10 of 10 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
A gritty debut fantasy!, April 6, 2007
This review is from: The Skewed Throne (Mass Market Paperback)
Varis is a young urchin, "gutterscum" by her own admission, a street smart thief who manages to survive on the margin by her own wits, resorting to violence when the circumstances are forced upon her. Living from hand to mouth in "The Dredge", a shanty town and slum beyond the borders of Amenkor, her developing abilities for murder and thievery attract the attention of Erick, a royal guardsman and assassin who seeks out and kills any marks the ruling Mistress has judged must be eliminated. Under Erick's tutelage her abilities are honed to a ruthless edge but Varis has another skill she has not disclosed to anyone - an innate magic she calls "The River", a supernatural flow into which she can submerge herself. In "The River" she sees evil in shades of red and innocence in shades of gray.
When Erick assigns her to kill a mark that Varis knows to be innocent, their ways part and Varis retreats back to the core of Amenkor proper. Once again, her agility, her survival skills and her murderous ability with knives bring her under scrutiny. Borund, a local merchant, hires her as a bodyguard and Varis finds herself embroiled in a conspiracy among the Amenkor merchants, an attempt to seize monopolistic control of trade at a time when the survival of the city itself seems in question. The First Mistress seems to be losing her sanity and is issuing nonsensical orders. The pitiless unfolding of events places Varis in the position of being the only one who can save Amenkor!
A fine plot line with much promise, to be sure! And, in his debut outing, Palmatier has certainly crafted his story with enviable writing skills in the development of his characters, in the clever narration of exciting action sequences, and in the layout of easy-flowing natural dialogue. Varis' own brief and lucid description of her young life seems brutal in its crystalline clarity but totally natural in its presentation:
"I decided I'd be better off on my own. So I left. I ran away, moved deeper into the slums beyond the Dredge. I lived like an animal there, scrounging in garbage heaps, eating anything I could find, scraps you and Borund wouldn't even feed to a dog. I was dying and I didn't even know it."
But I also felt that Palmatier was tip-toeing across a knife edged ridge that far too narrow for my liking - the difficult decision an author must make about how much to introduce, how much to disclose, how much to resolve and how much to leave for explanation and completion in future works! Oh sure, there is obviously a sequel in the works. But there are only two plot devices which move "The Skewed Throne" from normal medieval fiction into the realm of fantasy - the magic of "The River" and "The White Fire", some sort of bizarre, powerful event that sweeps through Amenkor from time to time! Even Varis owns up to having no idea about the meaning of The Fire:
"I felt its purpose. Nothing to do with Amenkor, nothing to do with me. It was residual energy, the remains of an event so powerful it had stretched across the ocean, burned across the sea from a distant land. The consequence of a magic that no one in the throne knew the intent of, that was totally unfamiliar. It was nothing to us."
Personally, I'd need more resolution in this introductory novel to move it to a higher rating as a stand alone novel. But (and this is a fervent hope), in the belief that all will come clear in future novels, I'll certainly move on to the second novel in the trilogy "The Cracked Throne" and recommend it to other fantasy lovers as well.
Paul Weiss
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8 of 8 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
Standard Fantasy Stuff, April 9, 2006
The three stars are for the quality of writing from this new author. The story itself left me pretty cold. Generic medieval city setting. Generic orphan character who turns out to be something special. It's competently written... It's just a story I've read dozens and dozens of times before. On top of that, the first half was very slow, and I probably wouldn't have finished the book if I hadn't been on a plane. The chapters of Varis wandering around the slums reminded me of all those computer games where your first levels are stuck killing pansy baddies outside the city walls until you have enough EXP to go do something cool. Fortunately, those levels go by more quickly than the first half of this book did.
That said, I thought the author had a confident voice with a lot of potential. Let's hope for something more original for his next book.
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10 of 12 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
NOT YOUR TYPICAL FANTASY TALE BUT STILL QUITE GOOD, May 8, 2006
This is good. Really good.
And it isn't like much of the derivative fantasy out there. By that, I'm talking about the dumb farm boy, who gets the talisman/sword from the wise old man, to defeat the Dark Lord of Wherever.
Now if you do go for that derivative fantasy, don't let it get you down. Expand your horizons and go for something different like this book.
Focus is on one character: a close to pubery girl named Varis who lost her mother at a very young age and has become something of a thief in the seedy districts of the city. She also has a special empath-like power that lets her see into the souls of strangers and gauge if they're good or evil.
Look for a great deal of emphasis on how she steals food (i.e. distracts some merchant while taking a piece of fruit) as well as how she deals with hunger and loss. The first sign of affection from someone nearly makes her burst into tears and this is one of the strong points of the character. Rarely do such complex characters exist in fantasy tales.
Partway through the tale, Varis is hired by a royal assassin to find people for him, and, a bit later, kill people for him. All come through order of the Skewed Throne, a magical seat which is controlled by a queen of sorts, who wields a great power to control the magical fluxuations. Think of the Skewed Throne like some great magical item of mystery.
Moral issues arise as Varis discovers some of the intended targets of execution are not evil. Moreoever, matters become more twisted when her mentor lets a competitor-thief boy get training and his heart is very dark. Through a series of events, Varis goes into hiding and becomes a bodyguard for a rich merchant. Don't be fooled by her small size, though, her mentor trained her to be deadly with a knife. People thinking she is weak works to her advantage.
However, the intrigue is just getting worse and it all ties into the Skewed Throne.
Look for a great deal of focus on the main character's stifled social skills as well as what it was really like to be a thief on the verge of starvation.
Deep themes of belonging and doing the right thing are also apparent.
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