Pale Queen's Courtyard (Moonlit Cities) [Kindle Edition]

Marcin Wrona (Author)

Book Description

Kamvar, a soldier, has lost his way. Leonine, a thief and sorcerer, has forgotten that he had one to lose.

When the daughter of a High Priest finds herself exiled and hunted across the entirety of conquered Ekka, both men will remember who they are, and the country's invaders will learn that memories, unlike temples, are not so easily torn down.

Pale Queen's Courtyard is the first novel by Canadian author Marcin Wrona, and a finalist in SciFiNow's 2009 War of the Words.

Approximate word count: 115k (~450 paperback pages).

Editorial Reviews

From the Author

Pale Queen's Courtyard is the first in a series of three historical fantasy novels inspired by Mesopotamia under Persian rule and the sword-and-sorcery pulps. All three novels are stand-alone works with their own characters and plots, but are touched off by some of the same events and are presented in chronological order.

While it is not necessary to read the series chronologically to enjoy any of its entries, please do note that the later novels sometimes make reference to events that happened in previous ones, and as such can reveal some aspects of their plots.

Order:
Pale Queen's Courtyard
Golden Feathers Falling
When on High

About the Author

Marcin Wrona is a Polish-born Canadian author, a multiple immigrant, a mustachio-twirling financier, and many other things besides. He lives and works in Toronto.

Product Details

• File Size: 496 KB
• Print Length: 323 pages
• Simultaneous Device Usage: Unlimited
• Sold by: Amazon Digital Services, Inc.
• Language: English
• ASIN: B004XTTVCC
• Text-to-Speech: Enabled
• X-Ray: Not Enabled
• Lending: Enabled
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #7,273 Free in Kindle Store (See Top 100 Free in Kindle Store)
  • #50 in Kindle Store > Kindle eBooks > Literature & Fiction > Fantasy > Historical

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars outstandingly good February 15, 2012

By Brent Nichols

Format:Kindle Edition

I was quite impressed with this book. On the one hand, it has a terrific array of the fun elements that make sword and sorcery novels a pleasure to read. There are battles and chases, narrow escapes, grim villains, and there is action galore. There is a thief out to burgle a magic vase, a mysterious secret society trying to manipulate the thief, a brave soldier determined to do his duty as things get ever more ambiguous, a terrified child being hunted by powerful forces...

But there is a whole other level of beautiful writing and moral dilemma. We see men struggle with their fundamental natures. Some of them grow, some of them just become twisted, but all of them change.

It's also refreshing to find a fantasy tale set in bronze-age Mesopotamia instead of the generic fantasy re-treads of Medieval western Europe.

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars Gritty, historical fantasy October 18, 2011

By Patrick H

Format:Kindle Edition

This is a historical fantasy set in the Near East at the time of the Achaemenid Empire around about 500BC. We follow the fortunes of Leonine, a thief with sorcerous powers; Kamvar, a solider in a company of Hounds, warrior-priests whose mission is to track down and kill sorcerers; and Iasin, an eight-year old girl with extraordinary sorcerous power who crosses both their paths. The conflicts are well set out right from the start, and the characters have strong conflicting motivations: the thief just wants to take his money, but events in his past make him sympathetic to the girl's plight, while Kamvar is a good solider who comes to find the idea of executing small girl for the supposed sin of sorcery troubling.

The historical detail is totally convincing, and the somewhat mundane world of subsistence farming, toll collectors and imperial bureaucracy gives the more fantastic elements a solid foundation in a convincing real world. This makes the characters inner struggles more convincing, as they are rooted in recognisable, real-world concerns; Kamvar's ruminations about leaving his wife and child behind are made all the more affecting as it's easy to imagine them living in another part of the well-imagined world.

As well as this depth, though, it provides a useful hard line for the magic of the setting. There is a low-magic level with simple, and fairly restrictive rules as it can't be so powerful to destabilise the setting completely and lose the benefits of the historical angle. The tight geographical focus of the novel helps here: Wrona concentrates his story on the attitudes to sorcery in one limited region rather than trying to work through the consequences of sorcery on a global scale. We hear vague rumours of the sorcery-friendly kingdom far away (presumably in Africa) where Leonid and Ilasin hope to escape the relentless pursuit of the Hounds, but otherwise we are left to ponder for ourselves how the existence of sorcery might affect ancient China, Briton or Japan, eg.

This straight-edge approach to magic has the slight disadvantage of making the magic a little mundane for my tastes. I generally prefer my magic a little more colourful, more like Jack Vance, Michael Shea or Michael Moorcock than what's presented here, which is quite close to a kind of psychic power. I felt this most keenly when the ghouls attacked while the cast was fleeing from the swamp - I had hoped these monsters might be a little more than shambling corpses. However, the limits clearly work for Wrona, who sticks to his guns admirably. Personal tastes aside, the magic is consistent in tone and effect and the final climax is suitably pyrotechnic.

There is more focus on the adventure side of things than the magic, however, and in many ways this reminded me a little of Michael Chabon's Gentlemen of the Road. I think I preferred this, though, as it has a little more conviction than Gentlemen of the Road, which was a bit larky for my tastes (and not a fantasy at all in the genre sense). The action in The Pale Queen's Courtyard is suitably gritty, and while the death rate isn't especially high (somewhat high, maybe) characters tend to get nasty but survivable wounds that mark them for life.

Wrona does a good job with his secondary cast so that these consequences of violence have real emotional weight. Aside from the main cast there are memorable characters such as the old warrior Ashok and Kamvar's best friend Tahmin. The story of Yazan, another of the Hounds in Kamvar's company, is particularly well-done, a kind of inverse of what Kamvar goes through that adds another layer to the theme of tolerance, peace and non-violence that plays lightly through the action.

Wrona goes perhaps a little astray in the final third. Up until then, the dual points-of-view of Leonine and Kamvar have been sufficient to get us through, but then a twist of the plot more or less forces him to include a section from Ilasin's viewpoint. It stands out as the only other moment where we get anything from any other character, and we don't return to Ilasin thereafter. It's not a badly written section by any means, but I just felt that it was unfortunate to lose the clarity and simplicity of those two voices. Additionally, there's a plot twist in this section that comes a bit out of nowhere. The author's hand is a little to obviously behind the coincidence that turns Leonine and Barsam into dread enemies - this needed more foregrounding, and Barsam's drunken confession didn't quite ring true to me.

On the whole, though, I enjoyed The Pale Queen's Courtyard a great deal. It has none of the problems one associates with self-published fiction - there are no typos that I spotted and the prose is tight and clean, it's an original take on the fantasy genre with strong characterisation and able writing. If you've got one of these Kindle things, or a some other compatible device, I highly recommend checking it out.

4.0 out of 5 stars An Exciting Start May 21, 2013

By Moira Katson

Format:Kindle Edition|Amazon Verified Purchase

Let me start by saying that I recommend this book. Keep reading for more detail!

Pros: the atmosphere and pacing of the book were engrossing, and the characters were well-rounded (one revelation, in particular, caused my hair to stand on end - in the good way). The story contained tropes, but in a way that reminded us why tropes recur; the characters brought life to the familiar stories in a new setting.

Cons: I occasionally got lost with the names of the different ethnicities, and which folded into which empire bits, and which names were gods or god-like beings. It's worth noting that these were not presented in a way that took me out of the story (as so often happens with non-English terms in fantasy books), but they were sometimes confusing. In addition, while I identified before that the pacing was engrossing, it was also somewhat inconsistent. Some fairly action-y events were given enough space to keep them as notable, but the writing was so understated that they felt more like connectors than legitimate plot points.

Overall: Wrona's talent is apparent, and his stories complex and engrossing - I see that he has kept writing, and I am glad of it! I look forward to reading the next book in this series.

More About the Author

Marcin Wrona is a Polish-born Canadian author, a multiple immigrant, a mustachio-twirling financier, and many other things besides. He lives and works in Toronto.