The Alchemist of Souls
by Anne Lyle is an alternate-history fantasy set during the reign of Elizabeth
I. The big twist in this timeline is that when European explorers reached the
New World, they encountered the thriving and powerful skrayling communities.*
Skraylings, based on Viking legend of encounters with, are not human, although
they interact and have longstanding trade relationships with the humans of the
New World (our Native Americans). The tattooed, fanged,
vestigial-tale-possessing skraylings are secretive but demonstrably possess at
least some magical abilities that make them much-sought allies by the nations
of Europe. When the skraylings send an ambassador to London, they recruit our
reluctant protaganist, Maliverny Catlyn, as his bodyguard, despite Mal’s openly
expressed wariness of the skraylings.
As the novel begins, Mal’s a down-at-the-heels gentleman, essentially reduced to
mercenary status, staying in Southwark with Ned, a scribe whose mother rents
rooms. There’s plenty of action; in the first chapter, Mal is confronted by
armed guards who take him to the Tower of London. Soon, Mal is involved in
court intrigues, caught up in the plans of Elizabeth’s spymastser Walsingham,
and still bewildered by skrayling ambassador Kiiren.
Meanwhile, Ned is spending time with his theatre friends,
including Gabriel Parrish, an actor who has successfully made the uncommon
transition from playing women’s roles to playing adult men. There’s a lot of
enjoyment in exploring the world of Shakespeare and Marlowe, and we’re soon introduced
to Coby Hendricks, who has been masquerading as a boy for years, ever since the
shipwreck deaths of her immigrant parents. She and Parrish work for Master
Naismith of the Duke’s Men, a theatre company that has been receiving funds
from both the Duke of Suffolk and a skrayling trader.
So, whence the angry robots of my post’s title? I mention
the publisher Angry Robot not to overshadow author Anne Lyle in any way: it’s
clear that the The Alchemist of Souls
and the rest of the Night’s Masques trilogy are the products of her rich
imagination and fascinated study of history. Rather, I mention the publisher
because this series seems emblematic of many of the qualities and values I’ve
noticed in Angry Robot books: 1) Bold, fresh voices. Even if the freshness if
often just from a slightly more realistically diverse cast of characters built from
longstanding types, the inclusion of an oft-neglected perspective, or the
reflection of the last few decades’ technological advances in an envisioned
future, it’s a freshness that’s much welcome in contemporary “speculative
fiction.”** 2) Fiction that rewards the reader’s expectations, delivering high
stakes action and characters worth caring about (usually with a fairly swift
narrative pace and showing some indications that the author is familiar with,
even if diverge from, genre tropes). 3) An attempt to deliver multi-volume
story arcs to the reader in a reasonable real-life timeframe. That means series
that come out over the course of a year or two instead of a decade or
more.
Believe it or not, there are some downsides to new authors
trying to speedily concoct fan candy, and Night’s Masques is not immune to
them. Angry Robot books sometimes seem a little rough and unpolished, with plot
or pacing issues that seem to indicate final products that could have used
another draft or two. The second book, The
Merchant of Dreams, is solid enough, taking its cast to the Venice of
courtesans and commedia del’arte as Mal attempts to discover whether the
skraylings plan to find a new European trade partner. The familiar partnerships
from Alchemist are mostly broken up,
but there are some rewards to seeing different sets of characters take
independent journeys. While there’s not enough of Mal and Coby (who are
increasingly drawn together over the course of the first novel) working
together, we get to see Coby interact with Mal’s twin. And there are pirates
and Sir Walter Raleigh.
The Prince of Lies
happily brings the whole company back to England, but in attempting to bring
all storylines, including the conflict with the skraylings, to a head, the book
perhaps bites off a bit more than it can chew. There are some questionable time
jumps, but more problematic is how we’re often not shown other characters’
reactions when one of our heros makes an important decision or betrays another.
In fact, decisions start to seem to be made based on plot convenience instead
of logic or recognizable character responses. For instance, we see Mal hastily
, while later he practically insists she join, and the difference in attitudes
isn’t fully explained. There are journey that prove unnecessary but other
points seem wrapped up too neatly (for instance, the end seems practically
ideal but leaves some big questions unanswered, possibly changing the
series-established rules on magic/transmigration of souls). Even some character
moments don’t seem fully resolved; there’s a chilling demonstration of Mal’s
brother’s amorality at the beginning of the book, but even the ending seems to
deliberately sidestep addressing this fully. Some of the choppiness of the plot
is surely to protect some of the surprises of the book’s last quarter (and
there are some interesting antagonists and some revelations about the “guisers”
who have long impersonated English nobility), but though the finale tries hard
to connect all the dots, I felt a few to be missing.
In this way, Prince of
Lies is very different from the seemingly more carefully constructed first
novel, in which much of the pleasure is seeing the points of view of different
characters, most of whom have been drawn into the world of espionage, as they
deliberate what to do and what to reveal. In terms of plotting and suspense, we
know early on in Alchemist that three
theatre companies are participating in a contest to be judged by the skrayling
ambassador, so as events escalate, we fully expect a climax to arrive with the
Duke’s Men’s turn to perform, and Lyle doesn’t disappoint. We just can’t
anticipate all the details, and so we read on.
Prince of Lies
occasionally drops a clue to the future, but the overall impression is of randomness
rather than carefully crafted suspense. This may be truer to life, but that’s
really not why I read historical fantasies involving magical races. So, Prince of Lies is not necessarily a book
I’d recommend, though it’s probably required reading for a reader who wants to
see how Mal’s story ends (or continues). The
Alchemist of Souls, however, was highly entertaining and the series as a
whole probably more pleasurable than not.
*Also, for some unclear reason, in this timeline Elizabeth I
married Robert Dudley and had kids. She’s already a widow by the time Alchemis of Souls begins and I’m not
sure of the significance of her marriage to this world (it does make the
succession politics, especially of the later books, quite different from those
of our history but not necessarily more interesting or tension-filled). I
suspect wish fulfillment from an the author who has just always rooted for
Elizabeth I to have (somewhat) better luck in love.
**No, no, no, I’m not going to talk about genre definitions.
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