So, when I followed the tag to find out the last time I read a book in Richard K. Morgan's A Land Fit For Heroes trilogy, I found out I last posted about it in 2012, and even then it was mentioning the series in relation to another series I was writing about. However, someone in a facebook group posted about the series recently and I found out he'd finally finished it back in 2015.
Which brings us to The Dark Defiles, which has taken me about two weeks to wade through, where every character talks like they're playing golf on a pirate ship. Seriously. I think the ocean they're all sailing on isn't nearly as salty as the dialogue at points. Even the gods/demons/whatever they actually are drop the f bomb every other word or so.
Any rate, the whole series centers on three warriors, veterans of another war, called back in to duty as the dwenda, figures of legend, start re-entering the world. We have Egar, also known as Dragonsbane, from the steppes, who had taken over his clan until his brother and a shaman tried to kill him and take over the clan. We have Archeth, a half-human who's father came from another outside race that helped drive out the dwenda the last time and who currently is the Emperor's advisor. And we have Ringil, who started off in the League, got exiled for taking a male lover, then managed to alienate both major governments by trying to end the slave trade single handedly. Add to it that he was schtupping a dwenda back in book one and now spends a bunch of time in the wounds between the worlds... Oh yeah, and he commands the glyphs that make up the magic in this world.
At the start, the three warriors are well north of both the Empire and the League looking for the body of the Illwrack Changeling, supposedly the dwenda's champion in time long gone. During the course of the search, Ringil gets separated from the other two, who get captured by League privateers, since the Empire has decided to start a war with the League again.
Egar and Archeth wind up getting free when they shipwreck near the fabled city they were also looking for, built by Archeth's people in the Ago.
Ringil uses magic, captures the leader of the privateers (eventually), and starts his own quest to pretty much kill everything that moves.
(That's really simplified, but true enough.)
Eventually, we find out there's not a single nice character in this entire series, and just about every faction has been plotting to serve their own goals rather than what's best for everyone.
The entire series is quite interesting, and has a bunch of Queer representation in its characters. It's also quite coarse and unrefined. While I kind of doubt I'll ever reread them, I don't regret wading into this series.
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