The Born Queen by Greg Keyes

The fourth and final volume in the Kingdoms of Thorn and Bone series opens with war about to consume the kingdom of Crotheny. Anne has taken the throne of the kingdom, but has been declared a heretic and a witch by the Church, who have amassed an army to the south whilst their ally, the King of Hansa, mounts an assault from the north. Meanwhile, the death of the Briar King and the rise of the prophesied Blood Knight both seem to portend a time of great suffering, and Stephen, Neil, Aspar and Cazio face different struggles in different parts of the land to ensure the survival of the kingdom and the world itself.


Right from the off, something feels 'wrong' with The Born Queen. Despite having read the first three books in short order six months ago, I found it very hard to get into this book initially. Characters seemed to have suddenly changed or moved a long way from where they had been at the end of the third book, and were behaving inconsistently with their prior selves (particularly Anne, although that at least is partially deliberate). The plot suddenly felt a lot more mechanical. In the first three books the characters had good reasons for doing what they were doing, but in this final book the characters feel like chess pieces being moved around merely at the author's whim. People do things because visions tell them to, or because they are under a curse, or because certain characters can suddenly see into the future with pinpoint accuracy. Tonally, the book feels a mismatch with the first three, with the more Song of Ice and Fire-like realism of the earlier books suddenly lost in favour of dark twists more akin to those of The Prince of Nothing trilogy or vision and prophecy-based storylines that feel more akin to Dune. Unfortunately, Keyes is a lot less adept at these forms of storytelling.

In short, The Born Queen really feels like a book the author had to write rather than one they wanted to write. Character arcs are truncated and dealt with perfunctorily at best. The end-points for many of the characters are highly dissatisfying. The grand finale is a complete failure, with the story fizzling out without any real sense of menace or tension. We go from the build-up to the final confrontation to the "Where are they now?" epilogue in the space of two or three pages. Major characters' motivations (particularly Hespero and Fend) are left as a confused mess.


The book isn't a total waste of time. Cazio is still written superbly and his storyline can still be fun (everywhere else the good humour and sense of fun that permeated the early books has vanished without trace, leaving the other storylines as a grim slog), and the events of the book are a reasonable conclusion to the story, but the actual depiction of them is severely mishandled.

The Born Queen (**) is a startlingly disappointing and weak conclusion to what had been a very solid series. The book is available now in the UK from Tor in the USA from Del Rey.

The Blood Knight by Greg Keyes

The third and penultimate book in The Kingdoms of Thorn and Bone series, The Blood Knight resumes the story where we left off in The Charnel Prince. Robert Dare, the late king's brother, has usurped the throne of Crotheny. He has imprisoned his brother's wife, Muriele, but has been unsuccessful in capturing or killing her lackwit son or youngest daughter, Anne. Meanwhile, Anne has overcome numerous obstacles and returned to southern Crotheny, which she begins the difficult task of winning some of the noble lords to her cause and raising an army. The monk Stephen's path leads him into the east to find knowledge that will aid in combatting the rising evil in the land, whilst the former royal holter, Aspar, will likewise find his destiny taking him into the wilds to a final confrontation with the mystical Briar King.

From the start, The Blood Knight feels a little uneven. The story takes a while to speed up again as we are, at length, reintroduced to characters from the previous books and what they are up to. This takes some considerable time. Once the plot gets going again, things get more interesting, paticularly as we get to the biggest battles in the series so far (although these are mere skirmishes rather than large set-piece engagements, which I suspect will be held back for the final volume). However, the writing feels a little less confident than in the first two volumes. Things are not as tight, whilst the inexplicable need to end every chapter on a cliffhanger gives the book a juddering pace which makes reading it at times mildly frustrating. Also, the extreme passivity of characters such as Aspar and Stephen becomes grating. They are both carried along by events outside their control, constantly second-guessing themselves and the people they need to trust. The moment when Anne, who was going the same way, breaks free and starts making her own decisions rather than blindly following some ancient prophecy, is extremely carthartic for that reason. One disappointment is that Leoff, given his importance to the second book, is extremely inert for this volume and doesn't accomplish much, whilst Muriele is pretty much absent, although given her conditions that is perhaps not surprising.

The Blood Knight is the weakest of the three books so far. The decline in quality of the series across its length was something I'd been pre-warned about, but is still regrettable. That said, even at this stage the core storyline remains interesting, the characters mostly sympathetic and, most importantly, the story remains intriguing enough to make you want to read on into the final volume, The Born Queen.

The Blood Knight (***½) is available from Tor in the UK and Del Rey in the USA.

The Charnel Prince by Greg Keyes

Picking up where The Briar King left off, the second volume of The Kingdoms of Thorn and Bone ups the stakes and pace significantly. The Kingdom of Crotheny is in turmoil and the capital, Eslen, seethes with those who would take advantage of the crisis to snatch some power for themselves. A composer, Leoff, finds himself elevated to the court after an unexpected act of heroism and made a pawn in the struggle between the Queen Mother and her sworn rival. Meanwhile, Princess Anne remains on the run with a small band of companions, and their flight back to Crotheny from the distant south is fraught with peril, whilst Sir Neil is sent on a quest to find her. Aspar, the king's holter, finds himself recruited by the Church and charged to hunt down and destroy the monstrous Briar King, but within the forest he soon finds that not all is as it seems...

The Charnel Prince is a solid continuation of this intriguing series. It's similarly as fast-paced and readable as the first book, and new characters and new storylines unfold that are mostly a match for those that have come before. A few storylines from the first volume are even concluded. Keyes' writing is fluid and well-paced, and the author's own skills at fencing and knowledge of composing come through in the writing, providing a solid backdrop for the story.

There are a few issues. Almost every chapter finishes on a major cliffhanger, which is frustrating as it's often not until several chapters later that we get back to that storyline, meaning that at any one time almost the entire cast of characters is in some form of jeopardy, which gets a little wearying after a while. Also, there are notably fewer twists around this time than in the first book and the second volume is a little bit more predictable than the first. Nevertheless the story ends strongly and leaves the reader eager to tuck into the third book, The Blood Knight.

The Charnel Prince (****) is available from Tor in the UK and from Del Rey in the USA.

The Briar King by Greg Keyes

Greg Keyes first came to prominence a decade or so ago, with his Age of Unreason quartet and his duology consisting of The Waterborn and The Blackgod. There was some concern that spec fic had lost a very promising author to the siren call of media tie-ins, as Keyes then moved on to produce some of the better Babylon 5 and Star Wars tie-in novels, but in 2003 he bounced back with his take on epic fantasy, The Kingdoms of Thorn and Bone, a four-volume series of which The Briar King is the first novel.

The Kingdom of Crotheny is facing rising tensions with the great kingdom of Hansa to the north. In the King's Forest there are rumours of monsters and banditry. The royal court is infested with treason and intrigue. Even the church is tainted by the growing corruption. Rumours abound of the imminent return of an ancient god, the Briar King, whose resurrection will portend the end of the world. Several characters are caught up in the growing chaos, and we follow their stories as the world enters a great period of uncertainty and conflict.

It sounds like epic fantasy by numbers, but Keyes writes his story with refreshing enthusiasm and vigour. His characters are well-drawn and understandable, the storyline is told well and there's a strong infusion of both Celtic and Mediterrenean influences into the more traditional northern/western European medieval fantasy ideas on display here. The result is a book that in summary sounds like every other epic fantasy you've ever read, but in the reading turns out to be enjoyable, and a real page-turner to boot and some real shocks and surprises along the way. Keyes isn't afraid to kill off major characters or upset the status quo in a major way.

The Briar King (****½) is one of the best opening volumes to a fantasy sequence I've read in some time, and will be reading the sequels in short order. The book is published by Tor in the UK and Del Rey in the USA, and is followed by The Charnel Prince, The Blood Knight and The Born Queen, all available now.