Daniel Abraham

The Long Price Quartet — (2006-2009) Publisher: In this brilliant and original epic fantasy of Machiavellian intrigue and unique magic, Daniel Abraham portrays fully realized women and complex, conflicted men in love, caught between the forces of money and power. The city-state of Saraykeht dominates the Summer Cities: commerce and trade fill the streets. Any desire, however exotic or base, can be satisfied in its soft quarter. The people live and work secure in the knowledge that their city is a bastion of progress in a harsh world. It would be a tragedy if it fell... At the heart of the city's influence is the poet-sorcerer Heshai and the captive spirit Seedless which he controls. Heshai is at once the linchpin of and the most vulnerable point in Saraykeht's greatness. Far to the west, the armies of Galt have conquered many lands. To take Saraykeht, they must first destroy its prosperity. Marchat Wilsin, head of Galt's trading-house in the city, is planning a terrible crime against Heshai and Seedless. If he succeeds, Saraykeht will fall. Amat, House Wilsin's business manager, her apprentice Liat, and two young men from the farthest reaches of their society stand alone against the dire threat to the city. But in this city of power and intrigue, no one is without secrets. The price they must pay to save Saraykeht may be greater than they can afford...

The Long Price Quartet: A Shadow in Summer, A Betrayal in Winter, An Autumn War

I often fall into the temptation of wanting to rush out and review a new book in a series immediately. It’s fresh, it’s out there, let’s let people know. But then I find myself three or four books in and wondering if readers should have bothered starting that first book, no matter how good it was.

So when it came to Daniel Abraham’s The Long Price Quartet, which began with A Shadow in Summer, as much as I enjoyed the book, I thought I’d hold off until we saw where he went with it. Having just completed An Autumn War, the third book of four, I feel confident in telling readers, “jump on in; the reading’s fine.”

The series is set in a world where there are basically two competing forces. One is the Eastern-tinged independent “summer cities” of the Khaiem. Rich, sophisticated, plush cities whose power is predicated upon a single magical concept—Andats. Created and controlled by “poets” (one poet to an Andat, one Andat to a city), Andats are ideas/metaphors made real and in humanoid shape. Each Andat has a single power that can be applied in multiple ways. For instance, the andat of Saraykeht, “Removing the part that continues,” more familiarly known as “Seedless,” can separate seeds from cotton, a huge advantage which allows the city to become a mercantile power. Seedless can also be used, however, to separate human seed, either on a one to one basis as an abortion (called the “sad trade”) or on a much wider basis, wiping out hundreds or thousands or hundreds of thousands. This threat would clearly make another power think twice about taking on the city.

Creation of an Andat is life-threatening, and control of one is a constant strain, as the Andat is bound to the poet (indeed, is in some ways made of the poet) but has its own personality and its own agenda, including a desire to be free. Andats can be kept and handed off from one poet to another over generations, though it is always a risk and always gets harder, meaning there is constant fear by the cities of losing their Andat.

Opposed to the summer cities, though not overtly (due to the power of the Andats), are the Galts a more technological, more military-based civilization who covet the riches of the summer cities and — even more than the riches — the Andat themselves. A Shadow in Summer introduces the setting — a conspiracy by Galt to break the power of Saraykeht by freeing Seedless — and the major characters:  Amat, a merchant woman who uncovers the conspiracy; Itani (later called Otah), a common laborer who once trained to be a poet; Liat, Amat’s assistant and Itani’s lover; Heshai, the poet who controls Seedless; and Maati, Heshai’s pupil who is training to eventually take over Seedless.

Book Two, A Betrayal in Winter, is set 15 years later and shifts to a more northern summer city — Machi. Here, the Khai (each city’s ruler is called the Khai) is dying. The tradition is that the sons of the khai enter into a kill-or-be-killed competition until only one is left alive to take the throne. It turns out that Otah (Itani) from book one is a long-forgotten son of the Khai who had been sent away as a child to train as a poet, a training he turned his back on for the life of a laborer until the events of book one. Once again, Otah is caught up in a complicated conspiracy, this one involving the succession of Machi. Also involved are Machi’s poet Cehmai Tyan, his andat Stone-Made-Soft, Maati, and the Khai’s daughter Idaan.

Book Three, An Autumn War, set over a decade later, presents a much broader threat. The first two books focused on a single city. In An Autumn War, we meet a Galtic general, Balasar Gice, who sees the Andat as a threat not only to Galt, but to the world (deep history offers up some reason for this belief). Having come up with what he believes is a successful method of destroying the Andat, Gice marches an army on all the summer cities, aiming for Machi as his last conquest. Otah, now ruler of Machi, must find a way to stop not only Gice’s army, but also his plot against the Andat and poets, aided by his fellow characters from the previous two books along with a few important additions.

Except for the latter half of An Autumn War, which follows Gice’s march on the summer cities, these books are not action-oriented. There are almost no battles, no quests, no swordsmanship, etc. The books are driven more by intricate conspiracies that must be either put into place or unraveled (depending on which characters we’re following at the time) and by the characters and their relationships. These are, for the most part, richly complex characters (A Betrayal in Winter is the weakest in this regard) torn by conflicting desires and struggling with major ethical questions. Seedless can be read as a simple villain, but he is enslaved to the poet’s will and this garners him much sympathy. As does his multi-faceted personality, able to be sinister and charming, to hate and to like.  Gice, as well, can be simply read, but while his means are brutal, his intentions are noble and hard to fault on many levels. The characters’ complexity also is displayed in the changes they undergo over the many years spanned by the three books; they are not the same people in book three as in book one and their differences are utterly believable. Daniel Abraham’s characters are probably the best thing about The Long Price Quartet, and enough on their own to warrant reading.

The Eastern-influence of the setting is nicely different. And it’s also refreshing to have a magical system that is so limited and has a stark cost associated with it, as opposed to the wave-of-the-hand magic we see so often. I would have liked a greater sense of the whole world, and especially more on the Galts, but this was a relatively minor flaw. As mentioned, A Betrayal in Winter suffers from somewhat weaker characters than the other two, but not to any major detriment and if anything, its plot is more focused and the writing tighter, so the character issue is somewhat balanced. An Autumn War’s subplot about a possible turncoat never really rings fully true, but luckily it’s only a subplot. Abraham’s use of formalized gestures as complement to conversation adds to the wonderful sense of difference, though I’m not sure it was mined for its full potential. I wouldn’t have minded a bit of humor leavened throughout. But again, these are all relatively minor complaints and all outweighed by the richly compelling characters, the brilliant premise of the andats (what reader can’t root for a book where poets — poets! — have so much power), the careful layering of plot points that lead inexorably to the current point, etc.

Having read three-quarters of the way through this series, I eagerly await its conclusion in book four (The Price of Spring). The Long Price Quartet is a compelling fantasy that won’t feel to readers like the same old same old epic fantasy. Nor do they need to worry that it will tease them into a series with a good opening than steadily deteriorates (you know who I mean).  Plus, it has the added advantage of having each book happily able to stand independently — no cliffhanger endings here. So as I said at the start:  jump on in, the reading’s fine.  Highly recommended. —Bill   Comments

A Shadow in Summer: Impressive debut—an anti-fantasy fantasy

The Cities of the Khaiem shine like jewels in the East, and the brightest is the port of Saraykeht. The realm's profitable cotton trade flows through the city, quickened by the artistry of the poet Heshai. For in the East, a poet's art can become incarnate as a powerful spirit-slave (andat), and it is on the shoulders of Heshai, master of the andat Seedless, that the weight of Saraykeht's continuing prosperity balances ... a weight outsiders would gladly topple.

In these delicate times, first-time novelist Daniel Abraham chronicles the poignant choices of a handful of characters seldom seen in the "fantasy" genre: a middle-aged, female overseer of a foreign merchant house; her aging employer, the house's lord; her young assistant; the assistant's lover (a common dock-laborer); and Heshai's newly-arrived apprentice. Together and individually, without sword or spell, these elegantly-realized few will determine Saraykeht's fate.

Daniel Abraham, quite often a poet himself in fashioning the novel's lacquer-smooth prose, has written a marvelous novel — a “fantasy” by virtue of its setting and the andat's power, but a fantasy that can be gleefully dropped in the lap of anyone complaining of generic, Arthurian or Tolkien-esque settings; paper-deep protagonists; or unrestrained gore. Shadow (Book One of the planned The Long Price Quartet) is both fresh and literary, and as Mr. Abraham has spent years writing short fiction and honing his craft, he deserves every compliment that comes his way.

Although A Shadow in Summer is not a perfect book — some will no doubt label the communicative custom of “poses” (e.g. “[he] took a pose half query and half command”) as a device to cheat and tell emotions instead of showing them; and there is a plot issue as mentioned after the spoiler alert — it is a book worth owning and, likely, re-reading. Fans of Barry Hughart (Bridge of Birds) and Guy Gavriel Kay (Tigana) should take special note of this tale. Four summer-bright stars.

The plot is driven by a Western conspiracy to remove the poet and andat and thus cripple the city. The execution of the story is solid enough that one may not pause to consider the larger picture; but in retrospect, it seems implausible that the conspirators would adopt their complex, innocent-life-taking scheme when assassinating the poet would work just as well. Of course, it could not be a blatant, traceable act, but a well-planned “accident” — perhaps a roof tile falling on the strolling poet (as it does on others in an actual scene), a mugging, or the consumption of “bad” liquor or drugs — would work equally well and with fewer contortions. —Rob R.   Comments

The Price of Spring

I’ve been a big fan of Daniel Abraham’s Long Price Quartet and The Price of Spring, its concluding volume, confirms my view that it is one of the more original and best-written fantasy epics in recent years.

If you haven’t read the third volume, An Autumn War, stop reading here as you’ll run into spoilers for that book.

As has been the pattern in the series, the story picks up years after the events of An Autumn War. Otah and Maati reappear as major characters, while other familiar faces show up in relatively minor roles — Balasar Gice, Cehmani, Sinja, Idaan, and others. New characters, both major and minor, are added to the mix, including Otah’s daughter Eiah, his son Danat, Danat’s betrothed, and several poets-in-training. An Autumn War ended with the destruction of the poets and the magical Andat, but only after the Andat Sterile had made the women of the Khaiem and the men of Galt infertile. Fifteen years later, both nations are already having difficulties and the prognosis for worse is obvious: without children, labor is becoming scarce, farms are going unworked, businesses lose essential workers, the armies and navies are aging and will in a few years’ time be unable to defend the borders.

The book opens with Otah attempting to negotiate an agreement with Galt to send willing members of the fertile genders of each sex over to the other country so the two countries can survive Sterile’s curse. As part of his negotiating, he agrees to have his son Danat wed to a prominent daughter of Galt, Ana Dasin, but the betrothal goes nowhere as smoothly as Otah had wished. Meanwhile, Otah’s daughter, believing that this agreement demeans all women (viewing them as useful only for their reproductive ability), has left the palaces and joined with Maati, who sees Otah’s treaty as a sell-out to the Galts who had destroyed more than half the Khaiem cities in a bloody invasion. To stop Otah and to reassert Khaiem power over Galt, Maati has gathered several women in an attempt to teach them to be poets and regain the power of the Andat. It quickly becomes apparent that along with Vanjit, whose entire family was killed by the Galts, Eiah is his best pupil, making these two the most likely new poets. Much of the book is focused on several races: the race by Maati and Eiah and Vanjit to “bind” a new Andat, the race by Otah and others to find them and stop them before they do so, and the race between the past and the future as the two countries must decide what their relationship to each other will be.

There is much less focus on the Andat in this novel, but the discussion of their creation and binding — the attempt to make concrete an abstract idea — is fascinating and enjoyably stimulating. The setting also plays a smaller role. The gesture/pose grammar of the Khaiem is more fully realized here since we see it employed between Khaiem and Galts, so its subtleties are more played up.

The strengths of The Price of Spring are the same as with the series as a whole: characterization, an original “eastern-style” setting, a unique magic system, tight writing, strong prose, and a good ending. These books are character-driven — you’ll find no sweeping battle scenes, no storming the gates, no brawling or swordplay or fireballs a’bursting. The action involves mostly travel, well-done dialogue, and brief acts that have deep and far-ranging effects. The characters are complex and multi-faceted and, as in real life, we can see their actions in both favorable and unfavorable lights. In other words, nobody does anything here because they’re simply “evil” or they’re the “dark lord” — their motivations are mundane and believable: grief, jealousy, love, protectiveness, etc. Even when characters do something we don’t like, we can see why they’d do it. For characters we already know, we get to see other sides of them or we get to see them ripen over the decades the book spans — sometimes growing wiser, sometimes letting the world outgrow their earlier wisdom. This is more true of Otah than anyone, and the rich, layered portrayal of his entire life as it plays out across the four novels is one of Daniel Abraham’s finest achievements. By the time this book ends we feel a true sense of a life, a real life, lived, with all the sorrows and grievous errors and magnificent triumphs any real life contains.

The plot of The Price of Spring is compelling and tense through much of the novel. I think, though, that my favorite aspect of the plot is how Abraham has us, as fans of fantasy and all that usually involves (magic, grand actions, noble justice, etc) rooting for the end of fantasy — the end of the Andats and the lack of justice. If the “good guys” win, there will be no magic in this world — only the continued technological progress of Galt as represented by their steamwagons. It’s a somewhat depressing thought for those of us enticed by the promise of difference and magic in these worlds. And Abraham shows us the bittersweet aspect of this — the necessity to move on, the built-in stagnation inherent in the Andat system set side by side with the sorrow of a world gone by, a world that wasn’t great but had its strengths, its pleasures, its better aspects that will be lost along with its worse elements. Much of this comes through the interior thought process of Otah, whom we’ve seen age from a young man to a nostalgic grieving old man burdened by responsibility.

The Price of Spring is relatively concise. There wasn’t any area of sustained lag, no major pacing problems. The writing is strong throughout and the bittersweet ending (really two endings since there’s an epilog) finishes both the book and the series strongly and logically and honestly, with a truly moving close.

The Price of Spring is an excellent closure to one of the best fantasy epics of recent years. I commend Daniel Abraham for actually finishing a quartet in four books and look forward to his next project. Highly recommended. —Bill   Comments