- Paperback: 736 pages
- Publisher: Gollancz; New edition edition (11 Nov 1999)
- Language English
- ISBN-10: 1857988981
- ISBN-13: 978-1857988987
- Product Dimensions: 17.4 x 10.8 x 3.6 cm
- Average Customer Review: 3.2 out of 5 stars See all reviews (4 customer reviews)
- Amazon Bestsellers Rank: 420,444 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
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Product Description
Amazon.co.uk Review
It's highly refreshing to find an epic fantasy that escapes mediaeval "Fantasyland" settings. Opening with The Harlequin's Dance (1997) Tom Arden's five-book "Orokon" sequence has a late 18th-century flavour, mixing swashbuckling adventure, Hogarthian lowlife and Regency high society. The King and Queen of Swords begins in a city resembling Jane Austen's Bath during ballroom season--though here events in the Pump Room and bedroom can be much spicier.
Young hero Jem's quest for five magic crystals is complicated by suitable melodrama: abductions, betrayals, impersonations, secret identities, notorious highwaymen, inheritances conditional on unlikely marriages and a pistol duel with a shocking outcome. Meanwhile heroine Cata has had her memory wiped and is being remade (with difficulty) as a young society lady; and the old, drunken usurper King of Ejland is a mere puppet of his First Minister, who's involved in schemes to bring back the horrid anti-god Toth. Exactly why do enigmatic mentors want Jem to gather the crystal keys to Toth's power?
Crystal number two lies in the adjacent land, Zenzau, against which Ejland is busily going to war. Jem stumbles through a battle zone, guided by unreliable fairy tales and cryptic, haunting repetitions of the Swords Song:
Everything is lemon and nothing is lime, But even the truth shall be revealed in time...The climax features battle, dragons, shape-shifters, court cards that come dangerously alive and multiple revelations. Witty, stylish and gloriously convoluted. Next, the saga takes an Oriental turn in Sultan of the Moon and Stars. --David Langford
Book Description
Second in this flamboyant and stylish Fantasy set in the 18th Century
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Customer Reviews
Most Helpful Customer Reviews
4 of 4 people found the following review helpful
Format:Hardcover
This book is set in an 18th century type reality which reads like a Jane Austen-with a society that is very believable as all the haughty snobishness and morality of a time that you hope never comes back.
The fantasy continues about Catayne, the wild girl who after being made to forget about her past and the love that she had for Jemmany is made into a Lady in a strict accademy for unentered girls of polite society to transform them in to ladies, while her former enemy has conviced her that she is her aunt. The powers that she commanded over her beloved animals has also been forgotted.
While Jem, the cripple boy who is destined to bring the five great crystals of power lost by the gods aeons ago, has already gained the first crystal which has healed him and allow him to walk. Disguised the son of the disposed rightful king of the land (Jem) heads out to fulfil his destiny.
It is a very rich story that has just about every thing; love,hope,betrayal,highwayman,rape,longing etc. The characters and the reality is very much alive and believeable.
1 of 1 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
This is the second book in the Orokon series so brilliantly begun with The Harlequin's Dance. The once crippled boy known as Jemany Vexing has left Irion to pursue his quest for the crystals of The Orokon. The book is populated with a host of unforgettable characters who are constantly evolving; the scheming, grotesque Aunt Umbecca not least among them. Tom Arden has a refreshingly unique style which by turns amuses and intrigues.
0 of 1 people found the following review helpful
Format:Hardcover
The first book in this series was good. It was new, it took a new approach, it excited me. A new way of looking at fantasy. The first book was slow at times, but overall the interactions between the charcters was entertaining. This second book however simply DRAGS. The characters are NOT entertaining, you don't care for them, or their sordid lives. The quest that Jemany is on... well it's all vague. The plot is never really uncovered, and there's too little meat to keep a reader hooked. I finished this book out of duty, not desire. Never a good sign. The third book is out... I may get it second hand if I see it, but I feel no urge to rush out and buy it.
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