Time for another book review. Feels like I'm writing these more and more often of late, maybe I'm reading faster. The Alabaster Staff by Edward Bolme is a Forgotten Realms novel and is the first book in a quartet titled The Rogues. Each of the four books details a story featuring a central character whose main skills lie in sneakiness. As I love sneaky characters, I'll admit I am a little biased towards these books from the outset.
This book focuses on Kehrsyn, a slip of a girl on the verge of womanhood who has grown up living on the harsh streets of the cities in the nation of Unther. Unther was a nation ruled by the god Gilgeam and his tyrannical clergy. All that changed when Kehrsyn was a small girl as he was killed in battle with another god Tiamat, the five-headed queen of dragons (who you should remember if you've ever seen the old D&D cartoon). Chaos has ruled in Unther ever since, with various factions controlling each city and struggling amongst themselves to reunite the country under their sole authority. To add to the nations problems, just over a year ago the nation of Mulhorand invaded, and has conquered three quarters of the divided country in just under 18 months. All that is left of Unther is the city of Massemprar and its environs.
And it is here that Kehrsyn, like so many other refugees has fled too, the cities population has tripled from the influx, and between that and the naval blockade of the harbour by the Mulhorandi fleet, food prices have soared. Kehrsyn does her best to earn a living though, entertaining crowds in the various plaza's of the city, with sleight-of-hand tricks (such as the card and coin tricks performed by modern day magicians). Still a couple factors make her living hard, one is that few people are inclined to part with coin to pay for her perfomances when that same coin could be needed to feed them; and the second is that Kehrsyn is far too nice for her own good, and frequently gives her money away to those more needy than herself.
It is while performing in such a plaza that she attracts some unwanted atention from a recruiter for the newly formed Thieves Guild, who seeks to employ her. When Kehrsyn refuses, the agent frames her for the murder of a Zhentarim soldier (the Zhentarim being a powerful evil organisation of merchants and wizards, and one of the few groups able to get food shipments past the blockade). Wanted by the Zhent's and the city guard she has no choice but to carry out the theft that the guild want her to perform, in return for which they will remove the stain on her name.
There are several powerful organisations in the Realms, for a novel to feature a couple of them and to do them justice is one thing... this book features no less than five of them! And all written superbly. I smiled reading pretty much every page of this book, as the characters, the action, the dialogue (ohh the wonderful dialogue, in particular how the character of Massedar speaks!), all of it is well written. I've never read anything by Edward Bolme before and I know he is now writing books for the Eberron shared fiction world, which is a loss to the Realms.
This book gets a full marks from me, 5/5. Kehrsyn is one of the best written heroines that I have ever read, and I'd dearly love to read another book about her (unwanted) exploits. If you want to try a Realms novel and you don't know where to start, I can heartily advise you to give this one a read.
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