A trip to Krondor

Finished another book the other day, Krondor: The Assassins, a fantasy novel by Raymond Feist. Actually I finished 3 books but the other two were rereads. I picked up this book years ago on the bargain shelf when I couldn’t find anything else worth reading and it looked like something I might be interested in. However it took a number of false starts before I finally got into it. The dust jacket isn’t exactly designed to catch your eye as it is just a field of red with the title on it. Actually there is a background of two crossed swords but they don’t exactly jump out at you. Could have been one reason it subconsciously prejudiced me, dull looking dj, dull book. Finally decided to give it another go and I found I enjoyed it.

Assassins is the second book of Feist’s Riftwar Legacy series, itself a sub series of his Riftwar novels. Actually Riftwar is a series of three books but it was the beginning of the whole shebang which amounts to about 20 or so novels in a bunch of sub series all taking place with the same background. In addition the Riftwar Legacy books are based on a computer game which in turn was based on the original series. I hate starting a series in the middle but considering the problems I had starting this book I wasn’t rushing out to buy the first one so I guess I had to live with it. Wasn’t too bad as the story can stand on its own. There is some back story to it in the first book, indeed in all the previous books dealing with Riftwar, but except for references here and there in the story and a bit of a lead in to the rest of the series at the end you can read this on its own though you probably won’t. This is actually a good thing because, while three books have been published, five books seem to have been planned but due to some kind of dispute between Mr. Feist and the game company the last two might never be published. I hate when I get left hanging.


As I mentioned in my earlier review of Parker here is another author whose strong suit is characters and he has a raft of them. Only time I’ve seen such a large list of characters sharing the stage has been in shared universe type books where different authors set their own characters amid those of other authors. Here one man is responsible for them all. The main protagonist of Assassins is Squire James, aka Jimmy the Hand, a thief who has risen to Court rank somewhere in previous books. It is set mainly in the city of Krondor, the capital city of the Western half of the Kingdom of the Isles, which in turn is set on the world of Midkemia. Being a fantasy there are magicians, royalty, mercenaries, elves, trolls, thieves, assassins and so on and so forth all over the place. Assassins, as the name says, deals mainly with the fact that someone, or something, is wiping out a good portion of certain classes of citizens in the city of Krondor. The prince of the city, having a number of other problems on his hands, needs to find out who is responsible and why and puts the problem in the capable hands of Squire James, who once roamed the disreputable highways of the city’s underworld as the young thief Jimmy the Hand. This is a mixed blessing for while James knows his way around and still has the abilities and contacts from his former way of life; he also has a death mark upon him from the Thief’s Guild for breaking faith with them when he joined the royal Court. Of course the Guild has some problems of its own as they are one of the groups the killers are picking off. Complicating matters on the other side of the scale, the prince, in addition to the problems in his city, has some visiting nobility from another kingdom who seem bent on pursuing dangerous pastimes. So the story follows James as he winds his way through the sewers and over the rooftops of Krondor as he tries to solve the mystery of the whys and wherefores of the city’s killings and the adventures of his friend William who has just become a member of the Prince’s guard and is given the mission of protecting the visiting nobility, no small task.

Feist writes a straightforward, easy to read story. While his world may have as many different races and religions as Tolkein’s he doesn’t carry the development of the mythos to the extremes Tolkein did. You don’t need all the appendices and concordances to get all the nuances in his stories. While reading his books in some kind of order would probably give a bit more understanding he does explain enough in the stories themselves to get you by with what you need to know without going into excessive back story. I found myself reading the novel in about 2 days which might translate to 3-5 days for the average Joe given that I am a fairly fast reader who doesn’t need to worry about getting up for work in the morning. I mention that because Feist knows how to keep your attention so that you really don’t wish to put the book down even at the end of a chapter and so I went a bit later in to the night than I really wished to. So if you are in to fantasy novels I can recommend Raymond Feist’s Krondor The Assassins though you might want to start with Krondor The Betrayal, the first book in the sub series. As I enjoyed Assassins I went and found me copies of the other two books in the series and am in the middle of the first one now. The third one I ordered but it seems the store had sold their copy so had to do some searching for another one. These are first editions of the hardcovers as I am a bit of a collector of authors I enjoy. Paperback copies are readily available online.

If my opinion of the book helps I’m glad to have been of service. Thanks for the listen.

PS

While I didn't get my threefer at last night's BL game I did get 5th which put a few more points on the scoreboard.