Book Review: The Pact
The Pact
Graeme Brown
Will Lesterall has grown up in the safety of his father’s castle, where tales of the outside world ruled by warring kings and creatures of nightmare have never seemed a threat. Yet on the night celebrating the two hundredth year of the sacred Pact that has kept Fort Lesterall safe, a secret intrigue ripens, and in the course of a few hours Will is confronted with a choice greater than he can comprehend.
Join an unlikely hero as destiny pulls him into the middle of an ancient conflict between fallen gods and ambitious women, one that demands blood, both holy and wicked, and the power of an ancient fire bound in steel. As swords clash below a watching wood, hope and betrayal war as fiercely as fear and valor, and whether he lives of dies, Will Lesterall will never be the same.
I found this short story / novella by fellow Champagne Books author, Graeme Brown, to be a dense and dark read. The tension begins right from the first sentence — “When you kill a man, look him in the eye” — and escalates from there. The setting? A dinner party. The sense of doom? Permeates everything.
Though it is a celebratory function, the reader can tell that something is amiss, that dark forces are gathering. The opening line, which is spoken by a character, is only one part of the gathering darkness. Brown manages to pull it off through the whole dinner sequence, with how characters interact, with how the celebration has a muted tone…
Having just watched the third season of Game of Thrones, I see a parallel between The Pact and The Red Wedding from episode 9 (which appeared in the third book of A Song of Ice and Fire) — both feature a celebration that is meant to be joyous and fun, but the reader and the central character just can’t shake the sense that something is very very very wrong.
The Pact features many of the long passages found in epic fantasy — passages that aren’t exactly my cup of tea, but Brown keeps them smooth and flowing. (Conversely, George RR Martin has a similar style, but I find he goes overly long in his detail and description. Brown keeps it relatively tight and relevant.)
The Pact is very compact — the dinner party soon turns into a disaster as the Unborns descend upon the castle to annihilate everyone, but Will is whisked away by friends. Plans made years prior, unknown to Will, have him sent through a tunnel and into the woods. In a matter of pages, we transition from a serene (though slightly off) dinner party to an all-out bloody battle.
The ending sequence is a tad confusing to this non-fantasy reader… there are evil plans, conspiracies, and counter-plans all happening at once. The reader is carried along, page by page, until the shocking end… It left me with a bit of a WTF reaction. However, I know Graeme Brown personally, and I know that his sequel project, A Thousand Roads, expands a lot on this, resolving some of the many questions left lingering in the reader’s mind.
About two years ago, I had never read a fantasy book in my life, and now I’ve read half a dozen or so… most of them have been good enough to appeal to this non-fantasy-reader, and The Pact is one of those books. It was short, it was tight, it never got boring, and it left enough questions and wonderings in my mind to make me want to read the eventual sequel.
