The Charnel Prince by Greg Keyes (Del Rey)

It was actually a while ago since I picked up an effort by Greg Keyes, I posted my review of the Briar King (here) on July the 20 so that is more than month. Back then I wrote that “this [The Briar King] was pretty good transition from one series to another and very good fantasy effort” and with that in mind I picked up the second installment (out of the four) of Keyes’ Kingdoms of Thorn and Bone saga. Generally, this saga seems have escaped the attention of a lot fans in the genre. In fact, Time Out dubbed this saga “the best reinvention of the big fantasy series since George R.R. Martin”. I am not so sure if this is the best reinvention or whether the big fantasy series are really in need of a reinvention, but these novels certainly have the potential to be a big fantasy series. If only they would get the attention of all the fantasy readers out there, but that’s a matter of marketing. The Charnel Prince was released in August 2004, a year after the Briar King was released and Greg Keyes seemed to settle more into writing fantasy. The short summary of the situation at the start of this novel and the introduction of the most important characters I am about to give you, could contain some Briar King spoilers, so if you have not read this first book do yourself a favor and skip this upcoming part. Just below the summary I will give you my thoughts on this novel, so I would recommend moving on to those musings.

Since the awakening of the legendary Briar King, many different types of evil breeds roam the once peaceful King’s Forest and the countryside. A season of darkness has fallen upon the Kingdom of Crotheny. In the capital of Crotheny, Eslen, Queen Mother Muriele is stalked by many men proposing marriage, trying to take the kingdom and the reign away from her. It seems like there is nobody she can trust with her burden, as treachery is ever present. Only two of her children remain alive, ’saint-blessed’ Charles barely able to rule the Kingdom at such a young age and Anne, fled from the assassins bent on destroying her family. Anne, in company of her maid Austra and the two Vitellian dessrata Cazio and z’Acatto are desperately trying to find their way back to Eslen, but it is a dangerous and long road. However, Neil MeqVren Queen Muriele’s most trusted knight has set out on a quest to find the daughter lost and guide her safely back to the walls of Elsen. Little does he know he is going to have to fight his way through the ranks of evil men that are chasing princess Anne all the way to Crotheny.
Meanwhile back in Eslen, King’s Holter Aspar White, accompanied by his love Winna and the monk Stephen Darrige set on a journey back in the forest to destroy the Briar King. Yet he is about to discover that nothing as a straight forward as expected when confronting this king of the forest.
In additional to this cast, we meet up with Leoff, a young composer and self-professed coward, who comes embroiled in the horror of a town’s destruction. Motivated by these shocking events, he sets out to unravel the intrigues at the court of Queen Muriele and lend her his aid.

I was not very impressed by this effort, it actually felt “more of the same”. That in itself is not necessarily a bad thing, but I was a bit disappointed by the overall quality and the fact that Keyes had not really improved. They were a couple of things I did like though, but as I said earlier on I am having my doubts that this is the best reinvention of big fantasy series since George R.R. Martin’s debut. Certainly, the ingredients are all there but Greg Keyes just has to put it all in a nice mix.
The thing I liked most was the way he incorporated different types of dialects in the dialogues and prose. We have ‘Vitellian’ which seems to be some sort of Italian type of language or maybe Spanish, we have ‘Hanzish’ which is more of a German, Saxon type of language while people in Crotheny speak English. These linguistic differences added to the world building overall, at the least distinguishing one culture from another. Apart from that, the landscape and government established in the countries seems to differ as well, all leading to a fleshed out world. It is not a very engaging world; we all have seen that pseudo medieval setting before but because of Keyes’ eye for detail in the surroundings, it is still working out very well. The prose, as I have noted before, is one of the strenghts of Greg Keyes as a storyteller and indeed he succeeds in The Charnel Prince. The thing is, buried underneath the simple words written down on paper there seems to be a constant, natural flow in his writing making it easier to immerse in his story. Rich and lavishly written prose certainly does welcome you to do so.

Now for the things I did not really like or put me off. First, the storyline. I cannot go in detail without spoiling the events occurring in The Charnel Prince but I felt it was ‘tweaked’ too much, as some of the characters were too. It was almost like Greg Keyes said to himself “well, I need these characters to arrive there on the map, in order to continue broad my scheme of events, so what do I need?” “Allright, let me put somebody on their road to speed up the process or build some suspense”. I am sick and tired of people getting knocked out in a forest or alongside a road and then finding themselves in some room of a ‘friend’ who accidentally found them and brought them to safety! That’s just too unrealistic if repeated more than once, it is not like I go around collecting unconsicious people from the side of the road all the time. Or when in mortal danger, you just happen to meet a friend who can keep you save and just also happens to be trained by an order of assassins. The chance of finding someone like that, when in those conditions…! It is far more realistic that you would run into some dumb farmer who is not even able to protect his own cattle from being slaughtered by knights (would it come to that). That is what I mean with the word ‘tweaked’, it seems that in some instances it is too much twisted in order to let the main cast of characters arrive where they should be and in the condition they should be. Kind of a shame really, because unlike George R.R. Martin people have been comparing him to, Keyes has no intentions of getting his main cast killed along the way as it stands now in this second novel. And this does affect the suspense he is so slowly trying to build up towards the ending.
The latest addition to the cast, Leoff was more of a plot device than a real character too, I felt. Especially a shame because he had some much potential to start with to turn into an interesting person; a self-professed coward is, after all, a nice change in a world filled with warriors and knights fighting for good and evil. But much as the same with some elements in the plotline, he was more of a device in order to progress the storyline and overhear certain things adding to intrigue than a real fleshed out character in its own right. Luckily, Greg Keyes has too more installments left to improve on this.
The rest of the characters are still fleshed out enough for you to empathise with them, but the character development of the cast goes slowly (but steady, I’ve admit). In fact, the whole pace of the novel downright slow, it picks up momentum for the last 150 odd pages but by then you have already read through 450 of them.
One of the other things that did bother me, was that neither of the characters was entirely ‘gray’, all of the POV’s are ‘good’ and (generally) Sefry, magic beings, the Church (corrupt more or less), followers of the Briar King were on the evil side of the conflict. Funny thing is, only the Briar King was the one I am having trouble figuring out on whose side he is and I look forward reading more about his presence. Once a character turns into something that can be both doing rightous things but then acts in a way one could deem evil that makes him alltogether the more interesting. Yet this clear seperation of good versus evil seems to be unavoidable looking at the themes Keyes’ has tackled in his novels.

So concluding, this book will appeal to readers of traditional fantasy and those who took a liking to the Briar King as it more or less follows the same formula. I can imagine some people might be bothered less with the ‘tweaking’ of the plot by just taking it as the natural turn and twist of the story. The prose of Greg Keyes still manages to impress me after two novels, as it is rich and lavishy written. The pace of the novel is quite slow and barely managed to draw me in, but enough to consider picking up part three of the Kingdoms of Thorn and Bone saga, The Blood Knight. I would rate this effort:

Six and a half out of Ten