The blurb:
Tomas Piety has everything he ever wanted. In public he’s a wealthy, highly respected businessman, happily married to a beautiful woman and governor of his home city of Ellinburg. In private, he’s no longer a gang lord, head of the Pious Men, but one of the Queen’s Men, invisible and officially non-existent, working in secret to protect his country.
The queen’s sudden death sees him summoned him back to the capital – where he discovers his boss, Dieter Vogel, Provost Marshal of the Queen’s Men, is busy tightening his stranglehold on the country.
Just as he once fought for his Pious Men, Tomas must now bend all his wit and hard-won wisdom to protect his queen – even when he can’t always tell if he’s on the right side.
Tomas has started to ask himself, what is the price of power? And more importantly, is it one he is willing to pay?
The review:
Do you ever read a book and think that the characters have been put through a fucking horror show… But that you wouldn’t have it any other way?
That’s me with the War for the Rose Throne series. Tomas Piety and his gang of Pious Men have a habit of being there when shit hits the fan. Whether that involves gang wars on city streets, suspicious bombings, or government-mandated violence. Put simply… When the Pious Men are around, people get hurt. Bad people, mostly, but sometimes just people who are in the way.
I’ve said it before, but there are grimdark books that are grim and dark for the sake of it, and there are those that use those things as a contrast. A juxtaposition of the grim reality of the now, and the hope for a potentially brighter future. And I’ll always love books that explore that hope. That ask hard questions, like whether horrors committed in the present can justify horrors avoided in the future. That explore why the world as it stands is so shit, looking at systems of power and how they are sustained.
And given that Priest of Gallows is one of those books, it shouldn’t be a surprise that I loved it. It starts off a couple of months after the events of Priest of Lies, taking place almost entirely in the city of Dannsburg. It’s much more “political” than the previous books in some ways, but entirely similar in others. Government agencies, it turns out, function pretty much the same as a gang. Just with more money, more power, and higher stakes. Tomas is brought closer to the powers-that-be in the Queen’s Men, but finds that the more he is brought into the inner-circle, the more he is used as a tool.
It’s an interesting subversion of what you’d find in some other fantasy novels. While a main character in another series might gain agency as the series goes on, Tomas instead finds that his agency is becoming increasingly limited, and this really helps to build the tension. McLean uses the strength of Piety’s narrative voice and the character foundations laid in the previous books to really make you feel like something about this dynamic is wrong. That, at some point, something or someone is going to snap.
Although… “snap” may be too small a word for what eventually happens.
If you liked the previous installations in this series, I’d bet that you’ll love this one, too. But I can spy a few things that some readers might not be too crazy about. There are a few really grim torture scenes, for one thing. There’s also less interaction between Tomas and the wider cast of Pious Men, and so those who enjoyed the dynamic between Tomas and his brother, for instance, may feel a little disappointed that those characters have been largely separated for this book.
Another point is that the line that Tomas has walked thus far — of being “not as bad as the alternative” — becomes blurred. The reasoning behind the threats, the killings, and the horrors begin to look flimsy. Especially as questions are raised over whether the touted “alternative” actually exists. But while I can imagine some readers may not enjoy this apparent descent into outright villainy… for me, this has been a core aspect of the series from the beginning. Everything Tomas does, he does to avoid another war. And it’s the question of whether the ends justify the means that intrigues me. Especially when those means may have been undertaken under false pretences.
If the above paragraph seems a little suggestive and cagey, that’s because I’m having a hard time not spilling my thoughts and predictions all over this review. Priest of Gallows gives you a lot to consider. From moral conundrums to crazy, powerful mages. It strikes me that I don’t think I have a favourite out of the three books so far — they all seem like one continuous, naturally-evolving story. A story that looks like it’s about to reach an explosive climax in the final book.
I can’t wait.
We received a copy of this book from the publisher in exchange for a fair and honest review. Thank you to Jo Fletcher Books for the review copy!
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