The King's Name
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- 3,99 €
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- 3,99 €
Descrizione dell’editore
Years have passed since the Jarnish invasion, and Sulien ap Gwien has worked tirelessly alongside her lord, King Urdo, to restore the King's Peace to Tir Tanagiri. But the man Sulien believes to be the greatest of his time is seen by others as a potential tyrant. Urdo's vision of a nation of citizens bound by a single code of law is viewed with increasing mistrust, and this soon gives way to civil war.
Sulien must take up arms again. But where once her enemies were barbarian invaders, now they are former comrades and loved ones. As the conflict tears her country and her family apart, Sulien must fight harder and harder to hold onto Urdo's vision of the future.
Praise for the Trilogy
'Walton writes with an authenticity that never loses heart, a rare combination . . . She can dig down to a true vein of legend and hammer out gold.' Robin Hobb
'The people, the politics, the details of warfare and daily life, all ring as true as the steel sword the heroine wields so doughtily. This is much more than a retooling of the Matter of Britain: it is a fully imagined, living, magical world.' Delia Sherman
'Beautiful and thought-provoking. Walton tells a story set in a world and a history almost like ours, but different enough to be in itself a kind of elvenland.' Poul Anderson
'Head and shoulders and sword-arm above most fantasy. Like a lost memoir from the Dark Age of a subtly different history, tough and unsentimental and all the more touching for that.' Ken MacLeod
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
War is a tough subject to do well, but in this gritty, moving second and final book in the saga of Tir Tanagiri, British author Walton makes the strife of civil war not only believable but understandable. Battle-hardened, older and wiser after her adventures in The King's Peace (2000), the warrior Sulien ap Gwien has become lord of her own bit of land and wants nothing more than a quiet life. Ill fortune and an evil sorcerer who'd not been dealt with years earlier, however, return her to the saddle and a civil war that could break King Urdo's peace and leave the kingdom a shattered ruin. Brother turns against brother or in this case, sister against sister. The novel opens: "The first I knew about the civil war was when my sister Aurien poisoned me." Sulien survives her poisoning only to wonder why her sister hates her the answer makes her wish she'd remained poisoned. In the end, the cost of battle is felt by every person in the land. No one will ever be the same, especially Sulien ap Gwien. Walton has taken a thoughtful look at what war can do to real people, as a group and as individuals. A nicely paced, unpredictable plot that keeps the reader guessing who might be back-stabbing whom, coupled with musical language and natural conversations, sets this well above the fantasy average. The ambiguous gender of some of the character names may confuse some, but Walton is never stridently feminist, with women and men represented as equally capable of both good and evil. This fine work should garner an award nomination or two.
