Queen of Fire
Queen of Fire by Anthony Ryan My rating: 3 of 5 stars An epic conclusion to an epic trilogy, Anthony Ryan’s Queen of Fire brings the Raven's Shadow trilogy to an end in suitably grand style, yet somehow it feels like a missed opportunity. The first two books in the series Blood Song and Tower Lord were high energy and moved along with a real sense of urgency as mysteries unfolded or characters raced to conflicts. Queen of Fire has both mysteries and conflicts galore, in fact it echos the climax of Tower Lord to an extent yet doesn’t have quite the same climatic impact. The narrative of Queen of Fire picks up where Tower Lord ended with armies manoeuvring in the rubble of the Unified Realm. Queen Lyrna renewed by the dark with her burns healed is now worshipped by her armies and seeks justice for the Realm from the Volarian slavers attacks. There is a good counter point to Lyrna with the Blessed Lady Reva also worshipped by her Cumbraelin archers. There is some foreshadowing, some insinuation that Lyrna’s renewal only goes skin deep and that the desire for justice is hiding a darker more vengeful motivation. A motivation that will of course set the Unified Realm’s Queen against its most moral defender in Vaelin. It is good characterisation and plot development that hints at an intriguing narrative pitting characters against each other into deeply personal moral conflicts, all the while facing the existential threat of the Ally and his servant the mad and sadistic ‘Woman’. There are plenty of these intriguing moral dilemmas set up, Frentis’ reckoning for actions taken under duress, Lyrna’s terrible use of Vaelin’s sister Alornis, the potential Queenly rival in Reva, even sexual jealousy of Vaelin’s love Dahrena. It really seems like Queen of Fire is set to challenge the cohesion and loyalty of the Unified Realm heroes to their new Queen. Sadly, for me at least, it is a narrative strand that is barely followed through with, and in the end all too neatly avoided… like I said a missed opportunity. Part of the issue with Queen of Fire is that it is rather to epic for its own good. Throughout Blood Song and Tower Lord the villain of the piece has always remained an existential threat, a mystery working through the intermediaries of the Volarian Empire. With Queen of Fire Ryan has come to the point where the enemies need to be explained and this results in a narrative chocked full of exposition and lore dumps as the Valorian Empire’s history and its function in the Ally’s plans is explained. Another issues is the machinations of the quite frankly scenery chewing ‘Woman’ who spends a lot of her time telling Frentis her life-story or hinting at nefarious plans in shared dreams. I think she’s ace by the way, like Alan Rickman’s Sheriff of Nottingham but 100% more blood thirsty. But alas there is not enough of her interacting with the heroes in any meaningful way until the very end when the batshit gets dialled up to 11. Anyway, all the exposition and lore does give Queen of Fire epic scope and scale it however detracts and drags taking away the urgency and energy that made Blood Song and Tower Lord such engaging reads. Queen of Fire does have its high points, there are plenty of action sequences and battles, sword fights, nefarious plans and terrible monstrous enemies to combat. The lore and exposition is interesting stuff and the climatic scenes are a brutal and bloody denouement as you could want. It’s just in the end there is a lack of depth or follow through on the characterisation and you are left with the strange feeling that Queen of Fire could have been something more….like I said a missed opportunity. View all my reviews
