I finished reading this book yesterday and as I'm already well into my next book, it is best I get writing this review out of the way before I end up having to write two at once! The Yellow Silk by Don Bassingthwaite is a Forgotten Realms novel, and the fourth in a quartet of stand-alone tales called The Rogues. Each book in the series focuses on one (or more) characters who rely on their wits and dexterity to get by in life.
The rogue in this case is Tychoben Arisaenn, or Tycho as most people know him. Tycho is a bard, and makes a meagre living in the port city of Spandeliyon, by singing and playing his strilling at dockside taverns, in particular The Wench's Ease. He also runs errands for various people in the town, almost all of them unsavoury. Lastly he makes a few coins on the side as a music tutor for the teenage daughter of the city watch commander. He needs this money as much to keep a roof over his head and food in his belly, as to pay for the medicinal herbs that his ageing tutor Veseene needs to suppress the effects of the palsy that is slowly killing her.
Into Tycho's fairly humdrum existence comes Li Chien Kuang, a native of the distant eastern empire of Shou Lung (think medieval China), who has crossed a continent in search of his brother Yu Mao Kuang, who had traveled west with a trading caravan three years earlier, betrayed them and joined a pirate crew. He has been sent to restore his family's honour by slaying his brother. Unfortunately for Li, he is somewhat naive to the nature of the western world and on his first night in Spandeliyon he is brutally beaten up, stripped and left for dead. And then found in a snowdrift by Tycho.
He has only survived by the power of an artifact that his father has sent with him, the Yellow Silk Of Kuang, a large piece of silk cloth, in which the weavers trapped the power of the Sun! Teaming up with Tycho, Li sets out to recover first his stolen gear and then find out what became of his brother. His sole lead is Brin, a halfling pirate turned crime boss (think Frodo Baggins with an eyepatch and a REALLY mean attitude), and one of Yu Mao's former shipmates, only it was Brin's thugs that beat him up and left him for dead!
The plot is easy to follow, and yet full of twists and turns, providing for a fun book to read, as I was never entirely sure what was going to happen next. Every character is well detailed and springs to life off the page. The fight scenes are really something to read, as Li is a monk and fights with hands and feet, leaping and twirling about, quite a refreshing change in style from the usual depiction of combat in these books.
I'm going to give this book 5/5, it is a good read, with interesting characters (and really quite a cast of them too), and it has it all, magic, murder, betrayal, pirates, martial arts, music and a lot of pigs! A shame that Mr. Bassingthwaite isn't writing for the Forgotten Realms setting anymore really. I would love to read a sequel to this one, as the ending is left open enough for there to be one.
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