Over two timelines, we track the mysterious Lady Consequence and the "mine-girl", Natazia, years before. The former is a skilled duelist, a driven killer, someone who has plans within plans and is willing to back them at swordpoint. The latter...well, Natazia is years younger than Lady Consequence, and her world is on an upward trajectory. She's brought out of the mines, brought into a noble family, and asked to train to protect them, to fight and die for that family when its fortunes rest on the edge of a blade. As the story moves forward, Natazia's tale slowly intertwines with (or becomes?) part of the one that leads to the creation of Lady Consequence. Both feel like different people, and their eyes on the world show us different things. Consequence is thoughtful, possibly decent, but driven, pragmatically, even callously lethal. She dives off the pages like a hawk, trying to reach out and tear her enemies to shreds on her way to vengeance - but doing so behind a mask, behind wit and a whirl and subterfuge. And, at the end, the raw honesty of a blade. She's charming, funny, passionate, a creature of her convictions, and a lot of fun to watch saunter through a crowd of deadbeats, sycophants, philanderers, sociopaths and stone-cold killers. Lady Consequence has style. Natazia, on the other hand, does not have style. But she has the strength wrought form being a survivor, and a willingness to drive ahead, to commit, to keep people safe. Years before Lady Consequence and her dance of blades, Natazia is quietly stashing sharp implements up her sleeves so she can protect her new family at the breakfast table, and using the steadfast strength and tenacity from year sin the mines to push forward, always forward, never giving up. Where Consequence is witty, Tazia is plain spoken (though no less intelligent), and her endurance is an excellent contrast to the speed and fire in the older Consequence. They're both fascinating to read,both characters you can empathise with and cheer for, and they're both, in one way or another, fun.
On the other hand, they live in Rijou, which is, basically, hell. We've seen Rijou before in several other Greatcoats-adjacent books, and it's never seemed like a fun place to live. The aristocracy own the judiciary, the aristocracy don't, quite own the common people, though they'd like to, and the aristocracy absolutely own the swords in the hands of the people who enforce the law. Each of the Houses of Rijou is an entity unto itself, rich off the backs of monopolies and client-houses, effectively above the law and beyond reproach. Beyond reproach in the sense that they can't be reproached, that is. Because all the houses are filled with byzantine schemes and schemers, with blades who are looking for any excuse to put another house down, with accountants more than happy to buy a judge a meal, or a house, to look the other way. Rijou is a city fat on the stench of its own corruption, a frenzied gala of blood and roses. Tazia stands out here as plain, independent, uncompromising. And Lady Consequence flits between the gaps, using a razor-edge blade to cut through the social niceties and iniquities. Rijou is a horror, but it's a resplendent one, one that pulls in wealth and power and feeds on it like a bejewelled tick. It's a place filled with life, even as it drains life, or at least decency, from everyone in it. If you've been here before, it's even worse than you remembered, and if you haven't...well, watch your wallet in the bright lights and parties, and watch your back, too.
The story...I don't want to get into the story, because it has, well, a lot going on. There's some especially savage twists that I didn't see coming, the kind of thing that knocks you back, and certainly made me put the book down for a few minutes to mull over. And there's the threads there, of revenge. Of trying to protect family, of trying to make oneself into something else, one way or another. Of trying to be decent, and of being willing to be a monster in the service of red-handed justice, in a city where justice is a joke between enemies. It's an adventure, often a darkly shadowed one, filled with mischance, filled with love and hope, filled with the loss of both, filled with grief and joy in, perhaps, equal measure. And it has some absolutely top notch banter and sword-fights.This is a hard read, a complicated read, the kind of story that makes you think and makes you feel, that demands, here and there, a moment of contemplation, and asks, here and there, for your attention. It's bloody and messy and horrible and kind and compelling stuff, and a damn good read.
