Impressively Dunn
Synopsis
WHAT WOULD YOU SACRIFICE FOR GLORY?
Taerlys Eileerean, the powerful Queen of Gaelyr, nurtures a dangerous dream and will sacrifice anything to turn it into reality, even those she loves.
Driven by greed and arrogance, her actions will seed the war between her two daughters, Daelyn and Haewyn.
Daelyn will inherit two Queendoms united by a lie and divided by mistrust. To keep her crown, she will fight enemies in the battlefield, but the most treacherous are those dwelling in the shadows of her own court.
Ambition, madness and greed, grief and love will give birth to an unfathomable darkness.
It is a dangerous thing to meddle with fate.
Review
Come for the intriguing fantasy world, stay for the addictive backstabbing… indie author Bella Dunn has begun an epic new fantasy series here, and it’s more devilishly ambitious than a tech billionaire with too many rockets, but given the way I tore through it and the number of scenes where my heart was in my mouth, I have to conclude that her ambition has not been misplaced. This is original, this is fun, this is thrilling, and I can’t wait for the next one.
The world we’re concerned with is Atheatis, a continent split into four kingdoms. It’s by and large, though not exclusively, a matriarchal world where women are boss, still quite an unusual concept in fantasy, and one explored here not as a gimmick but as a fully realized society spanning from the religion (“The Great Mother” is their God; the queen herself is the “Mother Priestess” and religious head) to the rules of monarchy and cultural traditions.
Once upon a time, as explained in a lot of (luckily interesting) build up, the Queen of Gaelyr, a Gaelic-inspired kingdom, ruled over all four kingdoms, but then some princes got a bit tired of the matriarchy and a bloody war followed. Generations later, Queen Taerlys, inspired by a prophecy that “the maiden queen” will unite the land, is obsessed with uniting the kingdoms using her daughters and various tactical marriages to do so, but thereby triggers a dangerous feud between her children and the kind of intra-royal Machiavellian shenanigans fueled by magic and blood and bad omens that may lead to all-out devastating war.
The first thing that struck me was how wrong this could have gone. Dunn has chosen to make this an inter-generational story; first the queen, then her two daughters, and ultimately (though not really in this book) her granddaughter; all fighting to unite or conquer the lands. It’s ambitious, but could have felt disjointed. But even though we move in this book from the queen’s point of view to her daughters; Dunn’s decision to make this a fast-paced, timeline-jumping story actually works in her favor, and I was so absorbed by the quick-moving addictive plotline of royal deceit and secrets coming to light that I never felt any sense of whiplash, though others might not agree.
I was also struck by just how much effort Dunn has put into fleshing out this world. The influences of Gaelic mythology and Irish history are strong, but Dunn has left her own mark on the various kingdoms. From fashion to traditions to war histories to geography, it’s a carefully crafted world, and the result is a nice mix of action and worldbuilding. We see some of the other kingdoms (mainly the sea-faring, mermaid-iconographied one) and the rest have their own histories of timelines as shown by the four family trees Dunn includes at the back of the book. Yes, this is one of those fantasies where you need a good family tree to keep track; but whereas these are traditionally slow paced, complex affairs, Dunn has combined genealogically vital plotlines with a cheetah-like sprinting style and it feels vivacious rather than cumbersome. There’s also a nicely realized concept pf the Queen literally modifying the Mother Goddess in a spiritual, fantasy version of various pagan beliefs that is explored in some detail.
But perhaps the real reason I loved this book and tore through like a squirrel in a nut factory is that it’s just a rollicking great story, full of betrayal, family members plotting various villainous schemes, insurrections, dark magic, royals trying to win over foreign kingdoms, assassins, battles and so much more. It takes a while for the story to get established, but once the background gives way to the voracious fast plot, we get some terrific set pieces that feel like a great episode of TV. The accused princess must prove her innocence of murder before the watching court! The queen waits by her ailing daughter’s bedside to trap the potential assassin in the act! The queen is lured into a battlefield trap! It’s a lot of fun. Dunn has this nice way of keeping scenes feeling tight and exciting by switching between perspectives in short scenes, so we immediately jump into a new character’s head to see their reaction to a sudden twist. It works.
Dunn ends it with a gigantic battle set piece and, despite the fast pace of the book and jumping between characters and timelines, you still feel desperately for these characters and will them to survive it – an impressive sign of Dunn’s ability to wreak emotion from just a few scenes with a character.
Overall, The Sorrow of the Wise Man is a fast moving, addictive plot of court politics, betrayal and looming war in an impressively detailed and original Gaelic-inspired matriarchal fantasy world… I’m more sold on this new series than toilet paper in a pandemic.
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