The Modern Classics

There exists a second category of canonical works, distinct from the Classics in one important respect: where the Classics derive their authority from age and institutional endorsement, these novels derive theirs from having understood their respective worlds. They are works who have gained fame and devotion because of some great element of truth in them. Furthermore, they make for pleasurable reading, and since Your Grace is often loath to ponder the page, these may hold you longer.

Masks and Manoeuvres is set in Altomente and opens with Alba Vetturi, daughter of a respectable but commercially modest family known for enchanted miniature portraiture. This position is prestigious enough for her family to gain entry to the great masked balls, but insufficient to hold much political sway. She meets Lord Kassian d’Orenzo at such a ball and dislikes him immediately; he is the scion of Lusia’s most powerful banking dynasty and makes no effort to conceal his contempt of her family’s standing. What follows is the gradual discovery, conducted through guild rivalries and her own intuition, that their judgements of each other were false; and that there is a great conspiracy afoot, involving forged magical contracts designed to destabilize the city. Its account of masked negotiation and binding contract enforcement across the city-states is extraordinarily precise, so much so that it has been banned in Altomente and remains officially unavailable in Ferrocinto.

Angenga concerns Vikram Āloka, a drȳmann of considerable ability who passes through the Lēohtgield academies, then the Taprobane Magisterium, and finally arrives in Wattle. The Concordant College, then a nascent brew of ambition and few laws, offers him room to operate. There he creates artificial life from proscribed lore, smuggled Tungolstānas, and the raw energies of the Waste: a being of immense strength and dawning, alien sentience, which he promptly abandons in terror. The novel is then as much the Angenga’s story as Vikram’s - a created thing pursuing its creator across the Waste, driven not by malice alone but by the torment of its own existence.

Tangowan Straits follows Isara, a young storyteller and novice navigator, who joins the crew of the Serpent’s Tooth under a grim, one-legged captain who is consumed by vendetta against the colossal Azure Dragon that destroyed his previous ship. The voyage takes the crew through treacherous archipelagos and finally into the heart of storms seemingly conjured by the creature itself. That the captain’s obsession becomes the crew’s destruction is not a surprising conclusion; what the novel beyond compare is to provide a faithful portrait of Tangowan and its gods as they must have been. Your Grace may find some interest in reflecting on what Daub must do to avoid being a reduced to a mere novel.

Emmeline follows a healer’s wife in the provincial borough of Æppelþorp. Her imagination, which outstrips her provincial life, has been formed entirely by the magical story-scrolls that arrive from the Lēohtgield, depicting a world of high enchantment and passionate saga. Disenchanted, she flees her home pursues that glamourous world through clandestine affairs and costly magics, financed by pacts with a shadowy usurer whose contracts are bound by equally shadowy means, and is finally destroyed by her quest in the manner such stories require. It is a remarkable portrait and social history of the times of upheavel during Lēohtgield’s consolidation, and far more detailed than official histories.

Stānbyrig is set in a grim Ealdorfold mining city, and follows Rædwulf Sceaduweard, a destitute former student who has convinced himself that great-spirited individuals must be unbound by law. He murders an elderly galdor and her apprentice, is pursued and offered redemption by turns, and discovers across the remainder of the novel that he is not among the unbound. It is a grim tale, but perhaps the only source we have of what Ealdorfold justice looks like from the inside. The plot turns upon a forged contract processed through Valdermach, where it contains an intricate and account of a Diet session, drawn with extraordinary accuracy. The author, thus, has extraordinary knowledge of justice at both the high and the low halls of two different states; an extraordinary achievement.

The Lion Emperor’s Courtesan follows Lady Anjalī Devi, a celebrated noblewoman of rare talent trapped in a politically arranged marriage. She scandalizes Singhapura high society by embarking on a passionate affair with Count Weerasena, a heroic military commander. The affair is put to an end, of course, as Singhapura’s social doctrines demand, but it is a tragedy throughout. Woven alongside this is the story of Devan, a Singhapura landowner who has moved out of the city and into a new estate in Wattle. Devan who finds himself learning to co-exist with his resentful neighbours, and to slowly learn the ways of Wattle from them. The novel’s specific value has been noted elsewhere in this treatise: its a Rosantic court masque is of such stature that Rosantic diplomats correspondence have cited the scene directly. However, it also is an intriguing examination of the pressures of Singhapura society and how those who flee them come to terms with themselves and others unlike them.

Blōma Dæg follows three figures through a single day in Æðelburh: Lēofwine Blōma, a man of mixed lineage who peddles minor enchanted trinkets through the city’s labyrinthine markets; his wife Merewīf, whose haunting songs are said to sway men beyond what songs ordinarily accomplish; and Stǣlwyrhta Dædal, a brilliant young galdorcræftiga moving through the same city on a separate obsession - the recovery of the lost prophecies of the last Æthelgarth oracle. The three tracks converge and diverge across a single day without resolving. It is perhaps the best portrait we have of what everyday life and aspirations might look like for ordinary citizens of Ealdorfold.

The Count of Marezzia follows Edmondo Alighieri, a promising young ship captain from a minor trading family, betrayed by rivals on the eve of his marriage and condemned to an inescapable prison. There he befriends an aging magician of Singhapura, a fellow prisoner, who reveals the location of a vast forgotten treasure and imparts his knowledge before dying. What follows is a patient and elaborate ruin, conducted across Altomente, Septimura, and Ferrocinto, as Alighieri, now possessing immense wealth and power, reinvents himself as the Count of Marezzia and meticulously orchestrates the downfall of his betrayers. It is an extraordinary portrayal of the treachorous currents of Lusian high society, of inter-city politics, corruption within the great families, and of the terrifying power of Lusian debt and contract law. It is essential reading for anyone who may have made enemies there.