niko | The Briar King by Greg Keyes

Finally finished The Briar King. A very, very enjoyable book. I'm wishing I had put it a bit lower on my to-read list, now, because the next volume in the series isn't due out until late summer and I'm anxious to continue.

The setup of the series is a world where for many years humanity was enslaved by a race called the "Skasloi". With the help of powerful, apparently forbidden magics, humanity revolts against their masters and takes the world for its own, but not without a final warning from the Skasloi that there will be a price to pay for the power they've used. Several thousand years later, the story picks up with odd events stirring in the empire of Crotheny - political crises are brewing, a deadly monster out of myth is found in the king's forest, accompanied by horrible murders of a more man-made sort. It's clearer and clearer as the story moves on that the time for comeuppance is arriving, but memory of the threat has faded to the stuff of nursery rhymes and superstition. A mishmash of characters get caught up in events: the headstrong daughter of the king, a gruff holter in the king's forest, a novice monk, a young knight, a brash swordsman.

I've seen this book compared to George RR Martin's "Song of Ice and Fire" series, and I guess the comparison is an apt one. Like GRRM, Keyes uses multiple viewpoint characters each with their own smaller drama to play out, practically untouched by other characters, but each piece forming an important part of the whole. Like GRRM, Keyes isn't afraid to shake things up. By the end of this first novel, the landscape of the series looks much different than it did at the beginning, leaving me eager to find out where he could go from here. I think the comparisons, overall, are fair and favorable. For differences, "The Briar King" has (so far) a somewhat smaller stage than ASOIAF, with fewer important named characters to keep track of and moderately less complexity to the political intrigue side...but it also makes rich use of more elements of magic and myth, with the political climate more of a side-story.

Anyway, the very biggest thing I took away from Keyes' previous fantasy was a deep admiration for his use of language, and it's readily evident in this series, too. I can't explain it very well. It's nothing too over-the-top or verbose or flowery - he just really has a knack for picking words that evoke strong, concrete imagery without feeling like he resorted to a thesaurus to do it. Precise, straightforward, and perfect. Even the invented words - which are frequent, and would normally annoy the heck of me - work perfectly in the context of the story. Close enough to real-world languages, but far enough away to set this pseudo-medieval fantasy world apart from other, more mundane examples of the type.

Highly recommended.