Review: "The Born Queen," by Greg Keyes

It’s refreshing these days when a fantasy author delivers what’s promised. In the era of bloated epic fantasy series that just keep going and going without resolution, Greg Keyes promised four books in his Kingdom of Thorn and Bone series, and he delivered four books that were tight, focused and fast-paced. Unfortunately, that’s also a weakness of this last book.

In the final volume of the series, “The Born Queen” ($26, Del Rey), the powers that have established themselves in the first three books are maneuvering to decide the fate of the world, and none of them look like particularly promising rulers. The most likely candidate is Anne Dare, descendant of the legendary Queen Virgenya Dare and current ruler of Crotheny, but she has a dark side emerging along with her growing power. The Sarnwood Witch has set a plan in motion to create a new Briar King to take the throne. The legendary despot the Black Jester has been reborn in a scholar. Overzealous church leader Hespero has declared holy war against Anne. The last of the Skasloi, who once enslaved humans, is hatching its own plans, and of course, Anne’s uncle, the undead murderer and usurper Robert Dare is still out there.

The action hits as soon as “The Born Queen” starts and doesn’t let up until the final page. If there’s a weakness to the book, it may be just that. At times, the story seemed to move a bit too fast. There were certain events and revelations in the book that needed a little more time and attention. While the major story arc was tied up neatly, there were some underlying storylines that perhaps got a bit short-changed.

I suppose it’s the nature of epic fantasy to grow beyond the scope of an easy wrap-up, and I got the feeling several times during this book that Keyes was rushing to finish it in the promised number of volumes. I applaud him for not allowing the series to grow out of control, but I also wouldn’t have minded a fifth book to allow him to flesh the ending out a little more and give more time to some of the secondary storylines.

Ultimately, “The Born Queen” adequately wraps the story up, and it’s a satisfying end to the series, though perhaps a bit less enjoyable than the first three volumes due to its rushed nature.

Review: "The Blood Knight" by Greg Keyes

Epic fantasy can be a tricky thing. Fans of the genre expect complex stories with tangled subplots, but sometimes they can get too tangled. Just ask Robert Jordan, whose once-promising Wheel of Time series grew so many heads that it stalled somewhere around book six and has only barely inched forward in the last four or five volumes.

With "The Blood Knight" (Del Rey), the third of four installments of his Kingdom of Thorn and Bone series, Greg Keyes has managed to weave his subplots seamlessly and avoid the pitfalls that so many other authors have fallen into.

In this book, Anne Dare, the exiled princess and rightful heir to the throne of Crotheny, has returned to try to muster support and remove her usurper uncle Robert from the throne. While that battle rages, there's a bigger battle being fought in the world as a whole. The legendary Briar King walks the earth again, some say to reclaim it from man, and with him comes a host of creatures thought to be children's tales and myths. Just whose side they're on is open to debate.

The head-hopping style that Keyes adopts in his storylines will immediately remind readers of George R. R. Martin's recent works, but Keyes manages to stick rigidly with his tale with few wasted words. Action and conflict rule every line of the book with little time for the overlong descriptive passages and asides that often crop up in the genre. Keyes gives his readers what they need to know, when they need to know it, and the result is a fast-paced sprint to the finish in a genre that often prefers meandering strolls. It's a refreshing approach that keeps you wondering what's around the next corner.

Keyes' characters are likeable and easy to connect with. And just when you think he's falling into the conventions of the genre, he surprises you with a deft twist.
"The Blood Knight" should satisfy the most hardcore epic fantasy purists as well as the occasional reader of the genre. A lot of the other writers working in the genre could take a few lessons from Keyes.

Read reviews of Keyes' previous books.

Review: "The Charnel Prince" by Greg Keyes

Epic fantasy can be a tough nut to crack.

Between the classic high fantasy of J.R.R. Tolkien and the gritty, more modern fantasy of George R.R. Martin, there's plenty of fertile ground for writers, but there is also a lot of land that's been leached of its resources through overuse. That's why picking up the latest epic can be an iffy proposition, but when you get a good one, the fantasy subgenre is hard to beat.

Greg Keyes has planted the seeds for an excellent epic tale with the first books of his "Kingdom of Thorn and Bone" series. The second installment, "The Charnel Prince" ($23.95, Del Rey) delivers exactly what the first book, "The Briar King," promised - an action-packed thrill ride that keeps readers intrigued and turning pages.

Keyes' style blends the best of both worlds of epic fantasy. The action is more akin to Martin's darkly violent style, with no punches pulled. The tone and world of the story are closer to Tolkien's magical realm, filled with great wonder.

In "The Charnel Prince," the legendary Briar King walks the world again, and with him, he's brought beasts and monsters that most people considered only myths. Then again, a lot of the people of Keyes' world once considered the Briar King a myth.

Meanwhile, a civil war is brewing in Crotheny following the murder of the king and most of his family, and the surrounding nations are positioning themselves to capitalize. Queen Murielle has kept a shaky grip on the throne with her mentally disabled son Charles, but unless her daughter and only other surviving family member, Anne Dare, is found, all may be lost.

If you missed "The Briar King," you might want to pick it up in paperback ($7.50, Del Rey) before you get started on this one. Otherwise, you'll be a little lost in the story, and you may not get a full appreciation for some of the characters, which were more fully introduced in the first volume.

Since Keyes weaves so many storylines together, the chapters of the book hop from character to character, and the author usually leaves readers in a cliffhanger ending to each chapter. I've heard some complaints from other readers about this style, but personally, I love it. I think it's one of the things that makes the book so hard to put down. I've just got to see what happens next.

Another appealing thing about this book is that Keyes wastes little time on the lengthy, distracting, purple-prose descriptions you'll find in other epic fantasy novels. He tells the reader only what you need to know and keeps the plot moving forward.

I'm always a little nervous about recommending a series like this because I've seen a lot of promising epic series come to a bad ending (usually by never ending). The concise way that Keyes has structured the first two books gives me hope that he can tell the story in the promised four books.

Keyes is off to a fantastic start with a series that could rank among the best the genre has to offer.

Review: "The Briar King" by Greg Keyes

Greg Keyes' latest book "The Briar King" ($24.95, Del Rey) is just the kind I love - and the kind I've come to dread.

It's a complex story with a number of different threads and some nice twists and turns - epic fantasy at its best. Keyes has promised a four-book cycle, and that's what worries me. These days, the number of promised books tends to grow with the success of the series - witness Robert Jordan's unending mess of a story. And judging by the first installment, this should be a very popular tale. If Keyes can deliver in four books, though, this series, called "Kingdoms of Thorn and Bone," could be one of the best I've come across in several years.

"The Briar King" takes on one of the great mysteries of American history - the lost colony of Roanoke Island. In 1587, more than 100 English colonists settled on the island, the first English settlement in America. Within three years, the colony had vanished without a trace, leaving only the word "Croatoan" carved in a tree.

In this book, Keyes speculates that the colonists were transported to a new world - in the most real sense of the word. There they were enslaved by creatures known as the Skasloi until Virginia Dare (if you've studied the Roanoke Colony, you'll know she was the first English child born in America) led the people in an uprising against their oppressors. But in order to free her people, Dare invoked a power more ancient and dangerous than the Skasloi. Now, generations later, her descendants may have to pay the ultimate price for their freedom. The legendary Briar King, a creature of myth and fable, has awakened to the world.

While "The Briar King" starts a little slow, laying the foundation of the story, about halfway through the action picks up. From there it's a thrill ride to the end with plenty of treachery, revelation and even a few bombshell surprises.

In truth, most of Keyes' characters are fantasy standards - the low-born warrior who gains knighthood through an act of valor, the headstrong (and a bit spoiled) princess who vows to marry for love and not duty, the grizzled woodsman, the foppish swordsman who is about to meet his match, the young monk who is learning that the church isn't as holy as he thought. Fantasy fans have read about these characters a dozen times in a dozen different books, but Keyes manages to take the basic archetypes and breathe new life into them.

He also has a deft hand at weaving together seemingly unconnected threads to form a bigger story, and his cliffhanger style of ending chapters keeps the reader hanging on and wanting to know what happens next. In those ways, "The Briar King" reminds me a great deal of George R.R. Martin's "Song of Ice and Fire" series. That's not to say it's a knock-off, but rather a story as well-crafted and intriguing as Martin's. "The Briar King" offers one of the most promising starts I've seen since Martin's "A Game of Thrones." I hope the follow-up is as good.