This is the first epic fantasy I’ve liked in quite some time.
There’s the usual elements. A Dark Lord ruling over an empire of groaning slaves and corrupt aristocrats. A band of plucky heroes dedicated to the Dark Lord’s overthrow. But they’re not planning to seek out the one sword that can slay the Dark Lord, or the one ring that is the source of the Dark Lord’s power.
No, they’re planning to swindle the Dark Lord out of his dark throne.
See, the Dark Lord’s economic power is based upon control of a single rare mineral, and if our plucky heroes can snatch away his stockpile of the aforementioned rare mineral, the Dark Lord loses the ability to pay his soldiers, who will then seek gainful employment elsewhere, and his empire collapses.
It’s as if Gandalf and Frodo decided to defeat Sauron not by destroying the One Ring, but by manipulating the Minas Tirith Stock Exchange until Mordor’s economy collapses, driving Sauron to bankruptcy and causing the uncounted legions of orcs to quit when Sauron can’t make payroll that month. Mordor collapses into insolvency, and to cover his debts Sauron has to sell the Dark Tower to the Chinese, who rename it the Spire of Harmonious Prosperity and hang a giant portrait of Mao from the Window of the Eye.
It’s a very interesting twist on the usual fantasy epic, and I enjoyed it a great deal. Economics don’t often turn up in fantasy books. When economics do turn up in fantasy books, it tend to be the usual Marxist horsecrap (specifically, I’m thinking of China Mieville), so it was refreshing to see economics based even loosely upon actual reality.
I’ll definitely be picking up the other two books in the series. Though since they’re published through TOR, I’ll have to get them through Barnes & Noble, since Amazon is currently attempting to crush TOR’s parent corporation Macmillian.
Ironically, it’s a plot right out of “Mistborn”.
-JM
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