I'm not entirely sure what it is about Elaine Cunningham's books that makes me not want to write reviews of them, but having recently finished The Dream Spheres by her I find myself uninterested in describing the book. At any rate I give it a 3/5 rating.
So with that done, on to the next book, which I finished reading yesterday. Faces Of Deception by Troy Denning is a Forgotten Realms novel and the second in a quartet of stand-alone tales entitled Lost Empires. I'm not entirely sure why the book is in this set though, because unlike the other 3 books in the series, this one does not feature some secret from a past fallen kingdom. It is set in the present day of the Realms.
The main character of the book is Atreus Eleint, a human of noble birth whose mother had him cursed with ugliness to hide him from the families enemies during the civil strife that tore the nation of Tethyr apart not long after he was born. His family were all killed in the strife, but he (and his families considerable wealth) survived in the care of the Shieldbreaker clan of ogres, who were his families former bodyguards. With his frightfully ugly features, he blended in with the young of the clan and his life was thus spared. Now a grown man, Atreus has found that getting rid of the curse is proving to be very hard, even for a man of his means.
To this end he has essentially bought himself a place in the faithful of Sune Firehair, the Goddess of Beauty. While his money is more than welcome though, he is not and to this end the temple's priests give him a false vision, sending him on a near impossible quest to find the mystical/mythical valley of Langdarma and to bring back a vial of sparkling water from the Fountain of Infinite Grace. Do this they claim, and his looks would be restored to normal. Utterly convinced by the vision, he and his ogre bodyguard Yago set off at once.
The next chapter is set some five months later after the pair have travelled many hundreds of miles to the state of Edenvale, in an area of the Realms not actually on the map of the continent of Faerun (in fact I cannot for the life of me find any map of the area where Edenvale is located) called The Utter East. There they get a short and rather confusing audience with the geriatric queen who orders her troops to send the pair back home. Cue an escape sequence over rooftops and through alleyways, helped by a native named Rishi.
Rishi is a thoroughly unlikeable character. A liar and a thief, who exagerrates about everything. I despised him within a page of reading about him. And yet Atreus just keeps on making allowances for this worm, even when he catches him trying to steal from him on more than one occassion. Continuing with the plot, the trio (and another lying thief called Bharat who is an accomplice of Rishi) head into the wilds of the Yehimal Mountains, being pursued by the Queen's guards, in particular a patrol led by a captain named Naraka.
Seeking to lose them after a fight in which Bharat is killed (by Rishi!), the group head into a bitterly cold swamp, and there they run into a group of slavers led by a devil (literally) called Tarch. Amongst his captives is the lovely Seema, a woman of great beauty and strong pacifist ideals. When Atreus and Rishi have dealt with the guards and then the slavers, she joins the group in gratitude, though she continually claims that Langdarma doesn't exist. Not willing to take her word over that of a goddess, Atreus and his companions continue up into the mountains, now pursued by Tarch who wants Seema back as she will fetch a high price at market.
I'm not giving anything away to say that yes they do find Langdarma and that it isn't what they expect (certainly it is neither Rishi or Yago's idea of a paradise). The book is a frustrating read, as in places it is very philosophical on the nature of paradise, beauty, honour and such things. It makes you stop and think. None of the characters is entirely right or wrong (except Rishi who is just plain annoying all the way through), even Seema whose admonition against killing prevents the group for simply dealing with Tarch, they instead unwittingly leading a devil into paradise.
The books ending leaves a lot to be desired though, as it just simply ends. There is no resolution of any kind, and you are left wondering what happens next as the book finishes on a cliffhanger of sorts, yet there is no follow-up book to it. I'm going to award this book 2/5. While it is well written it doesn't feel like a Realms book at all, it doesn't fit in with the theme of Lost Empires, it has no ending (or at least no end that feels like an end), and in Rishi, it has arguably the single most annoying character I've ever had the displeasure to read about.
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