Briar Engagement

Five years ago, I first read the fantasy book The Briar King, by Greg Keyes. It had just been published, and came with the recommendation of another author whose writing I liked. It was also the first book of a four-book series.

The second book, The Charnel Prince, arrived a very reasonable year later, but for whatever reason, I decided I didn't want to continue the journey at that time. I chose instead to wait until the series was complete. I would then go back and begin again with book one, and read the series straight through to its conclusion.

Well, the time has come. In about a month from now, the fourth and final book will be hitting stores. I've got the first three books here on my shelf, and I figure that mixed in with whatever else I do with my time, it might take me a few weeks to get through just those anyway.

This week, I finished the first book, for the second time. After the intervening years, I still remembered the broad shape of the story and a fair amount about the characters, but some of the details had faded a bit.

One thing that had happened between then and now is that I read the Song of Ice and Fire series by George R. R. Martin (what exists of it thus far). Perhaps my opinion is colored a bit by how highly I regard those books, but I feel like Keyes is another author heavily influenced by what Martin has been doing with his series over the last decade. It's not necessarily a bad thing.

But he's definitely not doing it as well as Martin. The Briar King does dabble in courtly politics, and is fairly interesting at it. It has a somewhat large cast of characters, though tries to restrict the storytelling "points of view" to a subset of that group. The author is not above killing important characters to progress the story. All elements I associate with Martin.

The story is interesting. What grabbed me then did get hold of me again this time through, and I still want to see how it all turns out. The book deals with the signs of an apocalypse manifesting in a fantasy land, as evil forces try to hasten the end of the world. It has just the right amount of magic to be a unique setting, while not introducing too much to offer "easy ways out" in the narrative.

But the writing is a bit hit and miss. When it takes its time, it's at its best. There are passages where you do get into the mind of a character, and watch the story unfold with a sense of the dread that "the end of the world" truly merits. But other times, the writing feels incredibly clipped and rushed. Not at times of action or urgency, necessarily, so I don't chalk it up to stylistic choice. Some chapters in the book have as many as eight or nine single-page pieces, spaced with time jumps, a bit too hasty and superficial. In a film, they'd be reduced to montages, or cut entirely.

I suppose all that is to say that while I still enjoyed the book overall and intend to see the series through, I didn't think as highly of it this time around as I did before. I recommend it to fans of the fantasy genre, but I don't want anyone to take the literal facts of my situation -- that I've been waiting five years for this series to be complete -- as high anticipation or fervent love of the book. I'd rate The Briar King a B-.

More on the rest of the series as I work my way through.