Mortedant’s Peril by R J Barker
I would like to thank Tor for an advance copy of this novel in exchange for a fair and honest review
Publisher - Tor U.K.
Published - Out Now
Price - £22 hardback £10.99 ebook
Irody can speak to the dead. But the living want him silenced.
Mortedants can speak to the dead – and Irody Hasp is the greatest of them. Not that they’ll admit it. And not that anyone actually likes the Mortedants, or Irody in particular. Nonetheless, Elbay is a city of tradition, and tradition calls for Mortedants to attend a death.
But when Irody reads the corpse of a low-level record-keeper, he’s dragged into a conspiracy that will see someone close to him murdered and Irody framed for the crime, the eyes of the city’s guilds, nobles and villains all fixed on him. With only days to prove his innocence before he is executed, Irody is forced to work with unlikely and unwanted allies: a street urchin and a hulking, inhuman mercenary from the sea people’s city of Oknusoka.
With danger and death lurking around every corner, and trust a luxury, Irody is running out of time. He must save himself and his friends, as well as Elbay – the magnificent, terrifying, complicated city that he loves. Or darkness will fall on them all.
Fantasy is full of fascinating cities from Minas Tirith to Camorr. For some fantasy stories the city is just thin set dressing for an adventure and uses the buildings as sets that hopefully the reader will not look too closely to see its paint on stretched canvas. The great cities of fantasy have depth, a sense of history and a huge array of secrets and lives pulsing away under the surface where like Ankh-Morpork you can see the potential for many more stories to flourish. Now RJ Barker adds the city of Elbay to that list and with the help of a fascinating unique man character brings this world to life and has a few things to say about our own world too. It creates a brilliant opening to a new series I’m very much looking forward to exploring more of.
Mortedants are the people you hire to hear the last thoughts of the dead. To know their final thoughts on were you loved or more often where is the family silver? But as it turned out many Mortedants turned out to be unexpectedly the beneficiaries of the deceased people they read the thoughts of! Many therefore have lost faith in the Mortedants and so they are now the most looked down upon and smallest of the three main power factions in the city of Elbay. Irody Hasp though is the Mortedant that all other Mortedants look down upon for a variety of reasons including he can be incredibly annoying.
Hasp gets a downtier job that may finally pay his bills for a day or so but unexpectedly finds himself in a stituation where he finds his apprentice murdered. In Elbay the finder of the deceased is typically the guilty party so Hasp has seven days to find his killer or be executed. With an unusual bodyguard Hasp is about to find out how Elbay works (or not) but also may be the only person to save the city if he lives long enough.
Oh my so much to look forward to when you read this! For me one of the highpoints is our narrator Hasp. I’m used to the occasionally unreliable narrator but here we have an incredibly unself-aware narrator. In his early chapters he is surly, pompous, aggrieved and clearly for him better than everyone else . Hasp would be annoying but Barker makes him also the focus of jokes. We can see why no one likes him and then just when we think he’s useless Barker shows Hasp is behind the sneers, the whining and self-pity something we don’t see too often in fantasy - he’s a fundamentally kind man yet he’s just not aware of this. Wanting to save himself from execution would we expect from what we know initially of Hasp be his motivation but actually he most of all wants justice for his apprentice that he really liked and feels extreme guilt over that he was not able to stop his murder. Barker peels away the layers of Hasp and while he isn’t too sure why he does what we does, we start to see that as with many of us the world shapes a person’s behaviour. Hasp is one of the of the most interesting complex characters I have met in a while.
Elbay is a fantastic city. Seven steeped tiers with the rick and powerful living on luxury mansions as you go up and as you go down tier the lower levels are squished full of the working class and downtrodden. It’s fuelled possibly by an asleep god whose energy powers and heats the water and the mysterious ring fire that is discharged outside the city at regular intervals incinerating anything living there at the time. It’s hidden ruler has ruled for centuries and is never seen while three main powers vie for supremacy The Mortedants we have met already but we also have the Worshipful promoting the power of their God and the Spurriers who use spirit energy to fuel all forts of mechanical devised from insect like vehicles to messenger devices. We have city full of classes, power battles and most of all we sense secrets. Elbay is not your standard fantasy faux medieval city and is a joy to explore and relaid there are even more secrets to fun in it. But it’s also importantly not a kind place. Life is cheap, justice is scare and executions are a plentiful. This is not a safe place to live and if you’re not one of those in charge you like Hasp and his apprentice are just inconvenient flies to be swatted.
As Hasp investigates then we get into a deliciously complex story of murder, scheming and conspiracy that also allows us to explore Elbay from the elites at the too to the criminal underworlds at its bottom and you may wonder after a while which is which. The plotting as regular readers of Barker is delicious and everything has a purpose. To aid Hasp we have a fantastic bodyguard in the form of the immensely tall, power and non human Whisper who as with Hasp we discover has layers and secrets to why she is in the city and acts often as a judge of is Hasp doing the right thing. We also get a new would be apprentice in the form of young Mirial sharp as a tack not just in her wits but desire to attack enemies and we have a trio of characters that become a found family none of whom expected. They get into danger, scrapes and get to support one another in ways when we first meet them you’d never expect. Interestingly all of these bring out Hasp’s sense of decency which you’d never expect to have been there when you first meet him and for me it’s more how Elbay has caused him so much pain he’s developed this spiky armour hidden in a grimy black robe and hat that makes him so compelling to read to find out what he will do next as he doesn’t know either and is often surprised by his own actions.
Finally it’s the tone of the story that was a huge delight for me. In Barker’s more epic works there is often a grimness combined with bravery and the off moment of laughter and weirdness. Here tonally Barker is more fluid spinning on a sixpence from the laugh out loud scenes of someone using pie as distraction technique, emotionally charged action sequences to a deep fierce sharp edged satire at how the privileged use everyone for their own games.
There are moments of adventure, the ultra weird and fantastical and a growing sense that there are many stories talking place in this book all at once. Mortedant’s Peril very much stands on its own two feet but rather than a feeling of a single storyline there is a strong feeling that here there could be many many stories in this city and its wider world to be told.
I strongly recommend Mortedant’s Peril, it’s a tale that feels light and yet can carry within it moments of darkness, pure true courage, magic and raging against injustice but most of all the message that people should always remember to be kind. Smart fantasy that carries adventure, satire and laugh out loud wit is hard to find so I suggest you get this book onto your shelves as soon as possible.
