Sword and Sorcery is alive and well, if Jen Williams Copper Cat novels are to be taken as evidence. In The Iron Ghost, the second novel in this sequence, the Blackfeather Three (Wydrin, Frith, and Sebastian) are hired to regain a stolen magical artifact. Their reputation is riding high, having defeated a dragon on their first adventure together as depicted in the fantastic The Copper Promise, so they have many willing clients.
Beware the dawning of a new mage…
Wydrin of Crosshaven, Sir Sebastian and Lord Aaron Frith are experienced in the perils of stirring up the old gods. They are also familiar with defeating them, and the heroes of Baneswatch are now enjoying the perks of suddenly being very much in demand for their services.
When a job comes up in the distant city of Skaldshollow, it looks like easy coin – retrieve a stolen item, admire the views, get paid. But in a place twisted and haunted by ancient magic, with the most infamous mage of them all, Joah Demonsworn, making a reappearance, our heroes soon find themselves threatened by enemies on all sides, old and new. And in the frozen mountains, the stones are walking…
I enjoyed The Copper Promise a great deal and was looking forward to following the further adventures of these characters, so The Iron Ghost was a welcome return. However; Williams takes a slightly different approach in book two. Where The Copper Promise was a bit more of an episodic narrative, The Iron Ghost is much more linear in nature. The story still bounces around in different locations and with different characters, but the whole of the novel is a more singular story with greater cohesion and a stronger narrative backbone.
Williams builds very well on what transpired previously with these characters; Wydrin and Frith continue their tension flavored romance and Sebastian finds himself with a cadre of “children,” the Brood Sisters, the draconic offspring of the dragon the trio smote in the previous volume. Where the first novel felt more quest-like in nature, there’s more of a heist/crime feel to The Iron Ghost, which allows for a brisker pace. Coupled with the great foundation laid down in the previous novel, there’s some fun and engaging character interactions.
Williams doesn’t just rest on the trio of characters, she fleshes out the world to give a fully expansive feel and introduces some new characters who leave a nice impression. The culture clash between the two societies vying for the Macguffin of the novel are fun, if a bit tropey. There are also wyverns and stone-lions woken by the Macguffin being sought by the Blackfeather Three, the mountain dwellers, their enemies and the resurrected demon mage Joah Demonsworn.
Clearly, Williams threw a lot of elements on the proverbial table to wrangle into a readable story. Each of the three protagonists – Wydrin, Frith, and Sebastian – have their individual journeys and character arcs that smartly feed into the main storyline of the novel and Williams pulls off a seamless, natural interweaving of all the storylines through to the end. Often when multiple plot threads are separate, one can potentially be weaker than the others, to the point where skimming over it might not be problem. Not here, each character journey was engaging and interesting and left me eager to keep the pages turning.
The world and history continue to deepen here in the second volume, almost as if the characters are moving towards the edges of the map away from the village in which they began in The Copper Promise. The aforementioned mountain society, the wyverns which seem commonplace in that region of the world, and the ancient lineages of mages that are connected to Joah Demonsworn lend a long-lived history to the world. Even Demonsworn, as evil as he may seem, is a complex character whose motivations are more than just being an “eeeviil” killer.
Williams’s storytelling abilities are on full display here as is her great ability with character development and character interactions. The Iron Ghost is a novel that balances down-to-earth characters with fantastic creatures and elements very well. Despite some wandering of the narrative in the middle of the novel, Williams tells a fun, engaging story.
© 2017 Rob H. Bedford
Trade Paperback | 448 Pages
Published by Angry Robot Books | January 2017
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