Which is all to say, what she lacks in moral rectitude, she makes up for in funnnnnnnn!
More like the “getting herself into ridiculously impossible situations, then bad-mouthing her way out” kind of fun, but okay
When we meet Amra in The Thief Who Pulled on Trouble’s Braids, her thievy friend Corbin is in a pinch after being swindled by a client, and asks her to hide a hideous golden toad for a while. The task of watching over a pilfered religious artifact seems benign-enough, but Corbin’s subsequent violent death pulls her into a web of mystery, betrayal, and murder as seemingly everyone in town is trying to get a piece.
This town is Lucernis, a festering urban dystopia, where vengeful cemetery goddesses, inhuman assassins, and brutal Giuliani-style crime suppression intertwine. While Amra’s network of underworld compatriots would not qualify as overly-bothered with morality, they operate (mostly) under an honor system that binds them into a motley crew. To protect her during a fact-finding mission to a particularly gnarly part of town, Amra’s fixer (rough equivalent to “crime pimp”) assigns reluctant mage Holgren Angrado as a bodyguard. Amra soon discovers that this seemingly benign spell tinkerer displays an alarming talent for exploding human impediments into fine red mist, among other dangerous skills.
It turns out that Holgren’s not the only one who is more than meets the eye. As old gods and hell-spawned creatures join the effort to recover the artifact for their own nefarious purposes, it becomes clear that Amra also possesses some other-worldly powers (beyond her ability to wield the phrase “Kerf’s balls” like a finely-honed weapon) – powers that evolve in the subsequent books, where they are revealed to be equal parts blessings and curses.
Because I, too, am all about finding joy amidst this summer of rage, I inhale any story that transports me out of the doom and gloom of daily news, and basically read each of these books in an extended sitting. The worlds of Lucernis, Thagoth, and Bellarius are full of strange magic, unsavory creatures, and angry, impulsive gods. And lots and lots and lots of action! Demon chases, magical traps, warring factions, knife fights – the pace rarely flags.
Yessssss, that’s the stuff
Unlike some of our other fantasy faves (*cough* Feysand), Amra and Hogren definitely do not qualify extraordinary specimens of humanity, and I love them for that. They are scarred and sharp, and become more so as indignities accrue, a hair shearing here, a lost body part there. But that makes their relationship as it develops even more delicate and precious. No one would describe them as even handsome, but to each other they are stunningly beautiful. And the unsurety they feel expresses itself in some sweet moments. Like when Holgren creates blood doll doubles as a distraction, the one of himself is barely a scarecrow, but, Amra notes:
The one he made for me was a bit more. Its short, brown hair was artfully if simply arranged, and its face was free of any scar or blemish. The nose was long and straight, the almond-shaped, green eyes perfectly balanced. My own thin lips were fuller on that face, and I would have needed cosmetics to get them as red as he made them. I fingered my oft-broken nose and wondered if he were mocking me or if this was how he really saw me.
They are terminally awkward together, but when the other is in danger work with a single-minded purpose, not caring who or what gets hurt in the process.
It’s a messy world in which there are often no good options, but the books still serve as a fantastic escape because a) the non-stop action is a great ride, and b) for the time being their world is still way more fucked up than ours.
The first two books are independent stories, while the latter tell a longer story arc, with common themes woven throughout. Mysteries from early in the series pay off in the later books, and, best of all, there is still one more book to come!
Yes, according to this random Goodreads comment, book 5 is set to drop sometime in 2018. Fortunately, the end of book 4 (The Thief Who Wasn’t There) wasn’t too big of a cliffie, so I’m not mad.
Okay, mostly not mad.
So grab the series RIGHT NOW and prepare to spend a week blissfully not giving a single hot damn about what is happening in the world, before crashing headlong into a book hangover and whatever nonsense current events hellscape awaits!
