Priest of Bones by Peter McLean – Review

Published: October 2, 2018

Publisher: Ace Books

Series: War for the Rose Throne #1

Genre: Fantasy

Pages: 352 (Paperback)

My Rating: 5.0/5.0

A copy of this book was provided by the publisher in exchange for an honest review.

Synopsis:

It’s a dangerous thing, to choose the lesser of two evils.

The war is over, and army priest Tomas Piety finally heads home with Lieutenant Bloody Anne at his side. When he arrives in the Stink, Tomas finds that his empire of crime has been stolen from him while at war. With his gang of Pious Men, Tomas will do whatever it takes to reclaim his businesses. But when he finds himself dragged into a web of political intrigue once again, and is forced to work in secret for the sinister Queen’s Men, everything gets more complicated.

When loyalties stretch to the breaking point and violence only leads to violence, when people have run out of food, and hope, and places to hide, do not be surprised if they have also run out of mercy. As the Pious Men fight shadowy foreign infiltrators in the backstreet taverns and gambling dens of Tomas’s old life it becomes clear; the war is not over.

It is only just beginning.

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Priest of Bones is a combination of two of my favorite fantasy elements – military and heists/gangs. Thomas Piety came home from war and found that his chunk of the city no longer belongs to him. Someone else was collecting his protection money, running his businesses, and roughing up his people. That won’t stand and Thomas Piety and his comrades in arms set about taking it back and reestablishing the dominance of the Pious Men.

I found the more central characters in this story to have excellent backstory, depth, and readability. They were never for a moment dull and came off as being legitimately tough as nails, rather than as swaggering tin men. Each of the Pious Men is battling demons from their pasts, whether that’s as recent as the war they returned from or as far back as their childhood. I was impressed that for the most part, the minor characters were given enough characterization to make you care about them or be unsettled by them. With a cast as large as this, minor characters are sometimes just a name to be conveniently killed off.

The plot is definitely grimdark fantasy, but the overall tone isn’t one of utter hopelessness, which let’s be honest, is kind of a drag. The consequences of failure would spell war and destruction for an already weak country, but at least that’s not as melodramatically dark as the world ending. This starts out small scale – Piety is trying to regain control of his portion of the criminal underworld and live comfortably – but as the plot thickens it becomes clear that it isn’t going to stay small scale. Spies get involved, and soon Thomas Piety is looking to expand his horizons, though not entirely by his choice alone. The whole thing was extremely fascinating and I didn’t want to put it down.

Priest of Bones was quite the page turner and remained quick of pace throughout, which suited the shorter page count. This isn’t going to be drawn out and wordy like an epic fantasy tends to be, but rather quick and dirty similar to something like Ed McDonald’s Raven’s Mark Trilogy. This is a violent book and while there’s some magic present, it’s primarily a hands on violence. I’m glad to see that it’s sequel, Priest of Lies, has both a cover and release date (July 2019) so it’s less than a year wait!