Storm and Steel(The Book of the Black Earth, Part Two)by Jon SprunkPyr, 2015The first volume in Jon Sprunk's “The Book of the Black Earth” series, Blood and Iron, opened with a storm at sea and a ship being chased to its destruction as it carries crusading warriors to fight the heathen hordes of the Akeshian Empire. On board is Horace Delrosa, ship's carpenter, who's swept overboard in the storm and winds up a chained slave at the mercy of the brutal, charismatic Queen Byleth. In the course of that first novel, he meets other slaves – especially Jirom, successful fighter in the arena, and Alyra, a royal slave, both of whom have ties to a resistance movement bent on overthrowing the rule of the queen and her evil councillors.But Horace isn't destined to be a slave for long, and the means of his deliverance will be familiar to every reader of this kind of blood-and-swash action-oriented sword-and-sorcery fantasy (there's been a kind of renaissance of the sub-genre in the last ten or fifteen years, which is cause for rejoicing because the stuff can be so much fun): he's got an inner spark, a hidden, inborn superpower – it turns out he's got a vast capacity for the manipulation of the zoana, the quasi-magical energy the feeds the zoanii, Akeshia's class of court sorcerers. As soon as Horace's abilities become known to the Queen and her ministers, his chains are struck off and he's installed in the palace complex. But where Sprunk portrays the Empire as systemically, almost entirely evil, Horace himself is an old-fashioned incorruptible hero, so he certainly doesn't forget his loyalties to the cause of Jirom and (as he comes to realize) Alrya.Blood and Iron is essentially the story of that hero's ascent; it's violent and fast-paced. Storm and Steel is every bit as violent, but it tells a very different kind of story, one in which our heroes are dealing with the new world largely of their own creation. Jirom is still a tough-as-nails fighter, and Alrya is still a passionate hard-headed idealist, but Horace, the main focus of the series, is now a figure of authority in Byleth's kingdom, steady but cautious voice of compassion against the gales of her melodramatic tyranny (she's by a wide margin the most enjoyable character in the series, obviously):

“A caravan was attacked by a band of rebel slaves. They seized the gold that was intended for our royal coffers.” She glared at him. “Gold we need to fend off our enemies.”“I am truly sorry. Was anyone hurt in the attack?”“Hurt?” she yelled. “The soldiers guarding that convoy had better be dead, or they'll wish they were when I flay the skin from their backs and nail them to stakes along that road as a reminder of what happens to those who fail!”

And along the way – more pronounced in this book than its predecessor, Horace is also exploring the nature of his sorcerous gifts, a magic system Sprunk delineates with a great deal more clarity and imagination than he did back when he first introduced readers to it:

He realized he was focused on the gateway to his power again and tried pulling his attention away, but the orb pulsed faster. A moment too late, he noticed it had opened. Just a crack, but that was enough. A rush of Shinar uncoiled across the ethereal sky of his hidden world in streaks of violet so deep they were almost black. Horace did nothing for a little while except observe the display. It was beautiful and terrifying at the same time. He reached out to the bands of energy. He didn't force it back through his qa, instead aiming to coax it. This was something he'd been working on. He'd been told the power would react to how it was handled. A harsh grip caused the zoana to gush like a bursting dam, but a softer approach yielded a more measured flow. So far, he hadn't been able to make it work, and this time wasn't any different. The zoana refused to return of its own accord, as if it was playing coy.

Knowing the whole time you're reading “The Book of the Black Earth” that it's basically basically cheeseball stuff doesn't detract from enjoying how good it is in its cheesiness, and it will be a hard-hearted reader indeed who reaches the end of Storm and Steel and isn't eager to read the next book in the series as soon as it appears. All Gormenghast and no play make Jack and Jill pretty dull genre fans, after all.