Peter McLean’s fourth novel, Priest of Bones is the first in a ‘grimdark fantasy’ series featuring crime lords, turf wars, secret police and the effects of PTSD on veteran ex-soldiers. Having survived the horrors of Abingon, Tomas Piety – once a ‘businessman’, now an army priest – returns to his home city of Ellinburg to retake his position, and his streets. What he finds there are businesses taken over in his absence, streets no longer safe for the people living in them, and a new war brewing that promises to be as dark and harrowing as the one he’s just returned from.
It’s told in the gritty first person perspective of Tomas Piety as he dispenses his own particular brand of ‘harsh justice’ and non-judgemental confession in equal measure. This is a character entirely prepared to let his swords do the talking where appropriate, and who has an instinctive understanding of how to make best use of the soldiers at his disposal, yet can also see and empathise with the damaging effects the war has had on his men. In other words he’s a complex and instantly engaging character, whose viewpoint makes for compelling reading in context of a story entirely deserving of its ‘grimdark’ moniker.
From breathtaking levels of violence and a head-on depiction of its aftermath, to some eyebrow-raisingly obscene language, it’s often brutal stuff but never feels gratuitous. It’s a dark, unpleasant setting so characters’ equally dark actions, responses and dialogue feel entirely appropriate, and make no mistake – characters are entirely at the core of the story. Tomas is the focus, but these characters and their world is enthralling from the get-go – loud, brash voices and personalities in a world painted in greys and splashes of blood. McLean slowly, carefully reveals their backstories as the plot develops, layering on depth and complexity and adding weight to the ongoing narrative.
There’s no doubt this is a grim and violent story, but it’s darkly satisfying to spend time with characters whose world is very much made up of shades of grey, to watch them do terrible things for understandable reasons, and to explore the city and its inhabitants as the stakes and complexities gradually rise. It’s a compulsively readable story that hooks you right away and keeps drawing you ever onwards, cleverly written and with a powerful, engaging tone of voice. If you like your fantasy on the dark and gritty side, light on magic and heavy on brutal, matter of fact violence, then this is an absolute must-read and promises to be the start of something very special.
