The Empire’s Ruin is the start of a new fantasy series from Brian Staveley, It’s set in the same world as his Chronicle of the Unhewn Throne series, and the excellent stand-alone, Skullsworn. In fact, it has several familiar faces appear in central roles, along with some we’ve never seen before. It’s probably easiest to pick this book up after reading the others in the sequence, though it has more than enough narrative weight to work as a standalone.
Anyway. Here we are again. A large part of the book takes place in the delta city we saw in Skullsworn. It’s a polity shaken to its foundations in the aftermath of revolution. An urban environment whose permanence is always in question, as the waters, reeds, and vicious predators of the delta slip in and out of focus. A place where the population is turning on itself in purges and blood, and where struggle is, quite literally, a religion.
It’s worth calling out Staveley’s evocation of atmosphere here. The city is close, paranoid. Stepping out after dark feels dangerous, not doing so armed is probably lethal. The nights are muggy and close, and everyone is always looking at everyone else for signs of backsliding. This is a people who have set out to define their own identity, but not yet decided what it’ll be. In the meantime, the priests of their long suppressed gods are driving them to frenzy and violence. The city is, essentially, a powderkeg.
That said, it contrasts beautifully with the delta. The humming claustrophobia of the metropolis is replaced by the lapping of muddy water against the hull of a hand-driven craft. Ten minute south side of the city, you’re probably lost in a sea of identical, head high reeds. Ten minutes after that, you’re probably dead, as one of the many, many predators - poisonous snakes, murderous fish, hungry gods - makes you deeply regret getting on the boat in the first place. The isolation, the tension of constant vigilance, the low thrum of danger are seeping off the page, contrasting with the boiling over pot that is the city on its edge.
But it’s not all familiar ground. I don’t want ot spoil things, but we also get to see a whole new area of the world. A place forbidden. A place filled with a slow and seeping contagion. A place that has been quarantined for, well, ever.And as we explore the unknown with our characters, the true horror of what sits within that area will become clear. Again, Staveley offers a masterclass in narrative tension, mapping the reader’s sense of discovery with those of the characters - and leting the in and out of universe sense of dread build slowly, until turning the page is something done because you need to know, need to see, what’s going to snap.
And rest assured, this is a richly imagined, beautifully terrifying, strange place we will go. It has its own character, nothing we’ve seen before, but something different. Something often awful, and unspeakably vital. Which is all rather vague - but the book does a fantastic job of its worldbuilding, giving us a strange, terrible, beautiful place where you would never, ever want to go, but which nonetheless has the beauty of an open wound. It’s beautifully realised, and skin-crawlingly real.
On which note: Gwenna Sharp is back! I’ve always had time for Gwenna, the sharp talking, smart arsed, worryingly competent leader of a Kettral Wing. She’s like a member of the special forces, if they flew on ops using giant birds. Now, though, there’s not many Kettral left, and fewer birds. Now, Gwenna is going to make some unfortunate, albeit perfectly sensible, choices. Now Gwenna is going to crawl into a small dark hole and hope to die. Now Gwenna is going to decide who she is - or not, and become something new. Gwenna has a hard time in this book, but oh, it rings fierce and true. Gwenna is not well, emotionally speaking - and we can watch her slide into depression happenning in front of our eyes. It’s an amazing portrayal of a woman falling down an emotional well, one which rings painfully true. Quite who she’ll be by the end of the story is somethin else, but Staveley shows us the strength of his characterisation in the descent of Gwenna Sharpe; honestly, its surgically accurate and breathtakingly painfully honest reading.
There’s others of course.Priests turned involuntary gladiators in the delta arena. A man chosen by the delta gods to be a killer, their killer, struggling with his heart, his faith, and his sense of self. An Admiral who is an utter arse, but has a sense of duty like a rod of iron. Young legionnaires, following Gwenna Sharpe with too much pride and concern, but not enough fear. A shin monk, setting out to run a con on the leader of the Empire (that whole thread is smart and funny and painful, and comes in such a different voice to the others, it;s a breath of fresh air).So many more, some of whom I can’t speak of for the sale of spoiling things. But in any case, the character-work is first rate. These are living, breathing people, and you’ll laugh and quail and love with them, celebrate their triumphs and mourn their deaths.
The story...well, I’ll say this. It’s epic. All three strands of the story - the con, the exploration, the delta - feel different. And examine different things. But they slowly intertwine into a larger creative structure, a cathartic ending that makes you sit up and take notice. And in the meanwhile, each story makes us care about our characters, puts them into this beautiful, horrible world with each of these fragile, breaking, pressured, loving, killing, gentle, vicious people. And the story shifts up a notch and tells us what happens, and what happens next, and it;s tense and fast paced and snappy and a joy to read.
In the end, this is a damn fun, damn fine story, one which I highly recommend.
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