Jacey Bedford's Journal

I thought I was going to love this fantasy without magic. I read the first three chapters before committing to buying it from Amazon as an e-book and it was fascinating. Three protagonists, three viewpoints. Two dukedoms, only recently reconciled after a long and bitter war. Duke Orsea of Eremia, and Duke Valens of the Vadani are uneasy neighbours even though they knew each other as boys. An engineer, Vaatzes, condembed to death in the Perpetual Mezentine Republic for daring to make an unsanctioned mechanical improvement to a mechanism, escapes with more technical knowledge than the Republic is willing to lose.

There's a complicated love triangle - with the third part of it carried out by correspondence between Veatriz (Orsia's wife) and Valens, who only met once, but for Valens it was enough.

Three protagonists, a complex political situeation. Sounds like something I would love... but then more and more viewpoint characters keep popping up. Miel Ducas, Duke Orsea's best friend and right hand man is way more competent to run the dukedom than Orsea, but too loyal to do so, though he does mitigate some of Orsea's bad decisions. Miel is also in love with Veatriz, which is only a slight complication as it's not reciprocated. Then we have viewpoints from easily forgettable officials in the Perpetual Republic, and then even more new characters such as the man in charge of the Republic's mercenary army. Maybe these characters will feature in the second and third part of the trilogy, but they didn't feel to add much to the forward momentum of the story. There's no main character to get behind. All of them evoke some kind of sympathy, initially at least, but I found that there was no one I was really rooting for. I couldn't make up my mind who the main character was supposed to be. Vaatzes is the lynch pin of the plot, and though I was completely on his side in the opening chapter, his machinations turn sociopathic and (for an engineer) somewhat illogical. He 'engineers' a war in which thousands die, and yet there's no clear motive, at lkeast not in this book, and he seems to have no redeeming feature. Orsea means well, but is incompetent as a leader and we don't really see his relationship with Veatriz except through her viewpoint. Miel is much more interesting and I found myself drawn to follow his story more than the others... only to find him sidelined at the end.

This is the first book in a trilogy, so it ends without resolution. I confess I was skimming towards the end. Parker has a tendency to never write ten words where he can use a hundred. His blow by blow accounts of -- well, everything, really, are longwinded. There's a lot of stuff here that doesn't move the story forward, though I'm sure other readers would call it richly textured character building.

KJ Parker is a pseudonym of the comedy fantasy writer Tom Holt. I can see why he's chosen a pseudonym. This isn't exactly a laugh a minute, and anyone expecting the usual Tom Holt style would be sorely disappointed. All in all I'm not rushing to pick up the second volume.