Seven Kings of Nowhere

The rare doorstop that deserves the door.

I've read it three times. Vale writes a court intrigue where you actually understand why everyone wants the throne, and then makes you not want any of them to get it. The middle third — the winter siege — is as good as the genre gets. Five stars and my copy is falling apart.

Finished it. I finish maybe one fantasy a year. That's the review.

I stopped reading epic fantasy because it kept asking me to care about lineage. This one asks you to care about seven people who are all wrong about something. Nobody explains the magic system and it's better for it. Four and a half — the ending is slightly tidier than the book deserves.

I don't read fantasy. I read this in four days.

June made me. I'd like it on record that there is a map, and I did not look at it once, and I was fine. It moves. Four stars.

A fantasy novel with sentences. I was not prepared.

I'd assumed the genre didn't allow for prose. Vale's does — spare, a little cold, occasionally very funny. Four stars rather than five because two of the seven kings are much less interesting than the other five and the book knows it.

Earns every one of its 612 pages, which I have never said before.

My usual complaint about big books is that they're padded. This one is dense: history, logistics, weather, grain prices. It's the only fantasy I've read that seems to understand how a siege actually ends. Four and a half.