Присягнувшая Черепу

A good solid, stand-alone fantasy. Maybe a little predictable, but a well-written story nonetheless.

In the words of Ducky from Land before Time, “nope nope nope”

I hated this. I hated this with a passion. This is a bad book, and nobody will ever convince me otherwise. I do not understand why it exists. This is one of the worst books I have ever read. I usually try to mitigate my bad ratings on a book, like “this just wasn't for me”, “not really my thing”, “made choices I didn't agree with”.

But I just fucking hated this book. I should have DNF'd except that I wanted to get the complete experience. This book cemented its one star rating when our main group needed to pass a test and the test was to strip naked and jump in a lake and fight giant crocodiles. But then it got even dumber as it went.

This book felt like it was drafted by a 14 year old, and Staveley just went “yep, okay” and wrote it as presented, no changes. There was constant nudity for literally just the sake of being naked, like “teehee wouldn't it be cool if they were naked but THEN they had to wrestle because they don't like each other, teehee”. The philosophy in this book is garbage, like if a 14 year old and a 16 year old got high together and the 16 year old just started telling the 14 year old a bunch of wild, nonsensical theories about life and the 14 year old was like, “wow my brother is so wise and deep”. Your brother is not wise and he is not deep. He is 16, high, and stupid.

The ending of the book, which I won't spoil, I disliked every single aspect of it. All of it. Top down re-write would have been my note.

Anyway, my suggestion is don't read this. But some people love it, so I don't know. I don't get why, I don't understand whatsoever, but I am apparently in the minority for this eyestain not being worthy of existence, so I will console myself by writing this scathing review and hopefully in time, I will forget how much I didn't like this book.

Brian Staveley wrote one of my favourite epic fantasy trilogies of recent years, so I was excited to read this. It's a standalone novel set several years before the Chronicles Of The Unhewn Throne, focussing on one of the secondary characters from that work. When we meet her here, Pyrre Lakatur is approaching her final trial before becoming a fully fledged priestess of Ananshael, the god of death. She has a kill list to follow, and two older priests observing her at every moment. It's a relatively short book, but Staveley fits in an awful lot - the rituals and customs of the assassin priests, an occupied city reaching tinderbox levels of frustration and rebellion, a long suppressed religion with a nasty line in sacrifices, an enigmatic tribe living in the swampy delta nearby and mysterious old gods. There is a good sense of place throughout - you can almost hear the insects and feel the sweat of the delta. Pyrre is a very different character from the version we see in the later books, full of doubt and uncertainty. Unlike the Unhewn Throne, this is a first person narrative that stays in one person's head throughout. You don't need to have read those other books to enjoy this. It's a true standalone - there is a shared background, but no knowledge of the earlier (later, depending on your sense of time) books is necessary to get this story. In fact, it's probably a good entry point to decide if you like Staveley's writing before embarking on the thousands of pages in the trilogy. Well worth reading.

Pros: excellent characters, great world-building, variety of fights

Cons:

Pyrre has reached the final test for becoming a priestess of Ananshael. She must kill seven people in fourteen days. But her final target must be someone she loves above all others, and Pyrre has never known love. So she returns to the city of her birth and the man she once knew, hoping he'll be The One.

Pyrre appears as a side character in Staveley's Chronicle of the Unhewn Throne. This is a stand-alone novel where she - and her worship of the god of death - are in the forefront. While the previous books aren't necessary to enjoy this one, there are descriptions of Rassambur, the assassin's home base, in book three, Last Mortal Bond, which flesh out the city and the practice of Ananshael's priests.

Witnessing her trial are two priests, Kossal, an older man who speaks truth and has few cares for the world, and Ela, the woman he loves, who loves everybody and who's as graceful as she is deadly. Ela tries to teach Pyrre what love is, a conversation that involves as many knives as you'd expect from a duo of professional assassins.

There's a surprising amount of banter considering the premise of the book. I enjoyed Pyrre's attempts to understand her own emotions as she alternates between getting closer and further away from Ruc Lan Lac. Her plan is overly convoluted but has some fascinating consequences. I especially enjoyed the chapters dealing with the delta and life there.

The world-building was top notch, expanding an unexplored area of the world but tying it and its history into that of the previous books. The delta felt vibrant and the dangers - and how to deal with them - realistic. The local religion also had weight to it, practiced differently by the city folk and the delta people.

As expected, there are some fabulous fight scenes, against a surprising variety of people and things.

This was an excellent book.