Customer Reviews

The Skewed Throne

5 star:		(14)
4 star:		(10)
3 star:		(5)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

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

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.

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.

I enjoyed this book quite a bit. I think for a debut novel it was terrific, and I'm looking forward to finishing up the rest of the story, and seeing how Palmatier's voice develops.
The first half of the book is a little slow, but at the same time, I really liked the way the real environment was set up. Despite having something of a set of morals, Varis is no "thief with a heart of gold." The reader gets a very good sense of what it's like to grow up on the streets of the Dredge, one step away from starvation.
It seemed that the end happened all in a rush, after many pages of slow setup. For me, the book didn't really start to move until Varis met Borund.
There were a few things that bugged me. Varis seems to get her face mashed into people's chests rather frequently. I don't know if this was an attempt to make her small size and fragility more apparent or what, but it did seem to happen a lot.
Also, I would have thought that, growing up an uneducated guttersnipe as she did, that she would be mostly ignorant of the greater city and what lay beyond it. Yet she seems awfully aware and knowledgeable about "the real Amenkor." Most children I have read true accounts of, who grow up in that sort of poverty, are too concentrated on where their next bit of food is coming from to have any sense of the rest of the world. Palmatier did such a good job of describing and making me really feel Varis' world of the Dredge and what her life was like, that her knowledge just struck me as slightly incongruous.

All in all, I did enjoy this, and I am looking forward to reading the next one!

I've come to believe that one of the greatest indicators of the quality of a story is its ability to take me away from the real world. I'm busy enough that I often find it hard to break away from reality to truly enjoy reading. But good stories... They manage to take me away through some combination of fast pace, compelling plot, great characters, interesting worlds.

Skewed Throne's greatest strength is that it places you so deeply into the mind of Varis, the protagonist, that it is easy to forget the world around you and to get lost in the world of Amenkor, the grime of the slums and the smells of the harbor, its politics and harsh realities, its real and pragmatic characters. I felt for Varis on every step of her journey (even when she was doing horrible things) because the story showed me how the world had taken a young girl and created something both ruthless and caring.

If you like immersing yourself in stories and often find it difficult to do so, then I would highly recommend this, Joshua Palmatier's debut novel, The Skewed Throne.

"The Skewed Throne" follows an orphaned girl (V--) in a fantasy city. Surviving by stealing food, V-- meets a cop and starts earning food (no money, just food) as a spy, locating criminals. V-- has a fascinating magical power, that enlivens this novel. Expect the poor part of town, dagger fights, and great character motivation.

The ending is forecast way too strongly, the length a bit long, and the fights entirely rediculous. Reminiscent of old Westerns, the least wound kills instantly, but V-- can receive any wound without consequence. V--'s motivations are well presented and consistent, and I liked that she stays desperately poor for most of the book. Overall, an entertaining and fun read, worth the purchase.

This book will appeal to readers who enjoyed Devlin's Luck (Sword of Change, Book 1) or Forged Without Fire: A Champion for Catlover or Cast in Shadow (The Chronicles of Elantra, Book 1).

Both his book The Skewed Throne and the Cracked Throne are very unusual and hard to label books. They are Dark, but not so dark I could not read them. They are bleak, but not so bleak I could not stand them. They are tough, but so interesting and compelling I could not put them down. There is real and important reasons behind all the action and violence.

Unusual settings, characterization and a fresh writing voice make The Skewed Throne and the Cracked Throne top of my list of books to give or recommend to all the guys and most of the gals I know.

I am sooo excited there is one more to come! The Vacant Throne is out January!

Joshua Palmatier's The Skewed Throne is an intense, sometimes almost claustrophobic tale of the city of Amenkor, its reigning Mistress - half goddess, half queen - and the "gutterscum" thief-girl Varis, for whom Amenkor and its slums are all the world there is. Varis - the name is a nickname meaning "hunter", her birth name having been lost long ago with the death of her mother - has lived most of her young life in the slums of the Dredge, scrounging a living from discarded food and unguarded purses. Hundreds of others live as she does; but Varis is different, able to see the essence of people, read their intentions, predict their actions. Her unusual abilities draw the attention of both friends and foes. They will also be her road out of the slums - but Varis is not at all sure that she wants to travel that road.

Varis isn't your typical fantasy heroine. She's tough, crafty, desperate and unpolished, and her creator is not afraid to let readers in on her deepest and ugliest secrets. It took me a long time to work out where the story was going, and just when I thought I'd got it, things played out quite differently than I'd expected. The Skewed Throne of the title, a vaguely creepy presence through most of the book, emerges finally as a real and potent macher - a whole new take on the idea of "the power behind the throne". The ending is excellent, and made me want to read the next book right away.

Varis is "gutterscum", a girl--as much animal as girl--who survives as a sneak-thief in the horrid slum of Amenkor known as "The Dredge." But even in the slum, rumors are spreading about The Mistress, who governs the city from the mystical Skewed Throne--rumors of insanity after a tidal wave of mysterious white fire sweeps through the land. After Varis stabs a criminal in self-defense, she comes to the attention of one of the Mistress's guardsmen-assassins and begins to help him in tracking his "marks." But in such a harsh, unstable environment, change comes quickly, and Varis soon finds herself outside of the Dredge. There, she finds that her skill with a dagger--as well as two strange magical talents--may draw her into a new life entirely.

The first novel by Joshua Palmatier, TST is an undemanding, gritty, visceral tale of low fantasy. The tale is told entirely from Varis's perspective--alternating between episodes in "real time", in which she is inside Amenkor's palace, and the preceding years--which produces mixed results. On the one hand, Varis's account of the startling, vivid details of life in the Dredge is often poignant and includes a few passages of emotional depth rare in fantasy fiction. On the other, by forcing all of the information necessary for the reader through the mind of an illiterate, socially isolated girl, the author limits the reader's experience of Amenkor and the ultimate situation in which Varis finds herself. (In other words, small details are often powerful--as when Varis is given good food, as opposed to her usual, meager diet--but large ones are ultimately lacking. For example, why should the reader care whether the Mistress goes insane and causes the city to collapse? Is a city and government so blind or inept as to allow the Dredge to exist worth saving from collapse?) "In which Varis finds herself" are also telling words with regard to the book's climax ... which requires an element of passivity on her part and is essentially a set-up for the sequel. With the hardcover edition totaling only 338 pages, this novel, one might think, could have easily been left as Part One of a greater whole. As is, while I enjoyed most of Varis's rise from the Dredge--with caveats for unoriginal profanity, throat-slashings galore, and constant repetition of the words gray, river, blood, knife/dagger/blade, and fire--I was disappointed by the climax (and, in retrospect, its inevitability).

Overall, TST is a more complex book to review than read; and even as (or perhaps because I am) someone partial to female thieves, I can only give it a qualified recommendation to fans of dark low fantasy untroubled by the story's continuation beyond the book. (I do note the sequel, The Cracked Throne, is now available.) Three gray stars.

I pretty much stopped reading fantasy back in grad school. I think it was Terry Goodkin's first one that did me in. Too many boy with untapped power has wizard friend who points him on his way and he saves the world. Skewed Throne, though, I really enjoyed. I liked the magic and that there wasn't too much of it. The way she used it seemed natural. It was fun to try to figure out how the magic worked, and I can't wait to find out more details. Magic seems to be an inborn talent rather than a learned skill. I also like that the action is constrained to the city. I like urban adventures.

By the end, we better learn the secret behind the white fire. If it turns out just to be a natural random phenomenon, I'll be disappointed. :)

The main thing I liked was that it was a personal struggle kind of story. Sure, she was saving the city, but it didn't read like a high *yawn* fantasy. It read more like a mystery/adventure. She was out to save herself and not a hero out to save the world. I had some nitpicky complaints, but no deal breakers.

Bottom line: I'd get the next one and I'd recommend it to people (and already have).