The Long Price Quartet
Books 1 - 4
Daniel Abraham
Tor
Fiction, Fantasy
**** (Good)
DESCRIPTION: Long, long ago, the grand Empire ruled with the force of the andats: abstract concepts, given tangible form and enslaved by men known as poets, that could turn solid stone soft as butter or leave lands barren as sand or perform other world-changing feats with a single thought. But cataclysmic infighting led to collapse and swathes of desolation that still mark the world. Today’s Khaiem are but a shadow of their former majesty, but still hold the increasingly-elusive andat in thrall, fueling industry and acting as deterrent even to the warlike Galts... but, just as the Empire itself succumbed, so, too, will the cities of the Khaiem, because, for all the powers of the andats, the Khaiem and their subjects are still blindly, fallibly human.
This was originally published in four volumes:
A Shadow in Summer: As a boy, Khai Machi’s youngest son Otah was sent to the school of the Dai-Kvo, master poet. If Otah endures the brutal education, he will become a poet and someday have the honor and burden of binding an andat. If he fails, he will be branded and go forth to find his way in the world, no longer a contender for his father’s throne and thus spared the traditional fratricidal violence of succession. But Otah does the unthinkable: disgusted by the horrible things done to him, and which he is compelled to do to others, in the Dai-Kvo's service, he walks away, refusing both the brand and the poet’s robes. Years later, his life as an anonymous indentured laborer in the great port city of Saraykeht is disrupted when a foreign house plots against the local Khai’s poet and the andat known as Seedless. What initially seems a bid to disrupt Saraykeht’s dominance of the lucrative cotton industry has ramifications that could lead to the fall of all Khaiem and the last vestiges of the lost Empire.
A Betrayal in Winter: As the aging Khai Machi lays dying, his sons prepare to murder each other with the last one standing inheriting the black throne, a tradition dating back to the Empire. But from the start, someone seems to be playing against even the minimal rules of these violent transitions... and the obvious culprit to blame is Machi’s outcast fourth son, who already flouted all respect for tradition: Otah. Though he has been hiding under an assumed name, entirely uninterested in ruling anything, he realizes he must return to the home city that cast him out, lest he endanger those he loves most when they hunt him down for crimes he didn't commit. Returning will almost certainly mean his death, especially when the only man who believes him innocent of the charges against him is a failed poet in poor standing whom he last saw in the final golden days of Saraykeht when both were in love with the same woman: Maati.
An Autumn War: Now Khai of the city of Machi, Otah is determined not to follow the bloody traditions that led to the slaughter of the rest of his family... a determination that sets him at odds with pretty much every ally and even his own subjects. After all, the cities of the Khaiem are built on foundations of tradition as much as stone. But a greater threat looms on the horizon: Galt has not ceased its ambition to strip the Khaiem of their powerful and dangerous andat (and, not incidentally, help themselves to the vast wealth of their otherwise-defenseless treasuries.) And, thanks to an ambitious and relentless scholar-turned-general, they stand poised to do just that.
The Price of Spring: Otah Machi, the boy who once turned his back on the poets and his heritage, is now the Emperor, but of a doomed people. Poet Maati’s failed attempt to bind a new andat left every girl and woman in his realm barren... and every boy and man of the invading Galtic nation sterile. To save both nations, he proposes an exchange, even offering his only son Darat to a Galtic high councilor’s daughter. But the disgraced Maati still yearns to make amends for his errors and reclaim the independence and glory of the Khaiem. He has, in defiance of Otah and every tradition dating back to the first Empire, begun training girls and women in the ways of the poets, in the hopes that one of them will succeed where he failed. His efforts could destroy the fragile future Otah is trying to build, just as Otah's own ambitions risk alienating those closest to him.
REVIEW: If I’m being honest, I probably would’ve stopped reading after the first volume had I encountered these titles individually. While the concepts were interesting and the setting well-described and -thought out, I didn’t really like anyone in it, and didn’t care about the fates of them or their various nations. But, since I already had the whole quartert, I decided to read on... and, in doing so, figured out what was going on. Abraham had not written four stories that were part of a larger series. Rather, he had written one long story that happened to be published in four volumes. The reason the first book felt unsatisfying was because it was an incomplete thought.
Abraham crafts an original epic fantasy world less dependent on chosen heroes and grand battles against the hordes of evil and more about the cultural and economic clashes and struggles that ultimately determine the fates of empires. In the first book, the andat known as Seedless is essentially being used as a magical cotton gin in a world with minimal widespread machinery, giving Saraykeht an unbeatable economic edge against other trade ports... but andats are unreliable and becoming harder and harder to keep enslaved, leaving the cities of the Khaiem vulnerable to the ruthlessness and ingenuity of rivals. They don’t even have standing armies, so sure that the andat can protect them from any foe. Khai Saraykeht laughs away a man who tries to warn them of the threat posed by Galt’s steam-powered war wagons, but the reader can read the writing on the wall, and soon enough so can Otah and his companions. (It’s not quite proper to call them “friends”; the culture they live in, the formalities, class divisions, and traditions that Otah flagrantly flouts, the different visions of what the world and the future should be, do not quite allow for true friendship, but they come to share common goals and learn to respect one another, even when they're embittered enemies.) This is ultimately a tale of a world in transition, moving away from powerful yet fickle forces of enslaved magic, away from old bloodthirsty traditions, and toward a new vision built by human minds and hands, a world of steam engines and unified nations. For such a world to come to pass, there must be sacrifices, and the harder a nation clings to obsolete ways, the more is destroyed by time's inevitable march.
As an epic, there are, of course, many characters, but the central one is Otah Machi. We meet him as a young boy enduring the brutality of the poet's school, finding the courage to defy both life-paths laid out for him by others: the way of the poet, enslaver of an andat, and the way of the Khai, murderer of family in the name of power. He aspires to disappear in the wider world, but learns the hard way, more than once, that it's impossible to outrun one's own destiny. Against his will, he finds himself drawn back into politics, into the circle of the poets whom he'd fled, into the dangers of the andats and the threat of Galt. He makes friends and, too often, must sacrifice them in the name of the greater good, or at least what he believes to be the greater good. He often faces decisions where there is no good answer. He finds love and loses it, finds hope and loses that, and thus ultimately rises to reforge the lost Empire and usher in a new future, even knowing he will never truly see the fruits of his long life's labors. Otah makes for an interesting and complex, but not always likeable, main character. The same could be said for the rest of the cast; even when I didn't like or agree with them, their tales were compelling enough to keep me turning pages.
If I have any real issues with the story, it's how some matters of gender were handled, particularly those that were never quite resolved. The whole also felt a little longer than it needed to be, and for all its length I kept feeling there were some things that just fell by the wayside that ought to have been properly addressed for closure. On the balance, though, I enjoyed this story. It's a different take on epic fantasy; while there were battles and matters of succession and other familiar staples, it was ultimately more about the politics, the negotiations and treaties made and broken, set in an original world with richly realized cultures.
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