Book Review: The Widow's House | Daniel Abraham (The Dagger and the Coin #4)
The only power that has withstood Geder Palliako is the heart of the woman he desires. For her love or her death, he will risk everything - but the cracks in his rule are beginning to show.
Published in 2014 by Orbit Books, The Widow's House is the fourth book of The Dagger and the Coin, written by Daniel Abraham, which I have been reviewing. The previous three books were The Dragon's Path, The King's Blood, and The Tyrant's Law. The final book of the quintet, The Spider's War, was released in 2016.
Reading this book, I felt like its title should've been switched with that of The Tyrant's Law. Throughout Tyrant's Law Clara - the widow - worked from Camnipol to undermine Geder Palliako's rule, set against Geder earlier than anyone else. But in Widow's House she goes on the move: following the new Lord Marshal (her son Jorey) and his army to report their movements to the Medean Bank.
The Medean Bank, of course, is the home of Cithrin bel Sarcour: the only person in the world with the force of will to stand openly against Geder Palliako, having rejected him in Tyrant's Law. As part of her plan to put a stop to Geder and the spider priests that refuse to stop coming, she invents something novel: central reserve banking.
Where the seeds of the end were sown in the last book, it is here that spokes in the wheel begin to break. Armies are gathering in Elassae and Sarakal, and the Antean army has been fighting for two years now. They are driven only by the spider priests, whose voices bear the power to convince listeners of anything they say. Only the spider priests keep the exhausted armies of Antea going.
There really is just so much to like here: Geder continues to fail to realize that he is a tyrant, that he doesn't love Cithrin so much as desire her. In his rage at not having her for himself he commits the army to finding her, alternately imagining her falling to her knees and professing her love or laughing at him for his stupidity and failure. He becomes increasingly unhappy.
Clara remains my favorite: a middle-aged woman, you could argue that "nothing much" happens in her chapters. But she is absolutely pivotal in linking together the various elements that will rebel against Palliako.
Marcus and Cithrin, too, have solid storylines: the former with Master Kit and Inys, the latter with her talents at banking. The economics of The Dagger and the Coin are absolutely delightful.
I, for one, praise the writer's choice to keep point-of-view chapters strictly limited to Cithrin, Clara, Geder, and Marcus. This lack of sprawl keeps the story tight and taut. Only the prologue and the entr'acte at the end of the book come from different viewpoints.
The side characters, too, remain excellent. Seeing Master Kit and the acting troupe is always a pleasure and Inys, the last dragon, is a beautiful subversion of cliche, a grumpy fire-breathing monster frequently lost in his own despair over the loss of the dragons and the takeover of the world by "slaves" - humans. Yet he is also a valuable weapon against the spiders, as he was alive when they were first created.
The spiders, too, are finally beginning to fail: an apostate takes control of the city of Kaltfel, declaring Basrahip the true apostate. What happens when people are absolutely convinced of their righteousness and what happens when there are hundreds whom all bring their own subtle biases and judgments? All of them, incapable of thinking they might be wrong?
Once again Daniel Abraham provides an amazing book, part of a series that does more to consider war and morality and the nature of truth and certainty than, probably, any other epic fantasy out there. It's fantasy of unusual sophistication and intelligence. Where some authors accept war as just a necessary detail, Abraham, however much war may feature, questions it.
Things are building towards an epic conclusion, and this novel moves the pieces into position. But even as it does so, the question remains: just how will it all end?
