Review: The Dragon's Path, by Daniel Abraham

[Russ Allbery]

The Dragon's Path
by Daniel Abraham

Series:    Dagger and the Coin #1
Publisher: Orbit
Copyright: June 2011
ISBN:      0-316-13467-8
Format:    Kindle
Pages:     579

I read this book as a free bonus included in a Kindle edition of
Leviathan Wakes by James S.A. Corey (a pen name for Daniel Abraham and
Ty Franck). The ISBN information is for that book.

Cithrin bel Sarcour is a ward of the Medean Bank branch in Vanai and
has been since she was four years old. She's a teenager,
half-Firstblood and half-Cinnae and therefore not entirely welcome in
either group, secretly in love with Besel, and being trained in
economics by Magister Immaniel. War is coming to Vanai and with it
demands from the prince of Vanai for the bank's money. When Besel is
murdered, Cithrin is the only one left to secretly smuggle the bank's
riches and account books out of the city.

Captain Marcus Wester is working as a caravan guard. Some would
consider this a huge step down from his past as a military leader and a
killer of kings, but after the death of his wife and daughter, he has
no interest in war. He particularly has no interest in being drafted by
the prince of Vanai into fighting for the city, even though he can't
hire men to fill out his company. That's how he ends up guarding, with
only his long-time lieutenant and a hired troop of actors, the same
caravan that secretly includes Cithrin.

The war between the Severed Throne of Antea and Vanai is just part of
larger political maneuvering between several adjacent kingdoms and the
Free Cities (which seem modeled after Italian cities). The reader sees
that part of the story through the eyes of Dawson, a member of the
royal court, and the hapless Geder, a minor noble who is an officer in
the Antean army but who would much rather be searching out and
translating speculative essays. These separate strands do cross
eventually, but they don't merge, at least in this book.

The reviews I saw of this book were somewhat mixed, but I decided to
read it anyway because I was promised fantasy based on medieval
banking. And, indeed, the portions with Cithrin are often satisfyingly
different than normal fantasy fare and are the best part of the book.
Unfortunately, the reviews were right in another respect: The Dragon's
Path is very slow. There are pages and pages of setup, pages more of
Cithrin being scared and uncertain, lots of Dawson's political
maneuvering and Geder's ineptness, and not a tremendous amount of plot
for the first half of the book. Things do eventually start happening,
but Abraham is clearly not interested in hurrying the story along.

The Dragon's Path is what I'll call George R.R. Martin fantasy, since
The Song of Ice and Fire is probably the most famous example of the
style. There's a large, multi-threaded story with multiple viewpoint
characters, each told in tight third person. Chapters cycle between
viewpoint characters and are long enough to be a substantial chunk of
story. And, with relatively little narrative signaling, several of the
viewpoint characters turn out to be awful, horrible people. Unlike
Martin, though, Abraham doesn't pull off sudden reversals of
perspective where the reader starts to like characters they previously
hated. Rather the contrary: the more I learned about Dawson and Geder,
the more I disliked them, albeit for far different reasons.

I'm not sure what to make of this book. The finance parts, and the
times when Cithrin was able to show how much she learned from spending
her formative years in a bank, were fun and refreshingly different from
typical epic fantasy. But then Abraham sharply undermined Cithrin's
expertise in a way that is understandable and probably realistic, but
which wasn't at all pleasant to read about. I enjoyed the world
backstory, with its dragon wars and strangely permanent dragon jade,
apparently magical draconic genetic engineering that created multiple
variations of humanity, and sense of hinted-at history. I'd like to
learn more about it, but the details are so slow in coming. The writing
is solid, the details believable, and the world vivid and complex, but
Abraham keeps pulling the rug out from under my plot expectations, and
not in the good way. Characters showing unexpectedly successful
expertise is an old trope but one that I enjoy; characters unexpectedly
turning out to be self-centered asses isn't as fun. Abraham repeatedly
promises catharsis and then undermines it.

Dawson and Geder are excellent examples of my mixed feelings. Abraham
writes Dawson as a rather likable, principled person at first, a close
friend and defender of the king. His later actions, and the details of
his political positions shown over the course of this book, slowly
paint a far different picture without changing the narrative tone. I'm
fairly sure Abraham is doing this on purpose and the reader is intended
to slowly change their mind about Dawson; indeed, I suspect it's subtle
commentary on the sort of monarchy-supporting characters show up in
traditional fantasy. But it's still disconcerting. I wanted to like
Dawson, and particularly his wife, despite disagreeing with everything
they stands for. That can be an enjoyable and challenging reading
experience, but it wasn't for me in this book.

Geder is a more abrupt case. It's hard not to be sympathetic to him at
the beginning of the book: he just wants to read and translate
histories and speculation, and is bullied by other nobles and miserable
on campaign. I thought Abraham was setting up a coming-of-age story or
an opportunity for Geder to unexpectedly turn out to be more competent
than he expected. I won't spoil what actually happens but it's... not
that, not at all, and leaves Geder as another character who is deeply
disturbing to read about.

The Dragon's Path is well-written, deep, realistic in feel, and caught
my interest with its world-building. I'm invested in the story and do
want to know what happens next. I'm also rooting for Cithrin (and for
Wester's lieutenant, who's probably my favorite character). But it took
me a long time to read this book, and I'm not sure it was worth the
investment. I'm even less sure that the investment of reading another
four books in this world will be worth the payoff. If I had more
confidence that good people would rise to the occasion and there would
be a satisfactory conclusion for all the horrible things that happen in
this book, I'd be more tempted, but the tone of this first volume
doesn't make me optimistic.

I still want to read a series about banking and finance set against an
epic fantasy background. I want to learn more about the dragons and the
jade and the wars Abraham hints at. But I suspect this will be one of
those series that I occasionally think about but never get around to
reading more of.

Followed by The King's Blood.

Rating: 5 out of 10

Reviewed: 2018-12-31

-- 
Russ Allbery (eagle at eyrie.org)              <http://www.eyrie.org/~eagle/>