The Tyranny of Faith

Starred review from December 15, 2022
This grimdark political fantasy thriller is the second of a trilogy chronicling the fall of an empire. Imperial Justice Sir Konrad Vonvalt; his clerk (and the novel's narrator), Helena Sedanka; and their two companions have traveled to Sova, capital of the Empire of the Wolf. There they intend to confront the traitorous Justices of the Magistratum, who have been sharing their secret magical knowledge with zealous priest Patria Bartholomew Claver, and gain the emperor's assistance in going after Claver, who is currently raising an army and may have designs on the throne. But their efforts are stymied by the suspiciously timed kidnapping of the Emperor's grandson, which Sir Konrad is ordered to investigate, and the debilitating illness afflicting Sir Konrad, the result of a hex cast by Claver. As Sir Konrad and his compatriots seek to solve a mystery, discover a cure, and find allies against Claver in an increasingly complex and treacherous political landscape, Helena battles both her feelings for Sir Konrad and her repugnance for some of his recent ruthless actions, which suggest that he is more and more willing to ignore the letter of the law in his pursuit of both justice and vengeance. While the previous installment, The Justice of Kings (2022), was pretty dark, this volume gets even grittier, as the remaining scraps of Helena's na�vet� about Sir Konrad's character and the nature of his work are brutally burned away and any faint hope that law might win out against might and self-serving politicking is crushed out in a fairly definitive way. It is now obvious that this empire of fractious, recently conquered nations is beyond saving, and all the characters can do is fight toward preserving whatever safety they can. This book travels even further beyond the traveling investigator/justice dealer mold of Tremayne's Sister Fidelma and van Gulik's Judge Dee series and more squarely into territory reminiscent of Andrzej Sapkowksi's Hussite trilogy, another complex and dark historical fantasy series inspired by medieval state-military-church political conflicts. Doom is inevitable; it will be interesting (and no doubt, heart-wrenching) to see what form it will take.

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