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Thraxas and the Sorcerers | Rating | |
| B | |||
| Martin Scott | |||
| Series | Related Books | ||
| N/A | N/A | ||
It's the dead of winter in Turai, and Thraxas the Investigator would like nothing more than the stay indoors. But the Sorcerer's Assemblage is in town to elect a new leader, and he's been hired to make sure Lisutaris, Turai's candidate, wins. But then one of the other candidates is murdered, and all the evidence is pointing straight at Lisutaris. She says she's innocent, but even Thraxas remains unconvinced. Still, it's his job to get her into office, and that's not going to happen if she's swinging by the neck. All he had to do was find the real culprit, who had utilizaed brilliant new spells to pull this off. Either of which might or might not actually exist.
This is yet another fantasy mystery, a genre mix that seems to becoming ever more common. But Thraxas is not the usual investigator that seems to populate these stories. He is cynical, like the others, but he's not wry and sarcastic. He comes off more as a grizzled veteran than a youthful smart-alec. There's also much less of golden-boy syndrome with Thraxas; he is perfectly willing to bribe, blackmail, and buy the votes he needs. Indeed, he considers it his duty to prove his client is not guilty, even if he knows for a fact that she is, and he's done so in the past. He is, in short, an investigator to be sure, but a very mercenary one with loyalties tied far more to whomever pays his wages than to any abstract concept of justice.
I was a bit surprised — in a bad way — at how quick some scenes were. It moves the story along, but it leaves out details that I felt would have been better retained. This is especially true during the occasional fight, but there are other critical scenes as well that suffered because the author seemed too eager to get to the next part of the story.
Although this is the third book of the series, reading the other books thankfully isn't necessary. This was the first I've read of them, and I understood everything I needed to understand. I doubt it'd hurt, though, and the story was good enough that I'm liable to get at least the first two should I ever run across them. This is an interesting take on the genre, and that it is told in first-person present tense lends it a certain immediacy that worked well. While not living up to the quality of Jim Butcher's Dresden Files, it is certainly comparable to most other books in the genre, and fans of Glen Cook's books will enjoy this as well.
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