The Briar King

Prior to stumbling upon Greg Keyes The Briar King (Book 1 of The Kingdoms of Thorn and Bone) I had no idea that Keyes wrote anything other than tie-in fiction. I have read his three entries in the Star Wars Universe, which like most of the other Star Wars novels are all fun reads. With the exception of the Timothy Zahn entries a perhaps one or two other though I never can remember who wrote which novel, which I guess is a good thing as all of the novels should flow together as if written by one author. Keyes also has novels set in the Babylon 5 universe and a game tie-in with the Elder Scrolls, I have not read any of these works.

With this as a background I did not have any grand hopes for The Briar King. I had seen it referred to as “GRRM-lite,” which when you really think about it could be applied to a lot of works; face it a lot of people can attempt to reach GRRM’s level, but so far I have not found anyone who has. Is The Briar King truly GRRM-lite? Well it is Sword and Sorcery, but much heavier on the Sword end. It does feature political machinations and unforeseen plot twists. There is no lack of blood and treachery, the narrative style is more POV than not, and there is a mostly unseen evil working to destroy the world of men. These are the bones that make a Song of Ice and Fire and the Briar King. However, the Briar King may be GRRM-lite, but it is more of the lite and less of the GRRM.

I liked all of the “POV characters” well enough, some more than others as you would expect. They are dissimilar enough to not feel like different sides of the same coin and they are truly spread around enough to actually give you different windows on the overall story. At the same time they interact enough to give you different viewpoints on the same points of action. I also enjoy the way magic is more of an enhancing tool (in most cases) than an a pure weapon.

The story follows members of the royal family and also a few people that work for either them or the church as an ancient evil rises anew. It is unclear in this first novel, just how much the political intrigue is purely on the human level and how much of it is actually the unseen hand of the Briar King (or whatever force might be behind him) using people as pawns in the larger game. As the evil rises other creatures thought to be the stuff of legend or tales used to scare children into obedience begin to arise, and of course there are the obligatory evil monks who have been corrupted by the power of evil.

The novel covers plenty of ground and actually builds to a fairly strong conclusion. In point of fact this novel could easily have stood alone, although at the end the reader would have been left with a few questions and the larger story arc would not have been resolved. It is, unfortunately, not often that a first novel in a planned series has even this much of a full story feel to its structure, and for that I give Keyes some credit. This is a fairly quick read, nothing that requires too much attention to detail. I enjoyed my time with the characters and the story, I give it 3.5/5