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The Seer of Truth
Eleven murders, eleven ghosts, and one lone linen maid.An unseen killer has slaughtered ten servant girls and one guard, leaving disemboweled corpses in the castle courtyard. But Nella, a linen maid, survived her attack. The slasher took only her hair, not her life.Nella loves a nobleman, the King’s grandson Risley—she admitted it with a bloody razor held to her throat—then she woke in Risley’s bed, surrounded by shining Holy Knights who pledged to protect her at any cost. Soon her beloved fled, insisting he left to get help. Without Risley near, the knights remained true to their vow and killed a man who attempted to assault her.The castle people grow ever angrier in the wake of the knights’ ruthless protection and demand Risley’s arrest and execution. Castellan Dubric does little to quash their fury, but Dubric has burdens of his own—the heavy, dribbling ghosts of the eleven slaughtered victims, mostly servant girls like Nella. Dubric’s set a high bounty for Risley capture and return to the castle alive, but Nella, now isolated from even her friends, fears the reward may not be enough to save Risley’s life.
176 pages, Paperback
Published October 25, 2019
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Displaying 1 of 1 review
September 5, 2022
4 stars, Metaphorosis Reviews
Summary
Dubric Bryerly, cursed with ghosts and anxious to find a serial killer, has let the Lord's grandson be seen as the culprit, but called on outside reinforcements. When they arrive, they may cause more problems than they solve.
Review
With the previous book – Protection of the Holy Knights , the second in this fork of the series, the first after the branch, I found the first half of the book to be the same as its alternate, and some interesting but non-essential divergence in the second half. It was academically interesting as an alternate version, and a strong book on its own, but I wasn’t convinced of its need to exist.
In this third book in the series, the alternate fork begins to come into its own. The lead characters are largely the same – with some important exceptions – but the story is now solidly established on its own track. So far, I still lean toward the original track, but this one is certainly interesting.
Summary
Dubric Bryerly, cursed with ghosts and anxious to find a serial killer, has let the Lord's grandson be seen as the culprit, but called on outside reinforcements. When they arrive, they may cause more problems than they solve.
Review
With the previous book – Protection of the Holy Knights , the second in this fork of the series, the first after the branch, I found the first half of the book to be the same as its alternate, and some interesting but non-essential divergence in the second half. It was academically interesting as an alternate version, and a strong book on its own, but I wasn’t convinced of its need to exist.
In this third book in the series, the alternate fork begins to come into its own. The lead characters are largely the same – with some important exceptions – but the story is now solidly established on its own track. So far, I still lean toward the original track, but this one is certainly interesting.
As a thumbnail, I’d say the original series (Ghosts in the Snow) is cleaner, neater, smoother. This series is richer, but more muddled, and has more weak points.
One of the intriguing things about the Snow fork is what a good job Jones did of setting the stage of a land in the aftermath of epic, dangerous events. We get hints about what it was like; little crumbs strewn here and there, but that fork leaves the bulk of the magic in the past. In this fork, we get morsels rather than crumbs, and the magic is much more obtrusive. It’s interesting, and very fun to try to piece together what happened in those past wars – as much fun as following the detective puzzle in the present.
This book, unfortunately, somewhat looses its grip on the strong characterization that the prior one offered. Some characters don’t seem to stay quite in character, and there’s a fair amount that rushes past without a great explanation. I don’t know which fork came first, but this one could have done with more editing.
Definitely interesting and worth exploring for Dubric aficionados. If I had to make a decision now, I’d probably argue for the Snow fork and a separate series of novels exploring all this rich magic, but we’ll see.
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