‘The Briar King’ – Greg Keyes (Tor UK)

 

Page Count: 552 Pages

Sorry for the ‘blog silence’ yesterday… The last couple of weeks have seen me somehow in charge of my team, at work, and given that one of my strengths is ‘usually flying under the radar’, it has been a bit of a shock to the system! No blogging yesterday then, I was trying to decompress a little… And that is what has led me to ‘The Briar King’ these past few days, the need for a spot of comfort reading.

That should tell you all you need to know about how this post is going to go… I’ve been revisiting ‘The Kingdoms of Thorn and Bone’ series for years now, and rank the setting right up there with Tad Williams’ Osten Ard. Notice I said ‘setting’, this series isn’t perfect (more on that as I go through it) but there is still plenty to love here, certainly with ‘The Briar King’. So, lets take a look…

In the kingdom of Crotheny, two young girls play in the tangled gardens of the sacred city of the dead where, fleeing an imaginary attacker, they discover the unknown crypt of a legendary, ancestral queen. In the wilds of the forest, while investigating the mass slaughter of an innocent family, the king's forester comes face-to-face with a monstrous beast found only in folk tales and nightmares.

Meanwhile, travelling the same road, a scholarly young priest begins his education in the nature of the evil that festers just beneath the surface of a seemingly peaceful realm. For the royal family is facing a betrayal that only sorcery can accomplish. And now, for three beautiful sisters, for a young man elevated to knighthood, and for countless others, a darkness is emerging to shatter all that once seemed certain, familiar, and good.

Numerous separate destinies will become entangled as malevolent forces stalk the land, and the Briar King, that primeval harbinger of death, has awakened from his slumber.

A comfort read can be any kind of book; the only criteria is that you know exactly what you’re getting and it’s exactly what you need. Something where you can just get lost in the setting and/or plot (although I’m guessing you can have ‘non-fiction comfort reads’ too?) but not have to work too hard, just enjoy it. Well, that’s me anyway and that’s exactly what I get when I read ‘The Briar King’, just what this Graeme needed over the last few days.

It doesn’t get any more ‘high fantasy’ than the Kingdom of Crotheny which comes complete with soaring castles, deep forests and monsters lurking in both; the regular sort but also those that appear in human form. If you’re looking for a different type of setting then this clearly isn’t the book for you. For those who decide to stick around though, it’s worth it to experience the kind of prose that just grabs you and places you right in the middle of everything. It’s pretty much what the word ‘immersive’ was created to portray. It’s certainly one of the reasons that I now have ‘The Charnel Prince’ lined up and ready to go.

The setting does a lot to create that ‘comfort read vibe’ then but Keyes doesn’t stop there, injecting enough courtly intrigue and mystery into the plot to keep things moving along very nicely, even when you know where the plot is headed. Whether it’s murder in the forest or the machinations of the Royal Family, Keyes maintains the urgency throughout, even more so as the reader gradually comes to realise that all of the mystery and intrigue is, in fact, connected. There’s a ‘big picture’, lurking in the background, that raises the stakes significantly and Keyes does very well to keep his reader guessing what the sides, in this growing conflict, look like and what their motivations are. At least until climactic events towards the end. It is interesting though, to re-read ‘The Briar King’ and realise that Keyes might just be leaving a whole load of clues for his reader to pore over. There’s a very interesting line running through the book that a lot of knowledge has been lost over differences in language hiding true meaning…

And of course, none of this would work without a decent cast… Luckily for us, Keyes gives us a cast of very relatable characters who are clearly there for a spot of ‘trope servicing’ but are also interesting to travel with as their horizons are all broadened in one way or another; whether it’s leaving familiar climes or being forced to confront ‘shinecraft’ (magic) for the first time. There’s a good mix of detective work and combat here that really keeps the plot moving in the right direction.

If the mark of a good ‘comfort read’ is that you know where it’s headed but you don’t care (and that’s kind of the whole point), ‘The Briar King’ very much sits in that camp for me. I knew exactly how it was going to pan out but still enjoyed the hell out of it and am looking forward to carrying on with the series. I’ll let you know how it goes...