Sunday, October 8, 2017

Devlin's Luck (The Sword of Change #1) by Patricia Bray (spoilers)

This year has been a tough one for reading fantasy. I've spent most of 2017 in a slump that for some strange reason, only dulled my interest in fantasy fiction with almost every attempt to jump back into it turned into a route. Thankfully, I've finally managed to break the slump, thanks in no small part to Devlin's Luck, the first book in Patricia Bray's The Sword of Change trilogy. I'd seen the book on the shelf at the local public library several times, but always ignored it because of the slump. Then about two weeks ago, I had the sudden impulse to take it home and damn near devoured it I would have torn through it like dysentery in a medieval army camp if not for the fact that I was reading a Jules Verne book at the same time, but once I was finished with that, I turned my full attention to this tome and finished it off in double time.

So what is Devlin's Luck about? It's a story of a man broken by tragedy who desires nothing more than to make amends for a past tragedy and die with dignity. At the beginning of the book, Devlin arrives in Kingsholm, the capital of the Kingdom of Jorsk, to take the office of Chosen One. It's a bit hard to explain what the Chosen One is, but essentially, they're the kingdom's official problem solver. If something needs to be investigated, for example, the Chosen One could be dispatched to do it. The same goes with quests and any situation that may require their services. The position itself was quite prestigious in days past, being equal to King's Champion and subservient only to the ruling monarch.

But those days are long gone. By the time Devlin arrives to take the oath, the office has declined into largely a ceremonial position so undesirable that the kingdom has to offer ten gold disks¹ in order to get anyone to take the job. Why? The office is seen as certain death because all of Devlin's immediate predecessors have lasted less than a year, each typically dying during or after their first quest.

And that's exactly why Devlin wants the job. As I said, Devlin is a man broken by tragedy. I don't count it as a spoiler since you find it out pretty early, but Dev's grief stems from his wife, their daughter, his brother and his son being killed by creatures called banecats. Even though he avenged them by hunting down and killing the banecats, he still blames himself both for their deaths and not being there to defend them. By the time he recovered from fighting the banecats and returned to civilization, he found himself named kinslayer by his sister-in-law and forsaken by all of his kin, a major thing in his people's culture. He goes into exile shortly thereafter and literally walks all the way to Kingsholm to become the Chosen One.

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