Booklog 42/2021: Stephen Aryan: The Coward

[jacey]

Kell Kressia's story is told in a ballad that everyone knows. Ten years ago as a young, untried youth of seventeen, he rode north with eleven heroes to slay the Ice Lich. All the heroes perished, Kell killed the Ice Lich and returned home determined never to do anything as stupid as that again. He knows what heroes are really like, and he's got a helping of PTSD to top it all off. Things happened that are not in the song. He's become a farmer and that's all he wants from life. But the weather is getting colder. There's a new danger in the north and Kell is recalled to service by the king. Unable to talk his way out of it, he commandeers a nice, steady horse and heads north, planning to be seen in towns and villages along the way and then making a run for it before he reaches the ice. Unfortunately his plans are foiled when he acquires a follower – Gerren – a young untried youth, just as Kell had once been. He ends up with a bunch of followers who join his quest for reasons of their own, and from that point Kell is stuck with the quest. As the journey progresses we find out what happened on the previous quest and how the heroes died. There's a second strand to the story in which Reverend Mother Britak sends forces against Kell for her own religious reasons, leading to confrontations with humans and creatures along the way. Kell is an excellent antihero, backed up by a rag-tag bunch of good characters. Excellent worldbuilding. This book is complete in itself, but is the first of two paired books.