This is a warning: avoid if you wish to avoid spoilers for previous books in the series – especially Days of Shattered Faith
The Pallaseen Sway’s war with the Loruthi is basically over, with the Sway taking the title. But that doesn’t stop small, once independent city states, like Eres-Fennegh, from fighting for its own autonomy. The city on the back of a crab kicked the Pallaseen out after the Sway helped to kick the Loruthi out, and now they are under siege. The last scion of a heroic family line shamefully loses an heirloom sword that housed the soul of its first champion. The last conjurer of an Allorwen clan has set up her brothel inside the temple of the crab. Maric Jack, upon losing his love to depths of hell, has become an apprentice to the demonic arts to search for her on the infernal planes. And new perfections have been ordered, forcing the malleable officers of the Pallaseen to make one last ditch effort to use the, now inappropriate, resources to end the siege before the big wigs show up. Can Eres-Fennegh find its place in the new world? And what will it give up to fight the horrors of the Pallaseen?
The first thing I said to Andrew after finishing Pretenders to the Throne of God is that the next, and supposedly, final book “is going to be very weird”. I said this with excitement because while I think all of the books have been thoughtful about their subjects, Pretenders feels like a mirror for the series to really think about what it means to lose faith in a world, where faith is ground up and snorted into magic fueling an empire meant to eradicate it. It still has big action set pieces, after all the story takes place during an ongoing and active siege. The characters are larger than life, especially those within the Sway. It’s no surprise that Tchaikovsky still manages to delight with his prose. Those all feel up to par with where the series has been. And while I came for the siege and the politics, I fell for the quiet moments of doubt and rage that filled in the myriad cracks. And with the walls falling, there are plenty of cracks that need to be filled and plenty of reasons to fill them.
First, the setting of Eres-Fennegh, the city on the back of a dead crab god. No one truly knows the position that the crab once held to the early denizens of the island. The temple of the crab had been desecrated. Another faith having taken a hold of it, the current structures of faith and government unable to dispel it for centuries. Their relationship to the faith itself completely separated while hanging onto some semblances of ceremony, tradition, and formality. The temple itself is now open, however, an Allorwen conjurer has taken up residence and turned it into a brothel, seeing it as payment for removing the presence that previously bamboozled the citizens. Throughout most of the series, when old gods are in play, there is a character often attached to them to give them context, but Pretenders To The Throne has no such character. Sure there is the scion of the Leachan family, but she is only a member of a heroic family that served Eres-Fennegh, not the crab itself. It gives the crab god a narrative and thematic distance. What are the people of the city fighting for? What drives their ability to keep fighting? Is it belief in something more or is it purely fighting because it’s what they do?
And this isn’t just relegated to the citizens of Eres-Fennegh, it extends to the Pallaseen on both sides of the wall. For in this siege, the defectors of the Sway, beholden to God or the Fisher King, have allied with the City for survival. The Fisher King now has a church, filling a famed lighthouse with the presence of the Pallaseen’s old sea ravaging god. Its disciples are fervent, ferocious, and will fight till the light leaves their eyes. They too fight for survival as the Pallaseen tries to eliminate those who have strayed from perfection. The Fisher King doesn’t have plans, it only expects what it’s due. It’s up to a few enterprising souls to crown a Pope who may have a vision for the future. But the church’s herald, The Mouth of the Sea, is playing both sides – mostly to spy on the Pallaseen, but it creates a sort of doubt within her as The Mouth fights against the world she used to believe in. There are still people she cares about that are actively looking to kill her. The Pope, however, has less doubt. Also formerly of the Pallaseen, he has taken the lessons to heart and started his own cult because he felt compelled to. He provides answers to his own questions about his faith, mostly revolving around his own unique ability to seize the opportunity.
And then we have the demons. The demons within the Tyrant Philosophers have been a tiger hiding in the grass throughout the books. We have known about them and the Allorwen conjurers since the beginning. There are full-on demonic characters that highlight the role of contracts within demonology, and how the nine Demon Kings hold control over everyone. They have been minor and major characters within the story, given perspectives in short punchy moments. They’ve even been soldiers for the Pallaseen through an accidentally vague contract. But they’ve also existed in this strange space where we, and the characters, don’t really understand what a demon is. Abellaime is there to remind Jack, through his apprenticeship, that the demon is just the contract. They have no shape in their own world, not in the way that we see them on the surface. They have no desires, needs, or personalities. They exist only for the contract. Because while it may be a form of slavery, at least it’s not slavery in hell. And most of this is told through Abellaime’s perspective, the last remaining Conjurer of her family name. A masterful conjurer who takes pride in it as an art. So why shouldn’t we believe her? She’s been doing this for decades. Not a bastardized version of the art meant to commodify and standardize the contracts. But an honest to God craftswoman who knows her trade and how to use it to her advantage.
Finally, it comes to good ole Maric Jack, plus the one and only Yasnic–the throughline character of the entire series. He is a man obsessed with the loss of his demonic lover to the point where he feels the only way to reach her is to become one who can control demons. Abellaime seizes on this opportunity to make Jack cruel and uncaring. Teaches him about how demons aren’t people in the way that we would recognize them. He watches her take delight in controlling her specific family minion, denigrating him like a dog in front of everyone. And she is excited about her ability to influence the innocent Jack. And these were the sections I found most introspective because though we’ve been with Yasnic/Jack through the whole series, Jack carries a certain distance from the reader, whereas Yasnic was open and vulnerable to our prying eyes. His internal conflicts were accessible, on his sleeve so to speak. Whereas Jack is grim determination. There is a soft core wrapped up in the shell of his grief over Caeleen. There were moments where I wasn’t sure what was going to happen with this story thematically, and it caused me great dissonance. And I mean that in a good way. It dances alongside the “ends justify the means” themes we so often see in big stories without overindulging in it.
This approach hit me unexpectedly as I never truly stopped to appreciate the fact that Yasnic defied God’s wishes through his gestures toward the demon, Caeleen. It was a moment that initially felt like a cheeky joke on Tchaikovsky’s part. Three books later you realize you’re a frog and the metal is getting extraordinarily hot. What does it mean to reject God in a world where your perceived enemy is actively turning gods into fuel? Can you replace God with a demonic force and still do good? I don’t have the time to dig into the specifics of Tchaikovsky’s version of God, but those specifics feel so incredibly sharp through Pretenders as this specific arc surfaces from the depths. It all gets rolled into a central question of “What even is ‘doing good?’” Pretenders answer to this is teased out slowly in the subtext and made me think “wait, what?” It’s not a forceful cry of meaning that reminds one of one’s worth in the world. It’s not an exuberant display of the soul in a world hell bent on crushing it. It’s a solemn, mischievous, and grounded mantra that reminds Jack of his place, his mission, and his desires: misery and wickedness. And in the month or two since finishing this book I turned that phrase over and over in my head, examining its many facets like a jeweler with an heirloom diamond. It’s the perfect story for someone like me who finds themselves a perpetual skeptic and searcher. How does one define good in a world trying to be perfect?
This breathing room is not just for the reader. The characters also take moments to come to their own conclusions. They think about the world they are fighting for and the weapons they want to use to fight for it. Pretenders practices restraint, letting it feel like a conversation the reader is involved in, not just principles to be preached. Obviously it can’t resolve this tension, if it could I think we’d have to be living in a completely different world with a very different relation to faith and its relationship to power. Some of it comes off as a little safe, but it feels like it is filling the role of a penultimate book perfectly, leaving me a small feeling of trepidation for the final novel. Tchaikovsky has a habit of placing the reader on an anvil first, with his final grand reveal being showing you the hammer.
Pretenders to the Throne of God is the kind of book I pray for in longer series that rarely gets a chance to shine. Often when fantasy handles religion, it’s sort of a “this is how people used to live” thing that never really scratches the itch. It’s often handled in a weird way because oftentimes the gods are real. Or it’s barely handled at all, missing gods with contemporary musings on the nature of faith. Tchaikovsky manages to combine the wistful musings with the fact that these gods actually do exist and influence how people think and act. And while it’s not the most bombastic of the series, it has found a special place in my heart. And I didn’t even get to spend time with the entire rest of the Pallaseen cast which is incredible and really showcases Tchaikovsky’s ability to write wily characters of mischief. That and just how horrifyingly creative he is with how the Pallaseen weaponizes its parasitism.
Rating: Pretenders to the Throne of God – Fill your God Hole with Misery and Wickedness.
-Alex
