Final books of 2016

[ladyofastolat]

Traitor's Blade and Knight's Shadow by Sebastien de Castell

The Greatcoats were swashbuckling travelling magistrates. Serving an idealistic young king, they brought impartial, egalitarian justice to even the poorest of people, much to the fury of the dukes, who were accustomed to having absolute power within their own duchies. Five years ago, the dukes banded together to depose and murder the king, and have rewritten the narrative. Now the scattered greatcoats are derided as cowardly minions of a tyrant who sought to overturn ancient rights. Falcio val Mond (who narrates in the first person) used to lead the Greatcoats. Now, along with his friends Kest, the best swordsman in the world, and Brasti, a skilled archer, he is reduced to taking any guard job he can get, all the while trying to carry out the king's last command: that he find "the king's chaorites," a task not helped by the fact that he has no idea what these are. When their current employer is murdered and they are framed for it, their flight takes them to a particularly corrupt city, where they become aware of a plot to embed the dukes' rule forever...

I enjoyed this. It has something of a Three Musketeers vibe - the recent BBC Musketeers, rather than Dumas - with lots of banter between the leather-clad heroes, and many sword fights. The author used to be a fight choreographer, and the fights do at least sound convincing and varied, although I have no idea if they really are. The world is quite a dark one, perhaps a little implausibly so. The dukes are all monsters who can kill or rape their subjects on a whim, so I found it rather implausible that these subjects would so quickly turn against the Greatcoats. However, the books themselves don't feel that dark, since there is plenty of light-hearted banter, and some self-deprecating, sarcastic humour in the narrative voice. While some Bad Stuff happens - some torture, some massacres, a rape in a flashback - it's not described in loving, graphic detail. Overall, I enjoyed both books a lot.

This is a 4-book series, with the fourth book due out in early April this year. Although I'm eager to read on, I've decided to stop at the end of book 2, which felt rather like the end of an episode, rather than read book 3 and risk a cliffhanger. I'll return to the series in a few months, when I read it to the end.

Oh, and one more thing: these travelling swashbuckling leather-clad magistrates sing their judgements, on the grounds that illiterate peasants will remember things if they're sung to the tune of well-known stirring chorus songs. As someone who memorised the French Wars of Religion for Finals by setting them to the tune of Matty Groves, I entirely approve of this. :-D I also think that a singing, swashbuckling magistrate would make a very good roleplaying character.