Monday, August 12, 2019

SciFi/Fantasy Book Review: Pale Kings by Micah Yongo



Full Disclosure:  This book was read as an e-ARC (Advance Reader Copy) obtained via Netgalley from the publisher in advance of the book's release on August 13, 2019 in exchange for a potential review.  I give my word that this did not affect my review in any way - if I felt conflicted in any way, I would simply have declined to review the book.

Pale Kings is the second epic fantasy novel from author Micah Yongo, after 2018's Lost Gods.  It's also the sequel to Lost Gods - a fact that is not necessarily clear on online marketplaces: Both Amazon and B&N online for example don't have the book listed as a sequel and the blurb says "From the Author of Lost Gods."  I haven't read Lost Gods despite me having bookmarked it a while back - none of my libraries have a copy and I was hoping they'd follow on my suggestion to acquire it, but so far no good.  So I was coming into this book a bit behind a reader of the first book, so keep that in mind.

And does Pale Kings work as a starting point for a new reader in this series?  It kind of does, in that I was able to follow things as they occurred, and I grew to care about the world and some of the characters and their fates.  On the other hand, the book is definitely building upon setup and character work done in the prior novel, so I wouldn't recommend trying to start here, even if you won't be totally lost if you try.  Overall though, Pale Kings is an intriguing epic fantasy novel which definitely works, and I will be trying to pick up Lost Gods to get a more complete understanding of the story before the next book's release.


--------------------------------------------------Plot Summary-------------------------------------------------------
The Surviving members of the Brotherhood of the Shedaim's last sharim - Neythan, Arianna, Josef, and Daneel - are scattered across the Five Lands, having been betrayed by their elders....and the fate of everything lies in their hands.  Neythan, Arianna, and their comrade Caleb go south to decipher the mysterious magi scroll they have obtained.  Daneel runs from his former comrades with a young boy he was once sent to kill, a boy who might be less ordinary than he appears.  And Josef remains with the remnants of the Brotherhood, guarding Sidon, the young Sharif (king) of the Sovereignty of the Five Lands.

Their paths may have diverged for now, but disaster is coming to the Lands.  Already, the city of Geled has mysteriously been destroyed, and now a lost son of the last Sharif is working with the nomad tribesman displaced by his ancestors to bring back the Father of the Gods to wreak havoc upon the land and restore him to his birthright.  As the four go forward, they will find more to themselves, and the world, than they truly knew, and that beings known as Pale Kings have been making their influence around the world for hundreds of years, and that their plans are nearing fruition......
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Pale Kings begins with a cryptic prologue that sort of sets the stage for our four most prominent heroes - which helped me, cryptic as it was, since I hadn't read Lost Gods first - and then it throws you into the stories of the major characters.  Each chapter is written from the point of view of various characters: Neythan, Sidon (followed by Josef), Daneel and Noah, as well as that of Joram, one of the central antagonists (sort of).

And this story structure allows for the point of view characters to really shine and develop throughout.  The story for the most part keeps each of the point of view characters separate from the others until the very end (and even then), so each set of characters essentially has their own journey, each incidentally related to the other.  And the point of view characters are pretty good - Neythan as the seeming chosen one, Daneel as the guy trying to do what's right and help out Noah and figure out what Noah's importance is, Sidon as the young ruler trying to claim his birthright among a bunch of sharks with their own agendas, etc.  Even Joram, the point of view character helping the antagonist is interesting in his motives and insecurities - he's most definitely evil in his actions mind you and pretty horrifying in what he does, but he's understandable and not cackling evil, with his journey never feeling like it's a fait accompli either.

The non-point of view characters are a bit more hit or miss, with the lack of knowledge from the first book definitely hurting me here.  This is especially the case for Neythan's companions, one of whom (Arianna) is supposed to be of significant plot importance but just seems a hanger-on due to her lack of perspective here with little to actually do other than note what is happening around Neythan.  Similarly, the plot agendas of some of the characters, most notably Neythan, are a little less clear without the first book's guidance.  Still it all generally flows pretty well, with the exception of one point in which a set of characters returns to a town off-screen where one of their number is being held hostage and just leaves with the hostage back in tow without any issue ENTIRELY off-screen, which just felt extremely jarring considering the attitude of that town earlier in the book.

I'm being extremely generic in this review so far, for which I apologize, since it's really not as helpful as I could be  Essentially the book has four parties - one trying to discover the secret history of Neythan and decipher the truth behind the past and a magical scroll, one of the young king dealing with nobles who seem to be plotting to remove him from rule, one of an assassin on the run after betraying his guild to save a kid and discovering the powers of the young kid, and one the antagonist following the whispers of the sealed-away evil God as he attempts to gain power to lead that god's rebirth into the world.  Even without the background of the first book, these plots generally are pretty interesting, and the book concludes them all in intriguing, if cliffhangery places.  Yeah this book ends in a cliffhanger, so you shouldn't expect a satisfying resolution here.

But overall, Pale Kings is a satisfying epic fantasy story from a different viewpoint, so if you're willing to read a trilogy to get max enjoyment out of it, it's worth your time.

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