The Born Queen
Author – Greg Keyes
Hardcover
Page Count: 464 pages pages
Publisher: Del Rey
Release Date: March 25, 2008
ISBN-10: 0345440692
ISBN-13: 978-0345440693
Greg Keyes is the most underread author in epic fantasy.
There, I said it.
His most recent work, a four volume cycle called The Kingdom of Thorn and Bone sets the bar for how to write a multi-volume epic fantasy without all the bloat that plagues so many other series. Keyes manages to tell an engaging, fully realized story and bring it all to a satisfying close by just the fourth book, The Born Queen.
Where Keyes excels is in the characters he crafts. Taking familiar archetypes – The Princess, The Woodsman, The Scholar, The Cocky Swordsman – he strips them down to the barest essentials and then reinvents them. The Princess, for once, is likeable; The Woodsman is an unconventional ladies man; The Scholar ends up kicking some ass; The Cocky Swordsman is most honorable and self sacrificing. When we were first introduced to the characters in The Briar King, I had trouble seeing what the big deal was – I had seen all this before. But by the end of that first volume I understood, and that was only the beginning of where those characters would take me.
