The Spirit Rebellion

[sawyl]

The second of Rachel Aaron's Legend of Eli Monpress novels, The Spirit Rebellion follows hot on the heels of the first, with Eli gloating over the success of his kidnapping of the King of Mellinor and Miranda, now bound to the great spirit of the Sea of Mellinor, returning to the Spirit Court in Zarin where she finds herself caught up in a power struggle between her mentor, Etmon Banage, the Rector Spiritualis, and Grenith Hern, an influential member of the court.

Having lost Nico's concealing coat during the final confrontation in Allaze, Eli takes her to the only person who can craft a replacement: rogue Shaper Heinricht Slorn. Uninterested in an offer of gold, Slorn instead commissions Eli to locate one of a number of rare indestructible swords created by the wizard Fenzetti. Discovering that the Duke of Gaol owns such a sword and not at all put off by the sudden appearance of a series of posters boasting the invulnerability of Gaol's citadel, Eli, Josef and Nico promptly set off for the duchy's capital only to encounter two critical problems: firstly, that none of the local spirits will talk to Eli; and secondly, that someone else, no doubt inspired by the posters, has already cleaned out the Duke's treasury.

Miranda Lyonette, meanwhile, arrives home to find that Grenith Hern has her role in the events of The Spirit Thief in such a bad light that she risks being drummed out of the Spirit Court unless she compromises her principles. After staging a daring escape, Miranda is asked by the West Wind to investigate the strange behaviour of the spirits in the Duchy of Gaol. Initially reluctant to accept the assignment — Gaol is Hern's power base, causing Miranda to worry that any action on her part could be seen as petty revenge — she agrees to take a look only to find that beneath the obsessively tidy exterior, the spirits are very closed off and reluctant to communicate. Needless to say, Miranda's investigation and Eli's heist eventually come to intersect and the pair find themselves putting aside some of their differences to confront the greater menace possessed by Edward Duke of Gaol.

As befits the second book in a series The Spirit Rebellion adds a great deal of extra background to the world, adding in characters like Slorn, mentioned in an aside in the first book, and filling out the background of the various different wizarding groups like the Shapers and through Slorn's work on Nico's new coat, we get to learn a lot more about what it means to be a demonseed and what price the seeds pay for their extended abilities. With Miranda's trial, we get to see how the Spirit Court is structured, with the Rector at its head and a series of independent Tower Keepers below him forming a decision-making conclave that is as subject to politicking as any other assembly. We also get to learn a little more about Eli's background, his possible parentage, and the person cost of the various decisions he has made about the direction of his life.

Edward Duke of Gaol, when he finally appears, is a formidable and fascinating antagonist. Where Renaud was a carpet-chewing monster, Edward is a precise, controlled and thoughtful villain who knows the cost of everything and the value of nothing. What makes his villainy far worse than the ordinary variety is its very lack of overt violence. Rather that threaten and bully and enslave, he has created a system of structural oppression that allows him to impose his will on his entire duchy from the rivers and winds at the top to the cobblestones at the bottom, creating a place that runs like clockwork and which presents an initially attractive facade to the outside world but which is actually a system of enslavement so subtle that it is enforced by the spirits themselves.

Highly enjoyable.