The Feywild Job by C.L. PolkMy rating: 5 of 5 stars
This isn't just better than most licensed fiction; it's better than most fiction I come across.
The thing with licensed fiction is that it's often just officially sanctioned fanfic, and while there is some excellent fanfic here and there, it's not common. Usually, you're going to see a better result from an author who has come up with an original world, situation, and characters, because if they can do that, they're probably talented enough to also tell a good story. (Lots of exceptions in all directions, of course, but that's the way to bet.)
But the thing with D&D licensed fiction is that, while the author is handed a detailed and complex world, they do generally come up with an original situation and characters, and that's what this book is.
A further advantage is that modern D&D is built for creating storytelling potential. Take the idea of a warlock. Here's someone who has made a deal with a powerful otherworldly being in order to get power for themselves. That's just bristling with possible stories. Firstly, it's a relationship that involves a power differential, so you know there's going to be some exploitation happening. Secondly, the warlock has to have had a reason they wanted that power and were prepared to trade for it; what part of them is broken that caused that to be true, and how will that continue to play out? And thirdly, they're now more powerful than the ordinary people around them; how are they going to abuse that?
The central character of this novel (and it deserves to be called a novel) is a warlock, Saeldian, who serves an archfey patron and has made a career out of con games. When Saeldian's old partner, the bard Kell, is forced into doing another job with Saeldian - who left Kell after their last big score in circumstances that looked like a horrible betrayal - we have motivated protagonists in a dynamic situation, and that's always an excellent story engine.
Alongside Saeldian and Kell we have the rogue Jubilee, who's Saeldian's new partner, and the druid Lorzok, who's Kell's new partner. Jubilee needs money to help her parents, former adventurers who have been "gifted" a dilapidated manor; Lorzok is seeking a place where he belongs. They're tasked with a heist, and told that the job is reclaiming a stolen gem with minor magical powers from someone who has bought it from a thief without knowing its provenance, and returning it to its rightful owner in the Feywild without them finding out.
The heist is tricky, but not, perhaps, as tricky as it ought to be; they're given no time to prepare, yet manage to pull off something that ought to be impossible. This eventually turns out to be down to complex machinations.
Along the way, though, the true story unfolds: the relationship between Kell and Saeldian. Is it retrievable? Can they ever be honest with one another? What really caused Saeldian to leave ten years ago? And this is where the book really shines. There's a gradual but completely believable unfolding of the truth and progression of the relationship, and it flows naturally out of the specifics of how the world works, which I always appreciate in a speculative fiction work.
The rich culture of the Forgotten Realms forms a great backdrop to the early part of the book, and the wonderful and terrifying, ever-shifting Feywild is an equally effective setting for the later part. The author does an excellent job of evoking these settings without ever making them the focus; that stays firmly on the characters and their relationships, plus the twisty and surprising plot. Also, you don't need to be familiar with these settings, or with D&D in general, in order to understand what's going on.
I knew C.L. Polk was a good writer, because I'd read The Midnight Bargain and rated it five stars. This book only confirms my opinion. Personally, I would use the past perfect tense more often than it's used here (that's a general trend I've noticed in the books I read), but otherwise I have little to complain of in the copy editing either.
Strongly recommended.
View all my reviews
