In Halls of Law, V.M. Escalada brings together familiar fantasy elements of a nation being invaded, a rigid military, people with supernatural mental abilities, a race of lost creatures returning, and of course, prophecy. Familiar elements when handled well, make for an entertaining, enjoyable story. Such is the case with the first installment of Escalada’s Faraman Prophecies. Escalada is no stranger to fantasy, she’s published several enjoyable Sword and Sorcery novels as Violette Malan. This novel and series is a slight switch to a more large scale story of Epic Fantasy from those intimate Sword and Sorcery tales and launches a promising series.
Seventeen-year-old Kerida Nast has always wanted a career in the military, just like the rest of her family. So when her Talent is discovered, and she knows she’ll have to spend the rest of her life as a psychic for the Halls of Law, Ker isn’t happy about it. Anyone entering the Halls must give up all personal connection with the outside world, losing their family and friends permanently. Just as Kerida is beginning to reconcile herself to her new role, the Polity is invaded by strangers from Halia, who begin a systematic campaign of destruction against the Halls, killing every last Talent they can find.
Kerida manages to escape, falling in with Tel Cursar, a young soldier fleeing the battle, which saw the deaths of the royal family. Having no obvious heir to the throne, no new ruler to rally behind, the military leaders will be divided, unable to act quickly enough to save the empire. And with the Halls being burned to the ground, and the Talents slaughtered, the Rule of Law will be shattered.
To avoid the invaders, Kerida and Tel are forced to enter old mining tunnels in a desperate attempt to carry word of the invaders to Halls and military posts that have not yet been attacked. But the tunnels hide a dangerous secret, a long-hidden colony of Feelers—paranormal outcasts shut away from the world for so long they are considered mythical. These traditional enemies of the Halls of Law welcome Kerida, believing she fulfills a Prophecy they were given centuries before by the lost race of griffins. With the help of these new allies, Kerida and Tel stand a chance of outdistancing the invaders and reaching their own troops. However, that is only the start of what will become a frantic mission to learn whether any heir to the throne remains, no matter how distant in the bloodline. Should they discover such a person, they will have to find the heir before the Halian invaders do. For if the Halians capture the future Luqs, it will spell the end of the Faraman Polity and the Rule of Law.
Escalada centers much of the conflict and emotion of the novel on Kerida Nast, a forward-thinking heroine who, like many of her fantasy heroine peers, is forced into a life and organization she would rather not live. Growing up in a military family, she wanted to continue that tradition, but that wasn’t the path Kerida would travel. Much to her chagrin, when Kerida was tested for supernatural abilities – The Talent – she tested very high so she was voluntold/enrolled in the Halls of Law, essentially a finishing school where she could hone those abilities to help her nation in a less militaristic fashion. What makes her situation even more disheartening is that she must sever all familial ties and essentially be a non-person to her family. The Halls of Law, along with the military, help to enforce the law and peace of the Faraman Polity as established by the ruling people known as Luqs.
As happens in such novels and stories, one army invades an unsuspecting land. In this case, Kerida’s nation of Faraman is invaded by the military of Halia. Kerida barely escapes her Hall with Tel Cursar, a young soldier of the Faraman military. They manage to evade the Halians in a series of mines only to stumble into a warren deep beyond the mines’ opening. They discover, or rather stumble upon, a secretive society with ties to magical creatures long thought to be myths – Griffins. These people, known as Feelers, also possess magical Talents and were thought to be gone from the land, in exile after their schism with the Talents from the Halls of Law. These “Feelers” also have a prophecy that fits with Kerida’s plight and her actions in the tunnels.
The invasion comes as a surprise since the people of the Polity had no knowledge of the Halians, at least the characters who comprise the cast of Halls of Law seem to have no knowledge of the Halians. The Halians are setting out to completely upend the Polity, they’ve killed most of the Talents (or witches as the Halians call them) and are looking to eradicate the Luqs, who all happen to be women. It becomes clear that the Halians want no women in any place of power or prominence.
There’s a sense of fun to the novel, much of which is basking in the elements of Epic Fantasy that have attracted readers to the genre for so many years. Escalada draws a very clear line between the protagonists and the enemy Halians at the outset, especially with the vicious attacks and scenes of death Kerida and Tel encounter in the other Halls. Beginning with the introduction of the Feelers and when some of the individual Halians show more of their character, the clear line begins to blur, if only slightly. The villains begin to show a glimmer of their reasons behind the attacks and their hatred of women. This glimmer needs to be brighter in the next installment or these villains could be sniveling cardboard characters. For the purposes of the first volume of a series; however, what we learned was enough in that it proved a facilitator for the action of the novel.
Escalada surrounds Kerida with a few supporting characters who are mostly effective at fleshing out the world and giving Kerida a fully-rounded character and personality. Though Tel isn’t really the protagonist, he gets ample “screen time” as a burgeoning romantic interest. As others have commented; though, Kerida is the center of the story and I was hooked into her story and plight.
There were enough details in this opening volume to hint at a history of the world worth exploring. Escalada adds enough of her own strengths of character and world building to the world that make it fully recognizable and familiar with the prophecy, Talents, and landscape, while also feeling fresh enough that the world also felt like I was visiting a new world. The invading army throws the characters’ worldview and the culture of the Faraman world into chaos, and it comes through with each chapter as something unexpected. In other words a nice balance of comfort for the reader, with chaos for the characters. There’s a lot of myth in the background of the worldbuilding, as well as just wanting to know what happens next for Kerida, that I’m greatly looking forward to the second book in the series.
Sometimes a book lands in your lap at exactly the right time, and Halls of Law was precisely the kind of book I didn’t realize I needed when I opened the first few pages. I was drawn in by the comforting prose and stayed fully invested because of the characters and world. Halls of Law is a fun, optimistic Epic Fantasy that proved a welcome change of pace from some of the more grimdark fantasy I’d been reading.
Recommended.
© 2017 Rob H. Bedford
Hardcover, 496 Pages
Published by DAW, August 2017
Review copy courtesy of the publisher
