The Copper Promise

[sawyl]

On the back of a suggestion on Tor, I found myself reading Jen Williams' The Copper Promise. An episodic novel, the story follows a group of three adventures — a knight with a past, a cheerfully amoral sell-sword, and a deposed aristocrat — as they wander around a world over-shadowed by the return of a destructive god. The story is a little episodic, as reflected by its four part structure, but it's fun, undemanding, engaging, and enjoyable.

Ghosts of the Citadel introduces the three heroes, igniting their quest by sending them off into a mysterious citadel at the heart of a busy city where they accidentally awaken an ancient and vengeful dragon-god. So far, so conventional. But Williams writing is engaging and the characters are well drawn: Aaron Frith, physically and mentally scarred by a group of invaders who tortured the rest of his family to death; Sebastian, whose calm demeanour covers a troubled past and looks unlikely to stand up well in the face of major stressors; and Wydrin, the happy-go-lucky swords-woman and thief, who is just as happy drinking and stealing things as crawling through dusty dungeons and releasing unspeakable horrors.

The Children of the Fog finds the adventures abruptly relocated to the village of Pinehold, where Frith finds himself face-to-face with Fane, the man responsible for the attack on his home and the deaths of his family. With the help of a mysterious glass-blower Frith uncovers the secret of his family's hidden treasure value, while Wydrin confront's Fain's two demon-powered henchmen, the titular Children of the Fog, and Sebastian gets a little bit fluttery over the glass-blower's apprentice. While I'm not entirely convinced the Big Mystery of the value really comes off — the big revelation never really comes — the rest of the episode works rather well, filling out the world, adding some exciting magical elements, and showing the characters making friends and generally behaving like real people.

The Prince of Wounds finds the companions going their separate ways: Frith to a distant island to learn how to control his new-found magical powers; Wydrin to cause havoc back home in Crosshaven; and Sebastian to investigate his strange link with the dragon god's army of lizard soldiers who are doing their best to destroy the world. Frith's part of the story allows Williams to systematise the nature of the world's magic, while Sebastian's decision to return to his roots as a Ynnsmouth Knight enables his back story to come out, although it's not entirely clear whether the person responsible for his expulsion was aggrieved by his homosexuality or his failure to uphold his vow of chastity — but given how relaxed everyone else seems about his sexuality, I suspect it might be the latter. Wydrin, on the hand, has rather too much fun impersonating a priestess to pull a fast one on a local pirate king, only to suffer moral qualms when she discovers that her partner in crime has decided to go beyond mere theft and into murder.

Upon the Ashen Blade draws the various threads back together. Thanks to his studies with the eccentric Jolnir, Frith has finally come to understand the nature of the secret hidden in his ancestors' vault and how it might just allow them to defeat the dragon Y'Ruen. Sebastian, having made a dark bargain in order to help his former order, finds himself at a moral crossroads, while Wydrin needs to put her conflict with the last of the Children of the Fog behind her in order to concentrate on helping Frith work his great spell.

Although it might not be the most profoundly original of concepts — adventurers get together, discover hidden powers, and defeat a great evil — the result is well executed and it's enjoyable to be able to see characters on a positive trajectory, recovering from the horrible tragedies of the past, rather than plummeting towards their inevitable doom. The characters are engaging, especially the sparky Wydrin, and some of the dragon-god's brood army of lizard women — who'd normally be othered as horrible, faceless monsters — get to establish their own individuality, complete with slightly odd names picked at random from looted books on the grounds of the mellifluousness.