There’s nothing in this book that you haven’t encountered many times before in the fantasy genre. This is a good thing as we already know pretty much everything about how this world works. What is really impressive is just what tremendous fun Joe offers us from this familiar fare! There’s almost non-stop action, fantastic banter and every character is very much their own person, with their own voice and their own bunch of problems, neruoses and heroic moments.
The story is built around a journey to take a exlied princess, raised as a street orphan in the Holy City to reclaim her rightful throne in the mighty city of Troy. Our putative Empress is escorted by a wonderful collection of misfits and criminals from the Office of the Holy Expediency, (the “devils” of the title) lead by a hapless librarian, Brother Diaz.
The action starts almost immediately and never really lets up anywhere in the journey. I had a moment of doubt in Venice when our heroes set off on a side-quest to gain passage across the Mediterranean. I was worried that we were going to be treated to a series of “go get a thing to do a thing” exercises (a bit like the first season of the Mandalorian) and would effectively get lost five layers deep in nested missions. Fortunately the side quest was rapidly resolved and we immediately boarded ship for Troy and the main thread continued at the usual fast pace. I saw “fast”, but this as a big book, almost 600 pages but it doesn’t seem like it, it is such a fun read and theres a lot going on so it doesn’t seem over-long at all.
The final chapters are particularly poignant as the characters that we have really developed a great rapport with, come to love and respect and find out their ultimate fates, not all that we necessarily hoped for them. Most things are neatly concluded and this is a good point to stop and rest before the second volume comes out next year.
I’m giving this book a recommended tag because I think Joe does a fantastic job of taking familiar fantasy building blocks and making something genuinely much greater than the sum of its parts - an action-packed, fun journey with great back chat and characters we really like, depsite their many, many flaws! A real triumph.