|
|
Title | A Shadow in Summer
| |
Author | Daniel Abraham
| |
Cover Art | Getty Images
| |
Publisher | Tor - 2018
| |
First Printing | Tor - 2006
|
|
|
|
Title | A Betrayal in Winter
| |
Author | Daniel Abraham
| |
Cover Art | Getty Images
| |
Publisher | Tor - 2018
| |
First Printing | Tor - 2007
|
|
|
|
Title | An Autumn War
| |
Author | Daniel Abraham
| |
Cover Art | Getty Images
| |
Publisher | Tor - 2018
| |
First Printing | Tor - 2008
|
|
|
|
Title | The Price of Spring
| |
Author | Daniel Abraham
| |
Cover Art | Getty Images
| |
Publisher | Tor - 2018
| |
First Printing | Tor - 2009
|
| |
|
Category | High Fantasy
| |
Warnings | None
| |
Main Characters | Othah Machi, Seedless, Amat, Maati, Cehmai, Stone-Made-Soft, Balasar, Eiah, Vanjit
| |
Main Elements | Spirits/Gods
| |
Website | danielabraham.com
|
|
 A Shadow in Summer
The city-state of Saraykeht dominates the Summer Cities. Its wealth is beyond measure; its port is open to all the merchants of the world, and its ruler, the Khai Saraykeht, commands forces to rival the Gods. Commerce and trade fill the streets with a hundred languages, and the coffers of the wealthy with jewels and gold. Any desire, however exotic or base, can be satisfied in its soft quarter. Blissfully ignorant of the forces that fuel their prosperity, the people live and work secure in the knowledge that their city is a bastion of progress in a harsh world. It would be a tragedy if it fell.
Saraykeht is poised on the knife-edge of disaster.
At the heart of the city's influence are the poet-sorcerer Heshai and the captive spirit, Seedless, whom he controls. For all his power, Heshai is weak, haunted by memories of shame and humiliation. A man faced with constant reminders of his responsibilities and his failures, he is the linchpin and the most vulnerable point in Saraykeht's greatness.
Far to the west, the armies of Galt have conquered many lands. To take Saraykeht, they must first destroy the trade upon which its prosperity is based. Marchat Wilsin, head of Galt's trading house in the city, is planning a terrible crime against Heshai and Seedless. If he succeeds, Saraykeht will fall.
Amat, House Wilsin's business manager, is a woman who rose from the slums to wield the power that Marchat Wilsin would use to destroy her city. Through accidents of fate and circumstance Amat, her apprentice Liat, and two young men from the farthest reaches of their society stand alone against the dangers that threaten the city.
A Betrayal in Winter
Daniel Abraham delighted fantasy readers with his brilliant, original, and engaging first novel, A Shadow in Summer. Now he has produced an even more powerful sequel, a tragedy as darkly personal and violent as Shakespeare's Macbeth.
As a boy, Otah Machi was exiled from his family, Machi's ruling house. Decades later, he has witnessed and been part of world-changing events. Yet he has never returned to Machi. Now his father--the Khai, or ruler, of Machi--is dying and his eldest brother Biitrah has been assassinated, Otah realizes that he must return to Machi, for reasons not even he understands.
Tradition dictates that the sons of a dying Khai fall upon each other until only one remains to succeed his father. But something even worse is occurring in Machi. The Galts, an expansive empire, has allied with someone in Machi to bring down the ruling house. Otah is accused, the long-missing brother with an all-too-obvious motive for murder.
With the subtlety and wonderful storytelling skill of his first novel, Abraham has created a masterful drama filled with a unique magic, a suspenseful thriller of sexual betrayal, and Machiavellian politics.
An Autumn War
Daniel Abraham delighted fantasy readers with his brilliantly original and engaging first novel, and in his second penned a tragedy as darkly personal and violent as Shakespeare's King Lear. Now he has written an epic fantasy of much wider scope and appeal that will thrill his fans and enthrall legions of new readers.
Otah Machi, ruler of the city of Machi, has tried for years to prepare his people for a future in which the magical andat, entities that support their commerce and intimidate all foes, can no longer be safely harnessed. But his efforts are too little, too late. The Galts, an expansionist empire from across the sea, have tired of games of political espionage and low-stakes sabotage. Their general, a ruthless veteran, has found a way to do what was thought impossible: neutralize the andat.
As the Galtic army advances, the Poets who control the andat wage their own battle to save their loved-ones and their nation. Failure seems inevitable, but success would end the Galtic threat.
With wonderful storytelling skill, Abraham has wedded the unique magic, high-stakes betrayal and political intrigue of his previous works with a broad tapestry of action in a spectacular fantasy epic.
The Price of Spring
Fifteen years have passed since the devastating war between the Galt Empire and the cities of the Khaiem in which the Khaiem’s poets and their magical power known as “andat” were destroyed, leaving the women of the Khaiem and the men of Galt infertile.
The emperor of the Khaiem tries to form a marriage alliance between his son and the daughter of a Galtic lord, hoping the Khaiem men and Galtic women will produce a new generation to help create a peaceful future.
But Maati, a poet who has been in hiding for years, driven by guilt over his part in the disastrous end of the war, defies tradition and begins training female poets. With Eiah, the emperor’s daughter, helping him, he intends to create andat, to restore the world as it was before the war.
Vanjit, a woman haunted by her family’s death in the war, creates a new andat. But hope turns to ashes as her creation unleashes a power that cripples all she touches.
As the prospect of peace dims under the lash of Vanjit’s creation, Maati and Eiah try to end her reign of terror. But time is running out for both the Galts and the Khaiem.
Where do I start in reviewing this quartet of novels? I could probably write an entire novel in praise of it. It has everything I enjoy in a fantasy novel. Complex characters, amazing world building, detailed culture, political intrigue, beautiful yet terrifying gods, wars, ethical dilemas, sympathetic villains (who are only villains depending on your point of view, in another tale they could be the heroes and our protagonists the villains), and something that spans an epic period of time, an entire life from start to end and beyond.
How can I write this review without giving anything away? There are so many twists and turns, so many impossible choices to be made, each of them with their own dire consequences and side-effects. Ok sure, maybe our protagonist does end up ok in the end, perhaps that is not giving away too much since only in grimdark novels is that really at risk, but it costs him dearly. Maybe I'll just pick on a few of my favorite points.
The poets and the andat. This is a unique magic system where "poets" use language to try to bind "toughts" or "concepts" into human form. One could view them as spirits or perhaps even gods. Like Seedless whose ability is to remove the ability to bear, handy in a city where their main profits are from cotton and you can just will all the little seeds to fall our without having to manually remove them. Also handy if you want to threaten your enemies with mass abortions! Or Stone-Made-Soft which is very convenient in a mining town, or threatening your enemies with city sized sinkholes. But these andat don't like being held in physical form, their poets are their slave master, and will do all they can to break free within the limits of their creation. And when one fails a binding, the consequences are dire. And a binding never works twice, our story starting when it has become harder and harder to bind an andat, to find a new and different way to bind a concept once bound before. And how do you decide who should be a poet, who should wield such a power to both do good and to destroy? And what if someone becomes one, but shouldn't have?
The worldbuilding. Here we have a world that is distinctly asiatic, and yet unlike any particular country of our own. But one thing I loved best is the fact that their language is not entirely verbal, they rely greatly on poses and gestures to get their meaning across and I found myself picturing the various contortions the characters must be making as they interact. From a pose of acceptance to a pose of question, a pose of servant to master and vice-versa. It is a very structured society, with strong traditions and hierarchy, grace and beauty, deception and intrigue. This non-verbal communication is quite unique in the fantasy novels I have read so far.
The ethical questions. As I said before Otah will survive till the end of the story, in a way, it is his story. But also in a way, it is a story over which he has little control. Placed into a position of power after trying to escape it, he is forced to bear the burden of the world, and the consequences of when he gets it wrong...and even when he gets is right! See, it's nearly impossible to make everyone happy, so in some way, no matter what he does, he's going to hurt someone, or at least piss them off. And it wasn't little things like move in favour for one merchant over another, his actions nearly destroyed his world. And putting it back together wasn't going to be easy. And even if he succeeded, he could never repair the damage done, and he was going to have to live with that on his conscience, whether or not there was anything else he could have done to prevent the disaster...likely not. But if you can't blame someone else do you just blame yourself. Where people do bad things for the right reasons. And as I mentioned earlier, what if you actually sympathized with your enemies, saw that maybe, just maybe they weren't exactly right but perhaps they were justified in what they did? There are no easy answers and Abraham could have taken the story in many directions and had different outcomes...and sometimes even if you change something here or there, fate is hard to avoid and you end up where you would have ended up anyway.
The complexity and the simplicity. What I mean by that, while it is full of political intrigue and machinations, it never gets bogged down. The action keeps moving even as plans are woven in the background. And to be honest, after a 2-3 year gap after reading the first two books I was worried about reading the remaining two, that I would have forgotten too much, but in fact not, Abraham pulled me back into his world so easily, dropped enough little hints to remind me of a few things that had slipped my mind, but by the end it felt like I had read the series in one sitting. Not an easy thing to do when your reader, like me, reads over 100 books a years and it gets hard to keep them straight!
I won't explain why it's called the Long Price Quartet, it was a strangely exotic name but you have to get to the end of the last book to really understand (and have a box of tissues nearby). I will however tell you to go out and buy it, do it right now, don't wait. I got the first one free from Tor as part of the ebook montly giveaways, but then bought the omnibus. It was heavy, really hard to hold, very worth the effort! I haven't read his Expanse series which was apparently good enough to make a TV series out of though I don't think this quartet would work on screen, there's just simply too much that would be lost in translation. Read it, and let Abraham's intricate and elegant skill with words whisk you away to another place and time.
|
