The Dragon's Path
The Dagger and the Coin series, Book 1
Daniel Abraham
Orbit
Fiction, Fantasy
***+ (Okay/Good)
DESCRIPTION: In a world of thirteen human races, from the common Firstbloods through the bronze-scaled Jasuru and enigmatic Drowned and more, unrest is normal. There's always a crown in contention or a trade route threatened or a treaty violated. But the latest squabblings over the future of the Severed Throne at the heart of Antea may inadvertently be the trigger of an age-ending event, the return of a goddess who may be older than the long-extinct dragons themselves. All it will take is the right people in the right places... or the wrong people in the wrong places.
Half-Cinnae girl Cithrin was raised by bankers after her parents died, learning the trade inside and out, but she's never been entrusted with any business - until the bank's wealth needs to be smuggled out of the ancient city of Vanai before foreign troops invade, and Cithrin's the only one available for the job. She's determined to earn the trust of the man she's come to see as her father, but the journey will bring dangers she could never have anticipated... and opportunities beyond her dreams.
Captain Marcus Wester was once a legend on the battlefield, but now manages a small, nondescript group of mercenaries on minor contracts. At least, he used to, until his underlings were locked up, set to be forced into defending a city doomed to fall. Unless Marcus and his second, the Treglu priest-turned-soldier Yardem, want the same fate, he needs bodies to fill out his contract - and a chance encounter with a troupe of actors just may offer the answer. Only what started as a simple job guarding a small caravan quickly becomes much more complicated, and one of the actors is more than he first appears.
Dawson Kalliam used to be best friends with King Simeon of the Severed Throne, but relations have grown strained of late. The world is changing in ways Dawson can't accept, and new forces are rising in the courts - forces that may spell the doom of Simeon and his young heir. With his influence fading, he must take desperate measures - but even those may not be enough to save Antea from war.
Minor lordling Geder Palliako never expected to amount to much, and never really cared. So long as he can chase ideas through old books, he's content enough... but he has obligations to his betters, which send him out on campaign as the laughingstock of his peers. Tricked, humiliated, reminded at every turn of his inadequacies, he will soon find himself utterly destroyed by machinations he doesn't understand - or remade into an unpredictable new power who might shake the very world to its foundations.
REVIEW: There's something decadently comforting about a good epic fantasy: the feeling of falling into a bright new world full of magic and wonder and danger, immersing in larger-than-life characters and events where good still has an outside chance of triumphing ultimately over evil (unlike reality, too often.) They're the warm-blanket-and-hot-cocoa-by-the-fire equivalent of stories, a sensory indulgence to be savored. I've been in a mood for that comfort, and this book has been lurking in my reading pile for a while.
Did it give me that nice, warm feeling?
Yes and no.
On the plus side, Abraham presents some nice, shiny epic fantasy ideas, both familiar (myriad cities and kingdoms and races, deep history riddled with mysteries, royal courts split by infighting factions under a weakening king, hints of magic and danger) and unique (a goddess whose worshipers have literal spiders in their blood, a world and races engineered by extinct dragons.) He also presents the sort of characters that don't often get the limelight in epics, notably a banker and an awkwardly bookish noble ill at ease with courtly intrigues (at least, one who does not suddenly emerge as a savvy player in games - martial or otherwise - after a few missteps, or becomes a disposable subplot.) Battles exist on the fringes, but aren't the main story drivers.
On the minus side... I never came to truly enjoy spending time with the characters, and thus had a somewhat dimmed view of the wider world they inhabited. Cithrin's banking angle may be different, but underneath that she's yet another underage girl who often needs men to get her out of self-inflicted problems. Marcus is forever rescuing her from herself, with a growing sense of attachment that can't seem to decide if it's fatherly or... not fatherly, made even more uncomfortable by Cithrin's younger-than-advertised appearance that heightens the existing age and experience gap between them. (Am I the only one tired of that little trope/cliche?) And the nobles were just plain unpleasant to be around more often than not; while I understood where they were coming from (in their in-world contexts), I didn't particularly enjoy my time with them. Prologue aside, the story also takes its own sweet time baiting the hook for the greater series arc, the threat that will ultimately (in theory) drive the narrative on a course that only multiple books can contain.
After finishing, I was left with distinctly mixed feelings. Parts of The Dragon's Path definitely intrigued, but I don't foresee myself returning to this series, save finding sequels at steep, steep discounts - and a book that fails to hook me into a sequel is a book that has, on some level, failed, in my opinion. There are other epic fantasies waiting in the pile, other chances to wrap myself in their familiar comforts and unfamiliar worlds; I'm not sure if I need to come back to this one.
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