous toehold on survival. Someone has angered the
godlike Fhrey, who are turning their near-divine powers and wrath upon the people of Rhuneland, a brave (or foolish)
warrior who already has been dubbed the God Killer... a man who turns up in Dhal Rhen just as Persephone and the
settlement could use the disruption the least.
Back in the capital of the Fhrey, the rise of a new thane brings with it a tangle of politics and grievances as one
clan among them seeks to secure a stranglehold on power, for now and the future. Rumors of a human killing a Fhrey
lord on the barbaric frontier only further feed what could become a grand conflagration, threatening to split apart
the monarchy, the capital, and perhaps the world itself.
Review
I've heard decent things about Sullivan's other series (the Riyria Chronicles books), so when I found this title
available through Libby - the start of a new series, technically related to Riyria but self-contained - I decided to
give it a try. As promised by the cover and blurb, Age of Myth is an epic fantasy with many familiar
trappings dating at least back to Tolkien, set in a world where humans have yet to enter the Bronze Age and where
superstition mixes and mingles with true powers and inhuman beings, often in unpredictable ways; not every dark shadow
is a demon or lurking witch, but not every omen is a false alarm, either. The Fhrey are cruel elven beings,
exceptionally long lived and highly cultured, who barely consider human beings as more than bipedal rats despite the
possibility of them being distantly related. Even among their own kind, there are hierarchies and prejudices that
belie their seemingly more evolved veneer, with Fhrey proving every bit as manipulative and prone to lies (to each
other and themselves) as the lowest of humans, not to mention every bit as prone to hubris. The humans (or "Rhunes"
as they're often called, a Fhrey word that has crept into common mortal languages as part of the overall - if
generally distant - Fhrey dominance of the world) are consumed by their own struggles, for power and mere survival,
with everyone in the story pulled into at least one machination or another. Most are convinced of the divinity of the
Fhrey, even though they also worship less tangible gods and spirits, and even though the capriciousness of divnities
is well known, many are convinced that their adherence to the Fhrey treaties means that the anger of the
near-immortal beings will spare them. Meanwhile, greater threats and portents loom over everyone, the promise of a
coming storm that will remake (or destroy) the worlds of Rhune and Fhrey alike if they can't stop their squabblings
to notice the danger. Of such grand, world-altering movements are epic fantasies made, but without the human (or
human equivalent) elements, they can fall flat as easily as they soar. Sullivan presents a collection of decent, if
not wholly original, characters to move things along and give the world life, and if they sometimes felt a little
too familiar, they did a decent enough job keeping the story moving. There are few lulls in the plot, and it all
builds to a solid climax that sets up future complications and installments in the series. The whole makes for a
fairly good epic fantasy with an old-school feel, set in a nicely lived-in world of magic and myth.
Once, the humans of Rhuneland looked to the Fhrey as gods, and godlike indeed they seemed to be: tall, elegant,
often living three thousand years, masters of all manner of unknowable arts, and bearing both unstoppable metal
blades and unbeatable magicks. That was before the coming of the God Killer, the young man Raithe who, helped by
an escaping slave, killed a Fhrey lord. He fled to the walled hilltop village of Dhal Rhen, and it was here that
humans, a band of renegade outcast Fhrey, a friendly giant, and a young mystic girl who had somehow learned the
trick of elven magic threw back the forces of Fane Lothian of the Forest Throne.
That insult will not be allowed to stand unchallenged.
When the fane's reprisal levels the village and calls for genocide against the whole human race, Raithe, newly
risen clan leader Persephone, and the rest of Dhal Rhen's surviving citizens flee southward. There, Persephone
means to do something no chieftain has managed before: unite all the human clans, even the wild northern warriors,
under one keening. It's their only chance against the coming war. But they'll need more than numbers and a leader
to win against Fhrey magic and Fhrey weapons. There's not much they can do about the former - only the wildborn
girl Suri has ever managed Fhrey-like magic - but the latter may have a solution, across the waters in the stony
halls of the dwarfs. But they are a mistrustful race that already lost a war with the elven Fhrey, and handing
over armaments to humans will almost certainly bring the wrath of the fane down upon them again. It will take
daring, cleverness, bravery, and more than a little deception to get them to part with their treasures.
Meanwhile, back in the Fhrey capital, Prince Manwyndule, the spoiled son of Lothian, chafes under the thumb of a
father who still sees him as a child. He longs to exact revenge upon the whole of the human race for striking
down his friend and mentor at the battle of Dhal Rhen, even as he seethes over how his former teacher turned
traitor to help the upstarts. When he encounters a secret society of other young men and women of his kind who
feel, as he does, that the magic-wielding Miralyith tribe are truly the superior of all the Fhrey, akin to the
gods themselves, and should be worshiped as such, he faces choices and temptations that could deliver everything
he dreams of - or turn into his worst nightmare.
Review
This year, I'm making a conscious effort to follow through on some series I keep telling myself I'll get back
to "someday". Having enjoyed Sullivan's Age of Myth (despite not having previously read any of his Riyria
books, which this series is evidently a prequel to), I figured this is one of those "get back to it" series worth
following up on. I was also in the mood for a nice epic fantasy. Fortunately, this book both scratched that epic
itch and lived up to the first volume, making for an enjoyable read (or listen, this being another audiobook).
It picks up more or less where the previous book left off - just as Fhrey magic (and attacking giants) deliver the
fane's answer to the battle in the previous book, with lightning and hail and tornadoes. In the aftermath, with
barely one stone left atop another in what was Dhal Rhen, chieftain Persephone - who, by chance, encountered a
trio of dwarfs while fleeing for her life - only grows more determined that the only way to save her people is to
rally the rest of her species against the Fhrey. Several familiar faces return, with a few new ones picked up
along the way, as the clan treks southward to the coastal village of Dhal Tirre... but what they find is not the
welcome they had hoped, and uniting the clans seems almost impossible from the start, even without the fractious
northern clans involved (yet). It doesn't help that most won't take her seriously as a chieftain because of her
gender. They'd rather have the God Killer, Raithe, as their keening... but he still rejects all efforts to drop
big responsibilities onto his shoulders. As far as he's concerned, the war is already as good as lost: few among
the humans even have so much as copper blades, no match at all for the bronze of the Fhrey, even disregarding the
problems presented by Fhrey magic. Persephone, however, refuses to give up, a drive that leads her into the
forbidden stronghold of the dwarfs with a group of young women, the Fhrey woman Arion (still endeavoring to teach
the young mystic Suri how to use her unexpected abilities), and the trio she met earlier, who were not as honest
as perhaps they should have been about what awaits the humans. Meanwhile, back among the Fhrey, the spoiled young
princeling seethes at still being treated like the child he so often behaves like, making him the perfect patsy
when targeted by schemers with their own ideas on the future of the ancient race.
As before, the story doesn't have too much down time, moving along almost from the first page with plenty of
action and intrigue, punctuated by moments of emotion and humor and wonder. As in the first volume, there are
familiar tropes at play, but for the most part they're interesting and work here, though some of the side
characters can feel a bit flat. Overall, though, it makes for a solid continuation of the series, retaining that
nice, old-school epic fantasy feel and sense of wonder without feeling at all stale. I'll be looking forward to
the third installment.
