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Once
Kailen's Twenty were the top band of mercenaries for hire,
but now those days are in the past. Their leader is in hiding
and one by one they are being killed. Their new task is to
discover who the assassin is before there are none of them
left to tell the tale, but their predator knows a few tricks
that even such a crack team doesn't see coming…
If you are a fan of the current trend for dark, gritty fantasy,
this might be just up your dark alley. However, if your taste
is for something lighter, this might have less appeal. It
is certainly not for the faint-hearted, or for anybody wanting
to be cheered up.
There
are many positive things to say about this book, which builds
on a popular sub genre but has more to add to it, dropping
the reader straight into the action with no preamble. Top
marks to the author for his world building skills, and for
using his imagination to create a new type of magic. The use
of herbs for battle enhancing skills is more akin to drugs
than magic, but the idea of mere recipe books being treated
as precious treasures is refreshingly new. There are also
many words unique to this book, which could use a glossary,
but which have instead to be guessed at. This enhances the
feeling of being in a brand new fantasy world, but a glossary
would not have spoiled this!
The action
flips back and forth from the band's glory days to the even
hairier present, and keeps readers on their toes, a bundle
of first person accounts detailing what happened from a number
of viewpoints. I haven't often encountered this, but it can
work well and does here, giving a more rounded feel to the
tale and how the action appears to some very different narrators.
Some of these are more articulate than others, but this itself
contributes to the innate realism of the book, something not
often found in a fantasy. You can expect plenty of blood and
guts, but also a story which sucks you in and won't let go,
remaining in the mind long after.
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