The House Of Sacrifice - Anna Smith Spark

The House Of Sacrifice is the conclusion of the Empires of Dust trilogy. And not to give the game away, but Anna Smith Spark can write a bloody good ending.  This volume contains all the things I loved about the first two books.  It has lyrical, soaring prose which manages to create poetry out of blood spatter. It has characters who do monstrous things, but also live and laugh and love within their own insecurities as much as anyone else. It has a world that sweeps from wet, cold islands and weed-raddled coastlines, through deserts drawn still with a merciless heat, to great cities, whose decay is matched only by their vitality. It has all these things, and from them is woven the sort of story which takes your hand and doesn’t let go – possibly because it just drove a knife into your chest.

So what makes it so good then?

Well, for one thing, the characterisation. Marith has been one of the core figures in this story from the beginning. Demon king, lover, conqueror, he mixes casual brutality and a penchant for offhand murder with a sense of fragility, a need for connection and compassion, and a deep love for his wife. In some ways, this story is as much a close study of Marith’s psyche as it is anything else. Reacting with or against his own demons is what drives him forward, is what moves him to the battles edged with slaughter in which he partakes, with the reader over his shoulder. As each friendship carries within it a betrayal, as each decision steps further into a self-referential whirl of recrimination and retaliation, Marith is never quite willing to let go. Of course it helps that he’s leading a host of killers, themselves driven by his imprecations and charisma. The armies of the demon king won’t let go, won’t back down. Have found freedom and release in carmine and carnage. As reflections of his will, they are a marvel. From moment to moment, they seem no better or worse than any of us – thinking about sending money home to their families, grousing about terrible food. But they’re also unrelenting professional killers. The text invites comparison, and lets us wonder, not if we can be anything more, but if we are already something less. Monsters are people too, yes. But also, people are monsters too.

And Marith isn’t alone. What can we say about Thalia, about a character whose appearance on the page can wrench the heart (and guts) on quite so many directions at once? Thalia is a survivor. Pulled away from horror, from a life of blindness and ritual sacrifice and death, she seems to love Marith deeply. But Thalia is also not a stupid person. She knows what he is, and what he’s done. But then, she’s done a fair few things herself. In her struggle for self determination and self actualisation, Thalia is quite willing to set the world on fire. I can’t blame her really. And for all that, she’s a joy to read. Driven, thoughtful, self-aware and complicated. Thalia thinks ahead when Marith is immersed in his own id. She knows her position, of wealth and luxury, of a life without fear, is built on the backs and blood of others. But she’s also not willing to give it up, to be hunted down and broken by vengeance, or by history. Thalia is inspirational, in some ways – someone who saw a way to take what they wanted, and seized it. Someone who genuinely lives within their own great love story. It’s a shame she also has a history of doing terrible things.

These two are at the heart of the story, but they’re not all of it. Orhan still sits in the decaying remains of Sorlost, nominally the greatest city in the world. His plans in disarray, Orhan is discovering both that everything can be lost, and what he may wbe willing to sacrifice to prevent it. And Sorlost – ah, alright, I always want to talk about Sorlost. This is a city with walls that are one winding ribbon of bronze, feet high. A city that nominally runs the greatest empire known to humanity – at least on paper. A city that has rested on its own laurels for so long that they’re starting to stink. But oh, when you see the energy behind it, in the soaring spires and in the dusty statue in the Court of Broken Knives…it feels like a living, breathing place. Riddled with corruption, of course. Ossified, yes. But still a humming metropolitan engine, which may surprise us all and shake of its torpor.As Marith marches on, laying waste to everything around him (sometimes more than once), Sorlost is always there – a jewelled band laced with thorns, waiting for a conqueror to seize it. Orhan embodies Sorlost, strives to save it, and in that struggle, gives room to let the reader feel both hope and tragedy.

Thankfully, there’s always Tobias. In a story which does give us a lot of grand themes, of armies on the march, of regal politics – even when those things are brought into the realm of the personal through blood and sex and death - , Tobias is the voice of the everyman. He’s feeling old, and tired, and not really willing to put up with anyone’s crap, What Tobias is, is good at staying alive. But he’s also a great mix of blunt and incisive, a professional who knows his work, and isn’t wiolling to take any guff from management, even when his work is killing people. Tobias grounds the story for me, helps keep it real, between the soaring dragons, the explosive, watercolour magic, and the death-metal romance of Marith and Thalia. Between all those things is Tobias, asking where the next meal is going to come from, and trying to avoid getting stabbed in the gut.

It’s this humanity, from everyone involved, that beats behind the ribs of the story. The sense that even awful, awful people are people, that they do what they can (or sometimes what they must), as much as anyone else. This is a story of terrible decisions, for sure, as much as it’s a story of shining spears, and blood painted on walls. But it’s also a story which is unflinching in letting you into who its characters are, and into the world they inhabit. That isn’t a comforting experience, but one which can sear the soul. Which may sound a bit dramatic. But this is a dramatic book, too. It’s prepared to let you revel in the chaos, the destruction, the nihilist drives that it dishes out – and then quietly points out the horrors that sit behind them. I was thinking about the end of The House Of Sacrifice for days afterwards, trying to decide what it had persuaded me to feel, and what I thought of it all. It’s a triumph of layered narrative – and if a lot of those layers are trauma, death, struggle, death, defeat, death , victory and, er, death…not all of them are. There’s hope among the embers, maybe, and if not 

that, then a sense of commonality, a sense of community – even if it is that of an army on the march, willing and eager to burn everything down.

So yeah. This is a great book. It will, as said previously, grab you and refuse to let go until it’s done. It has heart, and soul, and it has rather a lot of blood. It’s an unforgettable story, and one which ends on its own terms, and ends very well indeed.