The King of the Crags by Stephen Deas | book review

【 THE KING OF THE CRAGS 】

Genre: Fantasy (epic)
Audience: Adult
Author: Stephen Deas
Published: January 2010
Publisher: Gollancz
Pages: 384 (paperback)

I’m pleased to say that this didn’t disappoint following on from the first book – plenty of dragon chaos ensued! I’m still really enjoying this world and the devilish politics going on. There was certainly some interesting character development happening, and I’m no closer to really understanding where I stand with Jehal.

This continues the fast pace of book one, flipping through many POVs to give you all the angles of what is happening across the kingdoms at all times. While the cast of characters sees some changes, we have a solid cohort of good and evil (but as I said about book one, most of the characters are unlikeable!) to see us through the madness.

This is full of back-stabbing and destruction, and holds up to the promise of fighting, whether it’s clandestinely done or outright declarations of war. I also really enjoyed the introduction of a group of religious zealots who are hell-bent on bringing about a prophecy. That added some interesting elements into the mix.

For a sequel, this (thankfully) didn’t fall victim to filler syndrome and actually had a nice plot to carry it through. At no point did I feel I was twiddling my thumbs waiting for the action to take place, that’s for sure. The momentum only builds, and at the end of it, I’m left with baited breath wanting to know just how epic things are brewing up to be in the third book.

I have to say the only thing I didn’t really get was why this is called The King of the Crags. I was expecting a bigger reveal/role played by that character than actually happens, and it feels like it mysteriously places emphasis on a part of the book that I wouldn’t personally say is central. But eh, it doesn’t make much difference to how enjoyable it was to read.

This book invites such chaos and it makes me soooo want to see what a world with dragons fully unleashed (if you get my drift) would look like. While I enjoy reading all of the POVs, because none of them are likeable, they become thrillingly expendable to the reader, making this once a gain, an extremely interesting read.