Priest of Lies – Peter McLean

Tomas Piety has acquired a great deal alongside the position he has established as leader of the Pious Men of Ellingburg: a reputation as a businessman, though his actual business interests remain wide, varied and discreet, an expanding power base in the streets of the city, and a wife whose hands are possibly as bloody as his, if not more so.

He has also gained the interest of other parties, those of the established law who would wish to curtail or at least moderate his actions, those who might see him as a useful player in a larger game of the power struggles of the realm, still recovering from the war which left Tomas and his brother Jochan and many of their company damaged beyond what is apparent on the surface, and those who wish to seize the streets of the Pious Men for their own.

The second volume of Peter McLean’s War for the Rose Throne, it has been almost a year since Priest of Bones was published though only six months has passed since the wedding of Piety and Ailsa and the not-entirely-coincidental simultaneous razing of the Wheels, and Priest of Lies offers a quick catch-up in the opening chapter to re-establish the city and the characters.

Despite the very public alibi of the groom, with dozens of witnesses placing him at the altar, Piety knows Governor Hauer is not a fool for all that he is a drunk and believes him to behind the bombing even if he cannot as yet prove it, applying pressure on Piety which is exacerbated by a new faction aiming to establish themselves in the city, the Northern Men, thought to be backed by the Skanians, the old enemy against whom the war was fought.

Priest of Lies a tale told over months, despite McLean’s increasing confidence as a writer it is over half way through before a hint of a deeper plot beneath the superficial squabbles and streetfighting begins to emerge and for too much of the novel time and energy is expended in the mundane grind of expanding territory street by street like some bloody game of Monopoly, brawls, stabbing and spies reporting on each other.

The cycle of violence and possession endless and unforgiving, McLean repeatedly reminds of the quirks and vices of his characters, possibly because they are otherwise a largely indistinguishable rabble beyond the principal players, but while most of the Priest of Lies is spent simply shuffling the deck it finally finds momentum in the last hundred pages, taking the carefully constructed house of cards and burning it to the ground before turning over the still hot ashes.

Priest of Lies is available now from Jo Fletcher Books

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