A horde of marauding barbarians from the North with a secret agenda, a man who seeks revenge on these barbarians by any means necessary, a scheming palace eunuch, and a young servant girl from islands to the south—these are just some of the many characters who inhabit the world of M.D. Ireman’s THE AXE AND THE THRONE.
The novel is dark and full of the harsh realities of the lives of it characters. And also, it is quite convoluted, the separate characters and story arcs cycling back and forth, with the connections between the different people and events not always immediately apparent, and sometimes never even fully established, perhaps to be the domain of future sequels. But if one is prepared for this nearly unrelenting grimness, if one is prepared for the complex and sometimes confusing multiple plot threads, and if one is also prepared to take on such a hefty tome, THE AXE AND THE THRONE does have a lot to recommend it.
The characters, for one thing, tend to be fairly well drawn. Titon is a furious Northman with a budding conscience, but not in the ways you might expect. Cassen, the scheming eunuch, at first seems just an over-the-top villain, but, as the story progresses, the layers of this conniving and cruel man are slowly unraveled, all without him losing any of his menace. The writing tends to serve the story well, usually not going for anything too melodramatic or overstated, with simple but somewhat elegant prose: “Alone in the king’s study, Derudin and Lyell performed their nightly ritual. After a servant had brought the king his evening meal, he and Derudin would speak in earnest of the happenings of the kingdom and how to manage the intricacies therein.”
With well-rounded characters, more than a slight taste for the grim and the macabre, and a flair for the minutiae of historical lives, THE AXE AND THE THRONE is an engaging read set in a dark and fascinating world.
~IndieReader.