By Conn Iggulden.
In Darien: Empire of Salt, General Justan tries to overthrow the government in a coup d’etat.
That’s about the entire story.
The main characters play their parts in this drama. The clairvoyant hunter, Elias Post, is blackmailed into using his skill to assassinate King Johannes. Nancy discovers that she doesn’t neutralise magic, but absorbs it, and converts it to heat, which she can use to devastating effect. Tellius, the Fagin of Darien, finds that Arthur is not a child, but an ancient child-sized golem, who becomes the king’s bodyguard, and is then made king by Lady Sallet (who is a prominent member of one of the city’s ruling families).
Unlike Elias, I couldn’t see how this one was going to end. I thought the main characters might form some sort of league, but that never happened so that the story ended up being about a bunch of random people with special powers mostly acting randomly. While Elias was forced to help the gunfighter, Vic Deeds, assassinate the king, Nancy murdered Lord Albus, the king’s uncle, in revenge for her father’s death at the hands of Albus’s men, and then promptly turned round to defend the city against General Justan and his army. Arthur, aided by other boys under Tellius’s wing, decided to close the gates of the city even though he had little obvious motivation to do so.
Like Sir Richard Ashbury in Dan Davis’s series Vampier Knight/Outlaw, Elias was constantly being pushed to his limits, and he somehow rather improbably survived, which was suspending my disbelief just a little too far.
The world of Darien is magical, but there are also guns, although these are rare and the tech seems to be beyond the weapons of the 17th century. The Sallet Greens, who are Lady Sallet’s elite warriors, wear magic-powered armour reminiscent of mechas in anime. Indeed, the overall feel is a bit like the anime series Last Exile.
It may be that the overall story will become clearer as the trilogy progresses, but far from appearing to led to an obvious second book, Darien: Empire of Salt is self-contained.
The story is a decent read, but does seem to be a little aimless.