Synopsis
Amidst the gas lamp shadows former soldier-turned-mercenary John Vanguard hunts criminals at the behest of his corrupt employer, Captain Felix Sanquain. Shamed by his deserter past and seeking to make amends for his many misdeeds, a chance encounter with Tarryn Leersac – a skilled young would-be-assassin fallen from the graces of high society – leads Vanguard to become an unlikely mentor.
Charged with hunting down the killer of two guards left washed up on the banks of the canal, the further Vanguard delves into the underbelly of the city the more he finds himself entangled in a web of secrets and lies. A prominent aristocrat is missing. Crime lords, con men and harlots run amok and the city teeters on the brink of another revolution.
With his already precarious reputation hanging by a thread, Vanguard must piece together how and why the last war came to pass, find a way to earn redemption for his mistakes and come to terms with the past in a city where few survive, and even fewer can be trusted.
Review
I’ve been excited to get to HL Tinsley’s debut for a long time. I’m a fan of stories with morally grey characters and fantasy with a noir flavour, and this story definitely delivered on both. The atmospheric writing creates a vivid picture of the grimy city viewed through the eyes of its flawed and complex characters. This is a character-driven story but the city is almost a character in itself and corruption seeps through its very pores.
Vanguard, the protagonist, is a disillusioned ex-soldier with a whole host of inner demons, trying to do some good amid a sea of terrible options. He’s a killer working as a mercenary for a corrupt warlord, targeting criminals in an attempt to atone for the terrible deeds he’s committed in the past.
Tarryn, by contrast, is a former noble turned would-be assassin with decidedly less of a moral compass than our other protagonist. He’s young and impulsive and Vanguard takes him on as an apprentice of sorts while he investigates a spate of crimes that draw him deeper into the city’s dark underbelly.
While those two are the main players, there’s a number of side characters through whose eyes we see over the course of the story and all are equally complex and layered.
This isn’t the sort of fantasy with epic battles and heroic deeds. This world has a history of war and revolution, but it forms more of a background to the complex goings-on of the characters in the present day. The tension is palpable on every page and Tinsley’s simple yet elegant prose kept me turning the pages. It all feels very polished and it’s very easy to see why this book was chosen as a SPFBO finalist.
If you like your fantasy on the bleak and brutal side with characters who have real depth and are awash in modern dilemmas, I can’t recommend this enough. The story gives me the same vibe as Peter McLean’s Priest of Bones, and it’s subtle enough on the fantastical elements that I feel like readers of modern crime noir will find something to enjoy here, too.
I’m seriously impressed with this debut and I can’t wait to see where Tinsley takes the series next.
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