The One Kingdom

3.5 stars, Metaphorosis reviews

Summary
Three young men from the remote Vale plan to set out for a little adventure to civilized lands. But before they can even begin their trip down the river Wyrr, they're attacked by mysterious met at arms and their boat is stolen. Daunted but not stopped, they take up with a story-finder, gradually learning that their woes are part of a much larger, much darker, much older feud.

Review
Unusually, for Sean Russell, this is the start of a trilogy rather than a duology. And it's clearer than his Darwinian books, which, while I enjoyed them, I found heavy on vague mysticism, to the extent that I often wasn't sure what was happening.

Here, as in the Initiate Brother books, we have more concrete action and plot. That's not to say that I wasn't sometimes confused; there are many players and identities, and Russell's not always good about giving contextual clues to remind us who is allied with whom. To be fair, the players themselves are often pretty unclear about where they are, and would benefit from a map as much as readers would.

All that said, this is a fairly strong character-based story centered on three rural boys going out into a world of would-be sophistication, ancient rivalries, and even more ancient magic. This first book essentially sets the stage for what will happen next, and takes its time doing so. Generally, that's a plus, but Russell (perhaps worried about the page count) crams in a final scene that I found extremely hard to follow. You get the gist of it reasonably well, but the actual action is both frenetic and frustratingly vague.

A decent start to an intriguing fantasy series.