Review: Great follow-up to The Sable City! Fun fantasy adventure, rich world setting, and a bit of a D&D flavour
Rating: 4 out of 5
Date: 09 19, 2011
(Cross-posted from the Adarna SF blog)I really enjoyed The Sable City, and I'm pleased to say that Death of a Kingdom is even better. The Norothian Cycle series continues to be a fun throwback to the adventuring-party type of fantasy, filled with lively characters and playful trope subversion. While it retains some of the D&D; flavour, there's no dungeon crawling in this book. It turns its focus on the raging battles across the continent and takes a more serious tone. The gang's all here--Tilda the kleptomaniac rogue, Phin the snarky mage, Shikashe the stoic samurai, et al.--with the exception of John Deskata who's off in the Miilarkan Islands trying to keep it from imploding. There are new characters introduced too who are just as delightful as the rest of them.It's a joy to read McNally's prose and it is definitely smoother compared to his debut. It continues to be heavy on the exposition, but while some of it used to detract from the action, now it enhances it. It's especially notable with the fight scenes: it has memorable choreography while written with a snappy rhythm. There's even a Completely Unnecessary Sword Duel; while it does nothing for the plot, it's awesome and the author likely had as much fun writing it as I had reading it.I still had some trouble with the world-building. There are a lot of names mentioned: persons and places, current and historical--and it's a bit difficult to keep track of all the factions concerning the worlds of men, gods, and dragons. I'm no stranger to substantial world-building, I had a very clear vision of the factions in Frank Herbert's Dune and George R. R. Martin's Song of Ice and Fire series, but I can't say the same here. While maybe 30-40% of the details were lost on me, I still understood the general thrust of the conflict.The world itself continues to be captivating and dynamic, and has a sense of depth which perhaps could be attributed to the author's history background. I really enjoyed getting to know more of the cultures, especially the entrepreneurial Miilarkans. The political developments around Chengdea is intriguing (the region pledges allegiance to a distant empire united by a shared constitution, of course that means war with its not-so-distant former king), and the bird's-eye view of battle tactics are excellently portrayed and filled with the surprises of the real thing. It's sprawling world, but it's well-realized and it makes this series extra special.I noticed a few typos (e.g. "then" instead of "than"), but they occur only a handful of times in this lengthy tome. What I noticed more often was the overuse of hyphens. Using hyphens in compound words can be a stylistic choice, but in my opinion, more than a few were unnecessary. Some words should have been solid compounds, and I don't think hyphens need to be used if it won't lead to ambiguity (e.g. "far-too expensive", no hyphen needed there). But as you see, these are minor nitpicks.Overall, I highly recommend Death of a Kingdom, especially if you're looking for a fun fantasy adventure with a rich historical world setting, and a bit of a D&D; flavour. I wish that the author was more ruthless in stamping out the occasional typo and reining in some of the excessive history backstory exposition, but everything else works so well that I consider this series a gem.Note: A free review copy was provided by the author.