The review is based on a bought copy of the book
All paths lead to war...
Marcus' hero days are behind him. He knows too well
that even the smallest war still means somebody's death. When his men are
impressed into a doomed army, staying out of a battle he wants no part of
requires some unorthodox steps.
Cithrin is an orphan, ward of a banking house. Her job
is to smuggle a nation's wealth across a war zone, hiding the gold from both
sides. She knows the secret life of commerce like a second language, but the
strategies of trade will not defend her from swords.
Geder, sole scion of a noble house, has more interest
in philosophy than in swordplay. A poor excuse for a soldier, he is a pawn in
these games. No one can predict what he will become.
Falling pebbles can start a landslide. A spat between
the Free Cities and the Severed Throne is spiraling out of control. A new
player rises from the depths of history, fanning the flames that will sweep the
entire region onto The Dragon's Path-the path to war.
There are writers who although they come with
excellent recommendations and despite appealing premises for their works end up
unread for a long time. Daniel Abraham
is such an author for me, the volumes of his debut series “Long Price Quartet” beautifully aligned in personal libraries’
bookshelves ever since they were released, but always left aside for no good
reason when it was time for a new book.
It took me five years since it was first published to start reading the
first novel of that series, “A Shadow in
Summer”. Daniel Abraham’s second
series suffered a similar fate, only a bit more fortunate since it took me only
two years to pick up the first novel of the series, “The Dragon’s Path”. Again for no good reason, but even stranger
considering that the “Long Price Quartet”
easily became one of my favorite fantasy series.
Even from the prologue Daniel Abraham manages to
entrance the reader. A man is on a run from a religious cult, the worshipers of
a spider goddess with the power to clearly differentiate truth from lie. Little
is known about this mysterious man, mainly why exactly he is on a run, but the
novel completes this circle to some extent with the epilogue. However, the
story, or more correct the stories, found between the opening and closing acts
of “The Dragon’s Path” have little apparent connection with the one of the
prologue and epilogue. This false impression is shaken loose upon the complete
reading of the novel though, because the entire composition has everything to
do with the wide canvas of Daniel Abraham’s “The Dagger and the Coin” series.
But that is a discussion to be made later on, after the next novel in the
series is read.
Let’s concentrate on “The Dragon’s Path” instead. The
story is told from the perspectives of four major characters, Cithrin Bel Sarcour,
a young, orphaned bank apprentice who is sent away from her home town with the
bank’s valuable assets and documents when war comes to the city’s gates, Marcus
Wester, a veteran soldier who tries to escape the impending war and is hired to
protect the caravan from which Cithrin is part, Geder Palliako, a misfit man, a
knight in the war party that comes to the walls of Vanai (Cithrin’s home town)
and Dawson Kalliam, one of the local barons of Antea, Vanai’s invading kingdom,
who has an important part in the local political scheming. These four
characters not only reveal the stories of “The Dragon’s Path”, but are also
tools in revealing the world within which the novel is taking place.
Through Cithrin parts of the economic system are
shown, Marcus and Geder help reveal the historical and military elements while
Dawson is a cog in the political mechanism of the Antean Kingdom. They provide
little pieces of information, but put together with the other particularities,
rules and laws of each nation and region create a believable and sturdy
constructed world. A quite dark one for that matter too.
“The
crowd pressed here as thick as they had on the road. A great marble temple high
as five men standing one atop the other loomed on the eastern end, the
governor’s palace of red brick and colored glass on the west. God’s voice and
the law’s arm, twin powers of the throne. And between them, scattered through
the square, wooden platforms rose with prisoners suffering their punishments. A
Kurtadam man with rheumy eyes and severed hands held a sign between his stumps
announcing himself a thief. A Firstblood woman smeared in shit and offal sat
under the carved wooden symbol of a procuress. Three Cinnae men hung dead from
a gallows, flies darkening the soft flesh around their eyes; a murderer, a
rapist, and a child-user respectively. Together, the platforms served as a
short, effective introduction to the local laws.”
Daniel Abraham gives depth to the fantastical universe
of “The Dragon’s Path” by touching almost every little detail of its structure,
be that related to sociology, politics, history, economy, religion, geography,
anthropology or civics. The world is made more believable and the feeling of
archaic maintained through the way the story is told, never using the modern
and familiar measurements, going instead for other methods of quantification
such as men standing on top of each other for height or the number of breaths
for time. It is an ambitious project that it is mostly successful. Mostly,
because there are a few elements not treated enough, for instance all the
different races inhabiting the world or its religious aspects. To give you an
example, the world were once ruled by dragons and they created 13 races to
serve them, but although we do get to see glimpses of the characteristics of
every race these are mildly touched. It can be registered as complaint, but it
is difficult to make one if we consider that Daniel Abraham does not build his
fantastical world by dropping on the reader’s head long informing paragraphs,
all the information the reader can acquire goes hand in hand with the story
without impeding one another. To consider the wider picture of the entire
series works in favor of this technique as well. I am certain that putting
brick upon brick on the construction of this world doesn’t stop with this novel
and the following ones in Daniel Abraham’s “The Dagger and the Coin” will
reveal further details of the setting. In a manner that is far more convenient
and pleasant for me.
The four characters are not mere instruments in the
discovery of the world created here and not mere presences to help the story
move forward. They are vivid protagonists, difficult to be named champions of
the good or servants of the bad, each one with qualities and flaws, dreams and
worries. The events around them constantly challenge them, forcing them to make
decisions and suffer changes from one point of the story to another. Nothing is
imposed on them though, the different courses their destiny takes comes
naturally. And that makes them a set of very strong and realistic characters.
Marcus Wester is a character archetype we see very
often in fantasy fiction. A veteran soldier, with a turbulent past but a soft
heart. I found him easier to like than the other three because of his sense of
correctness and internal turmoil, but Marcus is also the one of the four
characters who changes the least from the beginning until the end. Nonetheless,
his terrible personal history and the bond with his second in command and
friend, Yardem Hane, are favorable points. Cithrin is a resourceful young woman
that comes a long way from the start of the novel to its end. Her story is a
coming of age but with fearful and insecure moments, the ups and downs
experienced when handling the world on her own for the first time in her life.
Dawson doesn’t change too much either from the conservative, narrow minded
fellow, but the politics of the court alter constantly around him. He can be
misjudged for a negative character if we consider his personal views of the
world (“…the servants’ quarters and the
stables were alive with stories, speculation, and gossip. Resenting that made
as much sense as being angry at the crickets for singing. They were low, small
people. They understood nothing that wasn’t put on the table before them.
Dawson has no reason to treat their opinions of the greater world with more
regard than he would a raindrop or a twig on a tree”), but Dawson just
stands behind what he considers to be good intentions. And that is hard to
argue when we personally believe that we have only good intentions. Geder
starts, continues and ends his side of the story in spectacular fashion. From
the subject of a very unpleasant prank to the different man he is in the end
Geder’s character path is full of twists, sudden turns and a couple of much
unexpected surprises.
The secondary characters are very convincing as well,
they are an integral part of the story, completing the entire cast perfectly. Toward
the end of the novel, for a short while, the readers are introduced to one such
characters’ perspective, Dawson’s wife Clara. Although I’ve seen its relevance
in the resolving of a particular situation and the implications left for the
second novel of the series, I find Clara’s presence on the central stage
rushed. I liked the further depth her perspective gives to the court politics,
but I couldn’t shake the feeling that this jump is made all of the sudden.
However, as I said, the implications her story arc leaves for the second novel
left me hopeful for a better approach of Clara’s perspective in “The King’s
Blood”, if that comes to happen. And while speaking of characters’ perspectives
there is another thing that makes “The Dragon’s Path” less surprising than it
could have been. Since the chapters of the novel are named after the
character’s story arc it touches there are places where one protagonist or
another is left in a dramatic situation but the existence of another chapter
with his name a few pages later turns the outcome of that particular scene in a
predictable one. Even so, there are plenty of unforeseen moments that take the
reader by surprise in “The Dragon’s Path”. The stories of the novel are
engaging and with plenty of tension, they take the reader in a powerful grip
and even the end doesn’t offer a relief from it. There are a couple of stories
developing in the novel, each moving naturally and gracefully and every time
the novel veers towards one or another of the stories the reader is eagerly
waiting for continuation. And while these stories seem disconnected from one
another they still cross each other at certain points and the general feeling
left by the novel is that all these stories will meet in a common place
somewhere in the next novels of the series. Of course, Daniel Abraham brings
all the story arcs to a certain closure, but he also leaves the doors wide open
for the next novels of the series and do not offer any satisfaction if we
consider “The Dragon’s Path” a stand-alone novel.
I’ve noticed in the recent years that I have plenty of
series on my personal library’s shelves left unread after the first novel. It
is hardly the case of “The Dragon’s
Path”. As a matter of fact I enjoyed Daniel
Abraham’s novel immensely, so much that I feel as eager as a child in a
candy shop to unwrap the foil and savor “The
King’s Blood”, the second novel of “The
Dagger and the Coin” series.
