Review: Another 5 Star Book for the EE Universe
Rating: 5 out of 5
Date: 03 10, 2013
Now that we've finally gotten the second book in this offshoot series, it's time to comment on it.  Enough has been said already, by others, regarding the plot, so I'll comment on it's place in Buroker's world.These two books detail an earlier period in the Emperor's Edge chronicles.  About 20 years prior, to be precise.  Raumesys is still emperor and Sespian is only a year old.  In Encrypted, the first of the two books, we learn that Admiral Starcrest, one of the two primary characters and a legendary figure in the prior Turgonia vs everyone else war, is idolized by Sicarius, who is a young man, (and possibly still a teenager), in these stories.  Starcrest (Rias) is an honorable man, and Sicarius looks up to him.  This is one of the books in which we get insight into the assassin's early life.  It also gives us information on the war that features so prominently as recent prehistory in all of the EE books.In Encrypted, we see how Rias and Tikaya meet, and fall in love.  It's a book filled with action and danger, like all of the EE books.  It also gives us important backstory information.  The second book, Decrypted, which has a different tone, is actually my favorite of the two.  In this book, Tikaya has taken Rias back to her home in the Kyatt Islands, hoping that he will be welcomed by her family as her fiancee.Of course not.  This book is about racism and prejudice, basically.  Rias is the preeminent war criminal in her people's eyes.  There are mitigations to this view that are not generally known by the Kyatt Islanders, and so their first inclination is to kill him or at least contain him.  The President of the island nation is "out of town" at the moment, an absence that is extended by his ministers to prevent him from returning and putting a stop to their assassination attempts.  This left me vaguely puzzled when the President finally arrives and doesn't penalize these ministers for what would seem to me to be treason.  He comments on the fact that he has been continually sent around the island chain on minor errands to keep him from returning to the capitol. When he does, he immediately stops their attempts, but does nothing to punish them for what is obviously a conspiracy to prevent him from making these serious decisions himself.  I would have kicked their butts.  But . . . oh well.The foundational plot in the second book is an ugly period in Kyattese history that includes the disappearance of a colonizing force of Turgonians some 300 years earlier, who were considered to have been lost at sea by the Empire.  There is a mystery surrounding these events, which slowly unfolds throughout the book.  The paranoid fears of the islanders and their desperate need to get rid of Rias becomes clear eventually.Buroker's handling of the racism issues in this book is touching.  Rias, an emblem of the conquering and much feared and hated Empire is constantly being  demeaned and attacked, both verbally and physically.  He endures it all with dignity, while Tikaya, well, not so much.  She is disappointed with her family's actions, and only moderately convinced by Rias that there is an underlying reason for this treatment unrelated to pure and simple racism.  Interestingly enough, he is the one to suspect deeper reasons than just hatred.The way these events resolve is unusual, for Buroker.  The negotiations at the end of the book are subtle, and very creative, and lend weight to her depiction of Rias as a very smart and very brave man.  We see first hand how he earned his reputation as a brilliant military stragetist.  The books ends in an upbeat way, with no real reason for a third installment.  Buroker does, though, tell us in an author's note that both Rias and Tikaya will be part of the final book of the Emperor's Edge series.  I now understand why she needed to publish this book before EE6.  I can't wait.  I love Rias and Tikaya, and hope they have their "passel of children" the island government hopes will be forthcoming.