Booklog 11/2024: Sebastien de Castell: Crucible of Chaos – Greatcoats #5

I love all Sebastien de Castell’s Greatcoats books, though I confess I miss the characters from the first four-book sequence beginning with Traitor’s Blade (highly recommended). In this we meet a new character who appeared in the short stories contained in Tales of the Greatcoats, Estevar Borros, the broad-girthed, duel-fighting magistrate, and his faithful, if occasionally unlikely, mule, Imperious. (No, Sebastien, mules don’t cock their legs and pee like dogs, sorry.) Not remotely recovered from a near-fatal wound in a previous duel, Estevar is called to the holy island of Isola Sombra where the monks are splitting into factions and running mad. On arrival (after a journey that nearly kills him) he finds Venia, the abbot who summoned him, has been murdered, but won’t stay in his grave. There’s a rogue ex-priest and a girl who might or might not be dead, plus a whole host of demons, but who summoned them? At times the religious arguments get a bit abstruse, but stick with it. This is a complex case for Borros to figure out, so complex that it might kill him.