Book Review: The Dragon's Path | Daniel Abraham (The Dagger and the Coin #1)

Falling pebbles can start a landslide, and a gentleman's war between the Free Cities and the Severed Throne is about to spiral out of control...

This book The Dragon's Path is the first book of The Dagger and the Coin, an epic fantasy quintet by Daniel Abraham. With this series Daniel Abraham takes on the traditional epic fantasy. The first book was released in 2011 and a book was released about every year until it was complete.

Having re-read The Long Price Quartet and found myself holding it in even higher regard the second time around, I decided that I ought to reread at least The Dragon's Path, since I purchased a copy of it.

(You will be disappointed to learn that Orbit Books only ever issued The Dagger and the Coin in trade paperback. There is no hardcover.)

From the looks of the cover and the name of the book you'd be forgiven for thinking that this is a generic epic fantasy. Let me reassure you: it isn't. Daniel Abraham does not write generic fantasy, as anyone who read The Long Price Quartet can attest to.

So! Our characters. We have: Captain Marcus Wester, a veteran soldier-turned-mercenary who has lost all hope thanks to a dark past that left his wife and daughter dead. Sir Geder Palliako, a minor nobleman whose interest in the "speculative essay" leads him to be ridiculed. Cithrin bel Sarcour, an orphan from a young age. Dawson Kalliam, another nobleman, but one of much higher position.

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This is largely a novel of setting things into play. We open with an apostate from the worshippers of the Spider Goddess, and he goes on to become a supporting character and the book ends with a chapter from his viewpoint as well, the Entr'acte.

There are many a familiar element here: caravans, court politics, duels, seers. The politics of the Antean court will remind many a reader of Martin, though Dawson, our viewpoint character into this, doesn't seem particularly good at it. And many a reader won't like Dawson: he's a conservative, reactionary nobleman. His enemies wish to set up a farmer's council. (As it turns out, one of them is working with neighboring Asterilhold to kill King Simeon and his son Aster.)

But it's Geder and Cithrin who are the characters of interest. They are the proverbial "dagger" and "coin" of the series' name.

Geder must be one of the best-drawn characters I've ever read about. We open with him being mocked and as the novel progresses we see his developing hatred of people lying to him and his (apparently continuing) hatred of people mocking him - something which always turns his embarrassment into anger - and by the very end of the book he has his own priest of the Spider Goddess, Basrahip, and has gone from minor nobleman to Antean hero to protector of the King.

Cithrin is an orphan, yes - but she is the ward of the Medean Bank. Economics and money matters majorly into her storyline and though that may sound a little dull it's one of my favorite aspects of the book. But being a ward of the Bank has had its negative consequences: she thinks of everything like a banker. She struggles to truly feel, like a person does, and when she fails to nab a particular contract 3/4ths through the book she turns to alcohol. (Captain Wester rights her.)

We get also two chapters towards the end of the book from the viewpoint of Clara Kalliam, Dawson's wife, and she too quickly became a firm favorite. It's something Daniel Abraham seems to do in every series of his: a strong, middle-aged woman protagonist. I love it. Clara's world is far more unique, her world of knitting with the ladies to gather information.

All of the characters are described and written very well, all of them true to themselves - Abraham's talent at characterization remains.

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But what of the world? Well, some readers felt that Abraham's worldbuilding wasn't quite up to snuff with his characterization. And, it's true, in the first book clarity is sacrificed for flow and many of the ideas seem underutilized. But I must disagree. We've gotten just enough to get a glimpse of a bigger picture.

The world takes place some hundreds of years after the fall of the Dragon Empire. Dragons were incredibly powerful. They built, out of... I don't know what, actually, it might be jade - they built the dragon's roads linking much of the world together. They created the thirteen races of humanity.

There are the Firstblood, your bog-standard human. And then there are also the Cinnae, the Tralgu, the Timzinae, the Yemmu, the Dartinae, the Jasuru, the Raushadam, the Haunadam, the Southling, the Kurtadam, the Haaverkin, and the Drowned. We don't see much of the thirteen races beyond superficial description. (Though Cithrin is half-Cinnae.)

Through the course of the novel we see Geder's wish to find the Spider Goddess grow, out of discovering a mention of the 'Righteous Servant' created by Morade, one of the last dragons, who went mad and thus lead to the last war of the dragons which saw their downfall. The 'Righteous Servant' could distinguish between truth and lie.

He finds a handful more than that. During chaos in the court of Antea, he leaves, on the advice of his father, heading east, hoping to find something of the 'Righteous Servant', maybe write a speculative essay of his own. Instead, he finds the temple of the Spider Goddess. And with it, Basrahip, who takes Geder as the sign he and the temple have been waiting for to return to the world. And so, when Geder returns to Antea, he brings Basrahip with him.

I'll say no more, as I dislike spoiling things for the readers.

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The prose is clearer, almost sparser than that of the Long Price. It's more straightforward. But that's okay - an observation, not a critique. It remains polished and fascinating, his skillful characterization and methodical plotting fully in play.

Drama before action remains a hallmark of Abraham's writing and I really can't complain. I loved The Long Price Quartet. Here with the first book of The Dagger and the Coin we have set up before us something more familiar, something closer to the standard epic fantasy. But the set-up for the future books (which I've pointedly avoided spoiling from) leaves a great deal open.

Just as the first time I read it, I can't wait to read what happens next.

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I can't guarantee when my review of the next book will come. I own a copy of The Dragon's Path but I don't own any copies of the four others - The King's Blood, The Tyrant's Law, The Widow's House, and The Spider's War. I'll probably check them out from the library, but it'll be a while before I do. I have two books checked out already and a half-dozen on hold.

I've been reading a great deal of fantasy from a great deal of writers. On my bedside I still have The Red Knight (Miles Cameron, Traitor's Son Cycle #1), which continues to leave me a little bored, and City of Stairs (Robert Jackson Bennett, Divine Cities #1) which in the first chapter (of not even twenty pages) left me more intrigued than half of The Red Knight, a book easily twice as long as City of Stairs.

You may safely expect many a fantasy book review from me in the coming weeks.