Jacey Bedford's Journal

The Broken Lands were shattered by mage wars and are full of malevolent and sadistic magics. The heirs of Marsan have to venture forth every so often to get fuel for the black flame which – in some unknown way – protects Marsan Port. In the Now the black flame is flickering so the heir to Marsan, Ryan, young and inexperienced, leads an expedition consisting of himself his friend Keeting, a few soldiers and two scholars, one young and one elderly, plus Nonee, a magically constructed being, created during the Mage Wars, whom the Marsan contingent think of a ‘the weapon’. Ryan’s story maps on to the previous expedition, many years earlier when Arianna, healer from Gateway, the border town on the edge of the Broken Lands, accompanied the then heir, Garrett. As we pick up the story, it’s been long enough that Arianna is dying of old age and Nonee (who seems to be ageless) is mourning her long-time friend. Nonee is the link between the two expeditions. We get Ryan’s journey and interspersed flashbacks to the previous journey when Nonee, as the nameless weapon, is released from a jail cell and forced to act as guide and protector. I like Tanya Huff’s writing. I started with the Four Quarters books and went through the Keeper chronicles and loved the Emporium stories and the Valor ones. This I’m not so sure about. The pacing is slow to begin with, Ryan and his crew spend what seems to be a long time in Gateway before the journey even begins. This gives the opportunity to take a deep dive into the characters who are surely going to be tested to the limits. Not all of them are likeable which makes this a challenging read.