Review: A Matter of Execution, by Nicholas & Olivia Atwater

A Matter of Execution is the introductory novella that kicked off the Tales of the Iron Rose series. It is steampunk fantasy with airships. I previously read and reviewed the subsequent novel, Echoes of the Imperium.

As noted in that review, I read the novel first. That was a mistake; this is a much better place to start. A Matter of Execution was clearly intended as the introduction of all of these characters. More importantly, I think reading the novella first would have given me enough affinity with the characters to not mind the worst part of Echoes of the Imperium: the extremely slow first half that seemed filled with the protagonist's impostor syndrome.

A Matter of Execution opens, fittingly, with Captain William Blair, a goblin, former Imperial soldier, Oathbreaker, and series first-person protagonist being carted to his execution. He is not alone; in the same prison wagon is an arrogant (and racist) man named Strahl, the killer of one of the rulers of Lyonesse.

Strahl is rather contemptuous of Blair's claim to be a captain, given that he's both a goblin and an Oathbreaker. Strahl quickly revises that opinion when Blair's crew, somewhat predictably given that he is the series protagonist, creates a daring escape for both of them. The heat of action gives both a chance to gain some respect for the other, which explains why Blair is not only willing to invite Strahl to join his crew, but to go back for Strahl's companion.

Breaking out Strahl's companion will be a more difficult, and surprising, problem.

Nicholas Atwater is a role-playing game GM, something that you will learn the "about the author" section at the end of this novella but probably will have guessed by then. Even more than Echoes of the Imperium, this novella feels like a (good) write-up of an RPG adventure. A wildly varied cast of characters come together and form a party with a well-defined objective that has some surrounding mysteries and surprises. Each of those characters get their individual moments to show off their specific skills. Readers with a certain gaming background will know exactly where to insert the Borderlands-style title card with a slightly demented description of each character.

This is not a complaint. You may be able to see the bones of the setup adventure for a long-running campaign, but I like this style of character introduction and the story moves right along. There are a ton of varied characters, some interesting villains and maybe-villains, a rather satisfying heist setup, and some good chemistry and a bit of banter. This is not a deep story — it's clearly an introductory episode for both the characters and the world background — but it's a fun way to spend a few hours.

I think the best part of this series is the world-building. If you have read my review of Echoes of the Imperium, you have unfortunately been mildly spoiled for the revelation in this novella. I don't think it hurt the story that much; you will be able to predict what obvious gaps in the novel backstory the novella is going to fill in, but it's just as enjoyable to see how that happens. But the Atwaters aren't going to drop any of the big world-building bombs in the introductory novella, of course. Instead, you get a gradual introduction to the nature of magic in this world, some of the political setup of the recent war, and a quick introduction to the capabilities of Strahl's mysterious companion.

If you've not yet read this series, I recommend starting here. It's a quick investment to see if you'll be interested. The novel is heavier and slower, and the pacing of the first half isn't great, but the world-building is even better.

If you've already read the novel, this is still worth reading as long as you enjoyed it. You'll have a few moments of "oh, that's how that happened," and it's a fun and fast-moving way to spend a bit more time with the characters.

Followed by Echoes of the Imperium. The back matter of the novella says that The Winds of Fortune is supposedly forthcoming.

Rating: 7 out of 10

Review: The Raven Scholar, by Antonia Hodgson

The Raven Scholar is an epic fantasy and the first book of a projected trilogy. It is Antonia Hodgson's first published fantasy novel; her previous published novels are historical mystery. I would classify this as adult fantasy — the main character is thirty-four with a stable court position — but it has strong YA vibes because of the generational turnover feel of the main plot.

Eight years before the start of this book, Andren Valit attempted to assassinate the emperor and failed. Since then, his widow and three children — twins Yana and Ruko and infant Nisthala — have been living in disgrace in a cramped apartment, subject to constant inspections and suspicion. As the story opens, they have been summoned to appear before the emperor, escorted by a young and earnest Hound (essentially the state security services) named Shal Worthy. The resulting interrogation is full of dangerous traps. Not all of them will be avoided.

The formalization of the consequences of that imperial summons falls to an unpopular Junior Archivist (Third Class) whose one notable skill is her penmanship. A meeting that was disasterous for the Valits becomes unexpectedly fortunate for the archivist, albeit with a poisonous core.

Eight years later, Neema Kraa is High Scholar, and Emperor Bersun's twenty-four years of permitted reign is coming to an end. The Festival is about to begin. One representative from each of the empire's eight anats (religious schools) will compete in seven days of Trials, save for the Dragons who do not want the throne and will send a proxy. The victor according to the Trials scoring system will become emperor and reign unquestioned for twenty-four years or until resignation. This is the system that put an end to the era of chaos and has been in place for over a thousand years.

On the eve of the Trials, the Raven contender is found murdered. Neema is immediately a suspect; she even has reasons to suspect herself. She volunteers to lead the investigation because she has to know what happened. She is also volunteered to be the replacement Raven contender. There is no chance that she will become emperor; she doesn't even know how to fight. But agnostic Neema has a rather unexpected ally.

As the last chime fades we drop neatly on to the balcony's rusting hand rail, folding our wings with a soft shuffle. Noon, on the ninth day of the eighth month, 1531. Neema Kraa's lodgings. We are here, exactly where we should be, at exactly the right moment, because we are the Raven, and we are magnificent.

The Raven Scholar is a rather good epic fantasy, with some caveats that I'll get to in a moment, but I found it even more fascinating as a genre artifact.

I've read my share of epic fantasy over the years, although most of my familiarity of the current wave of new adult fairy epics comes from reviews rather than personal experience. The Raven Scholar is epic fantasy, through and through. There is court intrigue, a main character who is a court functionary unexpectedly thrown into the middle of some problem, civilization-wide stakes, dramatic political alliances, detailed magic and mythological systems, and gods. There were moments that reminded me of a Guy Gavriel Kay novel, although Hodgson's characters tend more towards disarming moments of humanization instead of Kay's operatic scenes of emotional intensity.

But The Raven Scholar is also a murder mystery, complete with a crime scene, clues, suspects, evidence, an investigation, a possibly compromised detective, and a morass of possible motives and red herrings. I'm not much of a mystery reader, but this didn't feel like sort of ancillary mystery that might crop up in the course of a typical epic fantasy. It felt like a full-fledged investigation with an amateur detective; one can tell that Hodgson's previous four books were historical mysteries.

And then there's the Trials, which are the centerpiece of the book.

This book helped me notice that people (okay, me, I'm the people) have been sleeping on the influence of The Hunger Games, Battle Royale, and reality TV (specifically Survivor) on genre fiction, possibly because the more obvious riffs on the idea (Powerless, The Selection) have been young adult or new adult. Once I started looking, I realized this idea is everywhere now: Throne of Glass, Fourth Wing, even The Night Circus to some extent. Competitions with consequences are having a moment.

I suspect having a competition to decide the next emperor is going to strike some traditional fantasy readers as sufficiently absurd and unbelievable that it will kick them out of the book. I had a moment of "okay, this is weird, why would anyone stick with this system for so long" myself. But I would encourage such readers to interrogate whether that's only a response from unfamiliarity; after all, strange women lying in ponds distributing swords is no basis for a system of government either. This is hardly the most unrealistic epic fantasy trope, and it has the advantage of being a hell of a plot generator when handled well.

Hodgson handles it well. Society in this novel is structured around the anats and the eight Guardians, gods who, according to myth, had returned seven times previously to save the world, but who will destroy the world when they return again. Each Guardian represents a group of characteristics and useful societal functions: the Ox is trustworthy, competent and hard-working; the Fox is a trickster and a rule-bender; the Raven is shrewd and careful and is the Guardian of scholars and lawyers. Each Trial is organized by one of the anats and tests the contenders for the skills most valued by that Guardian, often in subtle and rather ingenious ways. There are flaws here that you could poke at if you wanted to, but I was charmed and thoroughly entertained by how well Hodgson weaves the story around the Trials and uses the conflicting values to create character conflict, unexpected alliances, and engrossing plot.

Most importantly for a book of this sort, I liked Neema. She has a charming combination of competence, quirks (she is almost physically unable to not correct people's factual errors), insecurity, imposter syndrome, and determination. She is way out of her depth and knows it, but she has an ethical core and an insatiable curiosity that won't let her leave the central mysteries of the book alone. And the character dynamics are great; there are a lot of characters, including the competition problem of having to juggle eight contenders and give them all sufficient characterization to be meaningful, but this book uses its length to give each character some room to breathe. This is a long book, well over 600 pages, but it felt packed with events and plot twists. After every chapter I had to fight the urge to read just one more.

The biggest drawback of this book is that it is very much the first book of a trilogy, none of the other volumes are out yet, and the ending is rather nasty. This is the sort of trilogy that opens with a whole lot of bad things happening, and while I am thoroughly hooked and will purchase the next volume as soon as it's available, I wish Hodgson had found a way to end the book on a somewhat more positive or hopeful note. The middle of the book was great; the end was a bit of an emotional slog, alas. The writing is good enough here that I'm fairly sure the depression will be worth it, but if you need your endings to be triumphant (and who could blame you in this moment in history), you may want to wait on this one until more volumes are out.

Apart from that, though, this was a lot of fun. The Guardians felt like they came from a different strand of fantasy than you usually see in epic, more of a traditional folk tale vibe, which adds an intriguing twist to the epic fantasy setting. The characters all work, and Hodgson even pulls off some Game of Thrones–style twists that make you sympathetic to characters you previously hated. The magic system apart from the Guardians felt underbaked, but the politics had more depth than a lot of fantasy novels. If you want the truly complex and twisty politics you would get from one of Guy Gavriel Kay's historical rewrites, you will come away disappointed, but it was good enough for me. And I did enjoy the Raven.

Respect, that's all we demand. Recognition of our magnificence. Offerings. Love. Fear. Trembling awe. Worship. Shiny things. Blood sacrifice, some of us very much enjoy blood sacrifice. Truly, we ask for so little.

Followed by an as-yet untitled sequel that I hope will materialize.

Rating: 7 out of 10

Review: On Vicious Worlds, by Bethany Jacobs

On Vicious Worlds is a science fiction thriller with bits of cyberpunk and a direct sequel to These Burning Stars. This is one of those series where each book has massive spoilers for the previous book and builds on characters and situations from that book. I would not read it out of order. It is Bethany Jacobs's second novel.

Whooboy, how to review this without spoilers. There are so many major twists in the first book with lingering consequences that it's nearly impossible.

I said at the end of my review of These Burning Stars that I was impressed with the ending for reasons that I can't reveal. One thread of this book follows the aftermath: What do you do after the plan? If you have honed yourself for one purpose, can you repurpose yourself?

The other thread of the book is a murder mystery. The protectors of the community are being picked off, one by one. The culprit might be a hacker so good that they are causing Jun, the expert hacker of the first book, serious problems. Meanwhile, the political fault lines of the community are cracking open under pressure, and the leaders are untested, exhausted, and navigating difficult emotional terrain.

These two story threads alternate, and interspersed are yet more flashbacks. As with the first book, the flashbacks fill in the backstory of Chono and and Esek. This time, though, we get Six's viewpoint.

The good news is that On Vicious Worlds tones down the sociopathy considerably without letting up on the political twists. This is the book where Chono comes into her own. She has much more freedom of action, despite being at the center of complicated and cut-throat politics, and I thoroughly enjoyed her principled solidity. She gets a chance to transcend her previous role as an abuse victim, and it's worth the wait.

The bad news is that this is very much a middle book of a trilogy. While there are a lot of bloody battles, emotional drama, political betrayals, and plot twists, the series plot has not advanced much by the end of the book. I would not say the characters were left in the same position they started — the character development is real and the perils have changed — but neither would I say that any of the open questions from These Burning Stars have resolved.

The last book I read used science-fiction world-building to tell a story about moral philosophy that was somewhat less drama-filled than one might have expected. That is so not the case here. On Vicious Worlds is, if anything, even more dramatic than the first book of the series. In Chono's thread, the slow burn attempt to understand Six's motives has been replaced with almost non-stop melodrama, full of betrayals, reversals, risky attempts, and emotional roller coasters. Jun's part of the story is a bit more sedate at first, but there too the interpersonal drama setting is headed towards 10. This is the novel equivalent of an action movie.

Jun, and her part of the story, are fine. I like the new viewpoint character, I find their system of governance somewhat interesting (although highly optimized for small groups), and I think the climax worked. But I'm invested in this series for Chono and Six. Both of them, but particularly Six, are absurdly over the top, ten people's worth of drama stuffed into one character, unable to communicate in anything less than dramatic gestures and absurd plans, but I find them magnetically fascinating. I'm not sure if written characters can have charisma, but if so, they have it.

I liked this entry in the series, but then I also liked the first book. It's trauma-filled and dramatic and involved a bit too much bloody maiming for my tastes, but this whole series is about revolutions and what happens when you decide to fight, and sometimes I'm in the mood for complicated and damaged action heroes who loathe oppression and want to kill some people.

This is the sort of series book that will neither be the reason you read the series nor the reason why you stop reading. If you enjoyed These Burning Stars, this is more of the same, with arguably better character development but less plot catharsis. If you didn't like These Burning Stars, this probably won't change your mind, although if you hated it specifically because of Esek's sociopathy, I think you would find this book more congenial. But maybe not; Jacobs is still the same author, and most of the characters in this series are made of sharp edges.

I'm still in; I have already pre-ordered the next book.

Followed by This Brutal Moon, due out in December of 2025 and advertised as the conclusion.

Rating: 7 out of 10