This is the fourth in the Emperor’s Edge steampunk series, and everyone
should know the drill by now: former enforcer Amaranthe Lokdon leads her
team in a madcap escapade that results in an unfeasibly large number of
explosions, shooting incidents, highspeed chases and crazy machinery
encounters, but miraculously all ends well. Or does it? Be warned, this
ends with a serious cliffhanger.
The setting is heavy-duty
steampunk, with trains and airships and an array of bizarre machinery. I
have to be honest, there were times when the machines seemed to be
designed for no other purpose than to generate a dramatic
how-will-they-survive moment. There’s an early scene where Amaranthe and
cold assassin Sicarius are trapped in a cellar being chased by robotic
devices capable of blowing chunks out of the walls and demolishing all
the equipment down there. Since that includes large amounts of gunpowder
- well, why would you do that? I had a bit of a Galaxy Quest moment,
reading that chapter; it reminded me of the chompers:
“What is this thing? I mean, it serves no useful purpose for there to
be a bunch of chompy, crushy things in the middle of a hallway. No, I
mean we shouldn't have to do this, it makes no logical sense, why is it
here?”
This is the sort of book that requires the logical part
of the reader’s brain to be switched off for the duration. No, some of
it makes no logical sense, but it’s fun and exciting so who the hell
cares?
The nice thing about this series is that is blends
steampunk with magic (which rather nicely is known as the Science here).
The combination is quite awesome, and leads to some interesting
approaches to dealing with the vast number of obstacles the team have to
contend with. There are also hints of something (still undefined) in
the distant past, some kind of even more advanced technology than steam,
which is totally cool. I love these sudden swerves in the
world-building; just when you think you've got it straight in your head,
along comes a whole new line of development, which was even
foreshadowed from the start (for those who paid attention, which I
obviously didn't).
The plot is to kidnap the emperor from a
moving train filled with soldiers, which if you thought about it for
even a second would strike anyone as probably not the sanest thing to
do. But - logical brain switched off, right? Besides, the plot is just
an excuse for some dramatic highjinks on the train, involving guns and
crossbows and smokebombs and who knows what else, not to mention
clambering from carriage to carriage, along the roof and even under the
train. Plausible? Not really, but that's not the point.
The real
joy of these books lies with the characters. Besides Amaranthe and
Sicarius, slowly inching towards a romantic relationship (actually not
even inching, this is sixteenth of an inch stuff), there’s Maldynado the
delightfully self-obsessed nobleman, Basilard the mute former pit
fighter, Books the academic, and Akstyr the magic-worker. This time we
also get Yara, the gruffly upright enforcer, and Sespian the young
emperor too, which livens up the mix. All of them have their own
distinct personalities and industrial-strength back-stories as well, so
they're all believably well-rounded characters. The charm is in the
banter between them and the peculiarly daft way they go about things.
There's enough laugh-out-loud humour here to lighten even the tensest
moments.
The ending, sadly, is a great big cliff-hanger of a
moment. Some of the threads specific to this book are resolved but our
heroes are plunged into a major crisis. I'm not a big fan of this trick,
but sometimes an author has to follow where the plot leads, and this
is, after all, the fourth in the series, so anyone still reading is
probably in it for the long haul. Luckily for me, the next book is
already out (actually the series has now wrapped up, so I'm way behind),
so - onward and upward. Four stars.
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