Amazon.co.uk Review
A prelude of magical battle and hard-won victory over hated slave masters strikes a note of doom as it's suggested that the coming Golden Age is already poisoned by misuse of magic at its founding. Next, a much later historian's note records that "In the year 2,223 E, the age of Everon came to an abrupt and terrible end." This is the year in which the main narrative begins.
It's a time of late-medieval kingdoms, with credible political tension and devious diplomacy. In the kingdom of Crotheny, something is very wrong in the royal forest--signalled by the forest warden's sighting of a "greffyn". Both like and unlike the griffin of myth, this creature's mere presence poisons streams with a deadly contamination that lingers and can be passed on by touch.
Something is rotten in the Church, too, where a gifted novice monk finds himself translating ancient, unspeakable texts that should have been left in decent obscurity. Other kinds of wrongness fester at court, with shifting tensions among the mostly likeable members of a dysfunctional royal family, increasing political pressure from outside and genuinely shocking treason within. When a knight of the Queen's most trusted personal guard abruptly tries to kill her, there seems to be no safety anywhere. Not even in the well-defended "coven" or convent to which the youngest, most wilful princess is despatched to be trained as an assassin-nun.
As a variety of neatly-drawn characters pursue personal feuds, vendettas, love affairs, comic pratfalls, escape plans and paths to advancement, there are repeated hints that the land itself--defiled by sinister rituals of desecration--is dying. The greffyn and the appalling Briar King of prophecy seem to be symptoms rather than the real disease.
The Briar King is a strong start to what promises to be a gripping fantasy sequence. --David Langford --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
Review
Derry Journal, September 2003
SFX, September 2003
Guardian, September 2003
Product Description
–ELIZABETH HAYDON
Bestselling author of Prophecy: Child of Earth
It has been two thousand years since the Born Queen defeated the last of the Skasloi lords. In doing so she freed the race of humans–once taken from their distant homes and forced to wear the bitter yoke of slavery. Thus begins the saga of the Kingdoms of Thorn and Bone, an epic tale of war and virtue, sorcery and betrayal. . . .
THE BRIAR KING
Book One of The Kingdoms of Thorn and Bone
In the kingdom of Crotheny, two young girls play in the tangled gardens of the sacred city of the dead. Fleeing an imaginary attacker, the girls–one of whom is the reckless young daughter of the king–discover the unknown crypt of the legendary, ancestral queen, Virgenya Dare.
In the wilds of the forest, while investigating the slaughter of an innocent family, king’s holter Aspar White weaves his way through a maze of ancient willows–and comes face-to-face with a monstrous beast found only in folk tales and nightmares. Meanwhile, traveling the same road, a scholarly young priest begins an education in the nature of evil, found festering just beneath the surface of the seemingly peaceful land.
The royal family itself comes under siege, facing betrayal that only sorcery could accomplish. Now–for three beautiful sisters, for a young man made suddenly into a knight, and for a woman in love with a roguish adventurer–a rising darkness appears, shattering what was once certain, familiar, and good. These destinies and more will be linked when malevolent forces walk the land. For Crotheny, the most powerful nation in the world, is shaken at its core. And the Briar King, harbinger of death, has awakened from his slumber.
Imbuing his tale with richness, pathos, action, and passion, Greg Keyes begins an amazing new epic that takes fantasy fiction to a new level. At the heart of the story, Keyes has placed a remarkable young woman, Anne Dare, the youngest daughter of a royal family . . . and the one person upon whom the fate of this world may depend.
