The Tales of The Verin Empire are quality self-pubbed fantasy that I feel have slipped somewhat under the radar. Ray is doing something really interesting with the series; each book is a genre pastiche. Book 1 was WWI military story, Book 2 was a noir novel, and in Book 3, Shadow Debt, Ray has turned his attention to the western. Of the three, Shadow Debt may well be my favourite, it's a most satisfying yarn.
Journalist Ned has been sent to the Rakhasin frontier, home of sweeping prairies; goblins; a boom town built on diamonds; and a most unusual female sheriff. The capital is currently being rocked by suffragist protests, and editors think the story of gun-toting Glynn Sorley will resonate with readers. But metropolitan dandy Ned may have bitten off more than he can chew: he'll need to learn to ride, help track down the infamous bandit Gentleman Jim, and then there's the matter of the Sheriff's charming sister...
All of Ray's books have a sense of playfulness that I really like. There's a metatextual element here; he's having a conversation with the genres - military, noir, western - but also interrogating some of our standard fantasy tropes at the same time. The fusion works well, and gives the books an almost sneaky depth that is belied by the more traditional (and satisfying) plotting.
Ned is a great character. Saddled with a stutter and persistent lisp, he's both proud and insecure. He's no fool, but he's also got some blind spots, and it makes him believable and likable at the same time. The other major character is not Sheriff Sorley as you might expect, but rather Gentleman Jim, a semi-tragic figure who in the opening chapter makes a bargain with a demonic six-shooter, one that haunts him for the rest of the novel. Jim's progression from horse thief to something much darker is a great piece of character development - indeed it's really the only major character development in the book.
Shadow Debt is not a large novel and the plot moves at a good clip; chapters are short and something happens in each one. This lends the book a terrific pace - I chewed it up in a couple of days - but the flip side of this is that compared to a more conventional door stopper fantasy, there's a lot left unsaid or unexamined. On the one hand, I liked this, it kept the pace up, makes the world believable, and left me hungry for more. On the other hand, there's so much good stuff in the Verin world, that I would happily spend more time with these people, this country, these stories. There are a few gaps that could have been fleshed out in more detail: other members of Jim's gang; Ned's relationship with the Sheriff's sister; and Glynn herself is mostly a cipher, a woman of action and few words. The latter is a hallmark of westerns in general, to be sure, but she could have used a bit more characterisation I thought.
My only other, minor, nitpick is that as the novel races to its' conclusion, the focus inexorably shifts away from Ned and towards Gentleman Jim. This shift is understandable - as I say, Jim gets the lion's share of character development and his arc is undeniably compelling, but I think it does somewhat of a disservice to Ned. He really needed a pivotal scene or two that demonstrated his metamorphosis as well, even if it was a more subtle one.
That all being said, I really enjoyed this book. It's a rollicking, fast paced yarn, with a voice and world that is something different in modern fantasy. In a hat-doff to his genre progenitors, Ray has also commissioned simple illustrations at the start of each chapter (Ned is more an illustrator than a journalist, and the pictures are meant to be his). I thought this was a delightful touch, and I think it says more about the novel than he might realise. The illustrations demonstrate that Ray knows, understands and appreciates the genre he is playing with, they are simple but not simplistic, they show humour, restraint, and an ability to identify what the key moment is in each chapter, and they have a sense of fast but solid construction. All of this could be said of the novel as a whole.
If you haven't read any of Ray's books, give Shadow Debt a shot - it's completely stand alone (as all books in the series are).
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- Reviewed in the United States on November 5, 2020Format: Paperback
