Two of Swords is the new
serialised novel by K.J. Parker. The first three parts are available now, and
run to about eighty pages each. Further parts will be made available on a
monthly basis. I’m going to try and put out a review for one of the currently available
parts each week, and then review each new part in the month where it becomes
available.
The sixth part continues the tradition of changing
perspective on us. In the last section, we got insight into the mind of one of
the Belot brothers, the fearsome leaders of the military on both sides of the
civil war. In this section, the reader is given the other brother as their
protagonist. On that basis, there’s some good stuff here. The second Belot
brother has a tone a lot like the first, something which feels like a
deliberate choice from Parker. There’s a focused intelligence and a certain dry
wit.
Admittedly, the focus is largely lensed toward eliminating our previous protagonist,
but that keeps things interesting. Our new point-of-view isn’t an irrational
monster – quite the reverse. Much like his sibling, he feels rational, logical,
and entirely plausible. There’s a certain sense of high flying intelligence, confined
into the straits required of it by the establishment. We’re also given, through
this new viewpoint, a little more insight into what drives the Belot brothers
into their seemingly eternal conflict.
Alongside this new Belot, we do get a few supporting
characters – including some from previous sections, which I won’t spoil here.
We do also get a look at one of the Emperor’s; as ever with Parker, the sense
of wry deprecation wrapped around a steel core is evident. Inevitably, it will
all end badly, but for now, that Emperor
is entirely plausible. There’s less of an ensemble cast here than perhaps
previously, but the Belot we have this time does get a few defining character
moments – there’s a level of regretful necessity, and an aura of necessary
violence, about the narrative. On the other hand, this applied to the previous
section as well – again, perhaps intentionally.
Plot-wise, we pick up immediately after the end of the
previous part. The beginning, the struggle against another Belot’s forces, is
frenetic and well paced – keeping the reader on the edge of their proverbial
seat. It gives way to a more deliberate prose and plotting as things move
along. By the close, the visible action is over, and all the knives and schemes
are confined to dialogue. That dialogue, however, hits Parker’s usual high
standards – there’s a sense of incredibly clever people operating at the top of
their relative games, which is, as is traditional with Parker, leading to an
appalling amount of institutional entropy. Where there is a potential to heal
an institutional gap, a personal issue steps into the way. As ever, the
dialogue is clever, often funny, and brutally cynical.
I won’t get into the plot per se, except to say it’s a light
touch here. There’s a sense that pieces are being queued up for following parts
of the narrative. That said, the contained arc is entirely readable – shifting
gradually from action to political thriller as the pages turn. There’s a lot of
tension in the text from about the halfway point, a feeling of unanswered
questions, which Parker expertly exploits to leave his audience hanging.
Overall, this is a decent piece of work – it picks up and
runs with the prose from the previous section. It doesn’t so much tie up loose
ends as extend the threads. Each action seems to be spiralling into others,
joining issues up and exacerbating them. There’s a feeling of a narrative
slowly bubbling toward boiling point.
If you’ve not read the other parts before this one, I’d
advise you do so before coming to this. It does work as a standalone novella,
but there’s a lot of context being built up by this stage, and it adds layers
to the plotting, the dialogue, and the characters. As part of a series, or
alone, this is an excellent piece – clever and tight dialogue, believable
characters, and a plot which shifts speeds quickly, but never lets go of the
reader. Certainly worth reading, especially if you have the preceding sections.
No comments:
Post a Comment