Review by New York Times Review
I CAN'T STOP noticing narration lately, partly because I keep reading books in which the narrators demand attention: unreliable narrators, narratives cobbled together into a document, second-person narration that leaps off the page to address me directly. I'm delighted to see this kind of experimentation, since it invigorates genres of longer lineage, like the venerable epic fantasy, and helps mint new coin out of the old metal of fairy tales. JENN LYONS'S door-stopping debut, THE RUIN OF KINGS (Tor, $24.99), is the first volume in a series called Chorus of Dragons. A story weaving empires, kings and queens, gods and goddesses into its telling, it's as epic as fantasy gets, a 560-page behemoth that takes me back to my teenage reading, when 1 measured my fantasyland sojourns in mass-market inches. "The Ruin of Kings" is the story of a young man called Kihrin, as told by three narrators: Kihrin himself, imprisoned and speaking into a magical stone that records his words; his jailer, Talon, a shape-shifting creature who can read minds, speaking into the same magical stone; and a scholar named Thurvishar D'Lorus, who has transcribed and footnoted the stone's recordings. Kihrin recounts his recent history, beginning with a slave auction where he was put up for sale, while Talon, unnervingly, describes Kihrin's childhood as a thief and apprentice musician. Undergirding their back and forth is the scholar, hinting at future developments and his own identity in footnotes. I'm an absolute sucker for innovative structures, and really appreciated this setup - in addition to maintaining that "but how did they get here" tension, the story-swapping makes for short, snappy chapters that put me in mind of the adage about the best way to eat an elephant. The narrative infelicities that don't stand up to scrutiny - for instance, the idea that any person would tell his life story the way Kihrin does - are shored up by the scholar's presence, and his epigraph stating that he's condensed and edited some things to make it a more enjoyable read for the mysterious royal personage to whom he has delivered it. There are, however, too many mysteries. There's the mystery of Kihrin's parentage, the mystery of Talon's origins, the mystery of how the end of Talon's story will meet up with the beginning of Kihrin's - and the mystery of almost every character who comes onstage. At several points 1 found myself on the receiving end of a mystery resolving itself before I'd really had a chance to wonder about it at all. And that's without getting into the other story lines about ancient immortal races and body swaps and the ever-present threat of demons in the world. "The Ruin of Kings" muddles stakes and scale, often substituting the latter for the former. I was much more invested in Kihrin's human problems than I was in the sweeping, celestial aspects of the world-building, and embedding those problems within decades' worth of divine lineage obscures their impact. Parsing the genealogy of immortals quickly grows frustrating and tedious; I often felt as if I were reading the middle book of a trilogy without having read the first. That said, it's impossible not to be impressed with the ambition of it all, the sheer, effervescent joy Lyons takes in the scope of her project. Sometimes you just want a largerthan-life adventure story about thieves, wizards, assassins and kings to dwell in for a good long while, and this certainly scratched that itch. I'll be curious to see how she structures the next volume. on the opposite end of the epic spectrum is the raven tower (Orbit, $26), the first foray into novel-length fantasy from the award-winning Ann Leckie. It's absolutely wonderful. Narrated by a god addressing a young trans man named Eolo, it reminded me of nothing so much as "Hamlet" - if "Hamlet" were told from the point of view of Elsinore Castle addressing itself to a Horatio who mostly couldn't hear it. Eolo and his liege, Mawat, live in a land where gods are indisputably real and open to being bargained with, strengthened by offerings and sacrifice. Mawat is heir to the Raven's Lease, a priest-king pledged to the Raven god whose power guards and supports the people of iraden. Eolo and Mawat, on the front lines of a war with the Tel people, have been summoned home in anticipation of Mawat's father's death. When they arrive, they find Mawat's father vanished, Mawat's uncle Hibal on the throne and other problems brewing. But this is as much the god's story as it is Eolo's: The god (embodied in a stone and referred to as the Hill) punctuates its narration of Eolo's experiences with its own memories, recalling its prehistoric origins and Neolithic experiences. The god's voice is mesmerizing, tender and careful, full of admiration for Eolo. The slow reveals of their similarities and the god's basis for interest (entirely located in the contents of Eolo's character, not in his trans-ness) are delicious and satisfying. I was struck by how deftly Leckie anchors the vastness of divinity to the intimacy of language and grammar, how the gods need to be taught to speak before they can be bargained with. "The Raven Tower" also features a war between gods, but it's managed so tightly with reference to the narrating god's perspective that it feels closer to the register of folk tale than epic, and is all the more riveting for that. "The Raven Tower" is also that rarest of creatures, a stand-alone fantasy novel that's relatively short; while I could have gone on reading the Hill's voice, or experiencing more of Eolo's perspective, for ages, it ended exactly where it needed to. In some ways the book has the affect of an elegant short story overlying the complications and concerns of a novel: These are not characters who change and develop, for all that it's partly the tale of the god's development over geologic time. It's proof that a story can be entirely told instead of shown and still be utterly brilliant. SNOW WHITE LEARNS WITCHCRAFT (Mythic Delirium, paper, $15.95), Theodora Goss's third collection, mixes new poetry and stories with some older, previously published material. These pieces, all centered on fairy tales, refract and reshape familiar stories as much as they retell them; fairy tales, after all, get told and retold because there are elements in them - young people and old people, trials and quests, a visceral desire for justice - that are universal, while their configurations are almost endlessly changeable. Fairy tales are clothing, and to retell them is fashion. The fashion of these particular stories and poems is an abundance of lace, roses and porcelain contrasting with fur, snow and blood. The lace is sometimes vicious, the blood sometimes dainty, but everything is always graceful and pretty - even an ogress fantasizing about eating people is actually dreaming of marzipan and butter. There is a tidiness to the earlier pieces in the collection that leaves little impression; they feel like a series of delicately posed portraits, a taxonomy of roses that dwell in their names for effect. But with "Blanchefleur," a particularly beautiful play on "The White Cat," the collection comes to life: The portraits breathe, the roses shake fragrance into the wind. The collection is at its strongest when troubling the boundaries between memory and memoir, exploring the terrain between childhood and adulthood. Recurring along with bears, snow and roses are a love of Boston and Budapest, and the sadness of moving between those places, and between the phases of life they represent. "I have always prided myself on my ability to let things go," a graduate student named Vera writes in "A Country Called Winter." "I've had plenty of practice. When I was a little girl, I let go of an entire country." As poised and lovely as most of the collection is, lines like that strike home, blood-tipped spindles swaddled in thread. And for all that the collection's beginning pieces misfired for me, I deeply appreciated the echoing patterns in the curation of the whole, with wildly varied takes on similar motifs or stories pouring color out of crystal. The book opens and closes with mirrors, ending with a gorgeous Snow White poem that slayed me with this silver needle of a sequence: "But am I as fair as I was / yesterday, or the day before yesterday, / all the yesterdays on which I was younger / than I am today." AMAL EL-MOHTAR, the Book Review's science fiction and fantasy columnist, won the Nebula, Locus and Hugo awards for her short story "Seasons of Glass and Iron."
Copyright (c) The New York Times Company [June 2, 2019]
Review by Booklist Review
*Starred Review* Lyons's dazzling debut is an audacious start to an ambitious five-book series. Kihrin alternates narrative duties with a demonic mimic who knows parts of Kihrin's story he is no longer aware of because of her ability to devour brains to absorb power and memories. The twisting genealogies of a complex set of royal families add mystery to Kihrin's awakening to a portentous destiny that involves training in magic and swordplay as well as intrigues in the various courts of Capital City. His adventures include encountering a diverse range of fascinating races, summoning demons, suffering magical enslavement, serenading a dragon of immense proportions, and dealing with goddesses who walk among the peoples of the Known World, making for a multilevel thrill ride. Thoroughly modern in her use of dialogue and assured in her world building, Lyons eventually dovetails the two narratives into one with one stunning revelation after another that will leave the breathless reader wanting more. With the scope and sense of fatality of Patrick Rothfuss and well-choreographed action sense of Brandon Sanderson, Lyons leaps into the big leagues of epic fantasy and sticks the landing.--Don Vicha Copyright 2019 Booklist
From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review
Kihrin, a street thief turned prince, unearths his complicated family history and faces devious magic-wielding foes in this intricate epic fantasy series launch by Lyons (the War in Heaven series). Set in a world of gods and magic, the frame story alternates between the perspectives of Kihrin and his jailer, a mimic named Talon, as they tell different parts of Kihrin's tragic adventures. Kihrin's enemies covet his protective Stone of Shackles, and in his journey to great power he crosses dragons, demons, and gods who seek to either aid or imprison him. Double crosses and hidden motivations pepper several plots for godly power. Though the hero's journey structure and classical fantasy elements are familiar, the complex mysteries and revelations feel novel and offer plenty of room for rereading and analysis. There's more mystery than action in this tightly plotted tome, and its lore and memorable characters will leave epic fantasy fans eager for the second volume. Agent: Sam Morgan, Foundry Literary + Media. (Feb.) © Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.
(c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Review by Library Journal Review
Awaiting execution in a prison with a beautiful, shape-shifting demon jailer, Kihrin tells the story of what led to this moment. A thief from the slums with little but the necklace left to him by his deceased mother, he witnesses a murder, goes on the run, and is claimed as the son of a treasonous prince of the D'Mon family. Told in two separate time lines by Kihrin and the demon Talon, with copious footnotes and intricate worldbuilding, Lyons's story is a well-crafted, elaborate tale of a thief-turned-prince. Those who enjoy the works of Brandon Sanderson and George R.R. Martin, with a grand cast of characters and a doublecross in every chapter, will find this on par with their beloved authors. VERDICT This stunning debut takes epic fantasy to a high level, portraying a world filled with magic, demons, gods, and dragons, in which politics and power plays are the laws of the land.-Kristi Chadwick, Massachusetts Lib. Syst., Northampton © Copyright 2019. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
(c) Copyright Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Review by Kirkus Book Review
Lyons' shelf-bending fantasy debut novel is an epic, breakneck-paced adventure structured largely as a dialogue between a jailer and her prisoner, a thief and musician who is much more than he appears to be.The story begins in a jail cell with a young man named Kihrin being guarded by Talon, a beautiful and monstrous shape-shifting assassin. Kihrin, awaiting what will surely be his death, begins telling her his life story. Talon complements Kihrin's tale with her own memories of the past few years, and, together, they weave a jaw-dropping, action-packed story of betrayal, greed, and grand-scale conspiracy. It all begins when Kihrina thief who has been raised in the slums by a compassionate blind musicianwitnesses a horrific murder while robbing a house. The sudden target of a group of morally bankrupt, and terrifyingly powerful sorcerers, Kihrin finds himself on the run. During his flight, he discovers that he may be the son of a depraved princeand that the necklace he wears around his neck may be much more than a sentimental object from his long-dead mother. While the comparisons to Patrick Rothfuss' The Kingkiller Chronicle will be unavoidablein terms of story structure and general narrative contentthe potential of this projected five-book saga may be even greater. Although a cast of well-developed characters and an impressively intricate storyline power this novel, it's Lyons' audacious worldbuilding that makes for such an unforgettable read. In a sprawling, magic-filled world populated by gods, dragons, krakens, witches, demons, ghosts, shape-shifters, zombies, and so much more, Lyons ties it all together seamlessly to create literary magic.Epic fantasy fans looking for a virtually un-put-down-able read should look no further. Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
