The game is ending.
Jeff Wheeler brings the Kingfountain trilogy to a close with The King’s Traitor, an epic story drawing partly from English history but mostly from Arthurian legend.
Owen Kiskaddon has served his regent faithfully these last few years. Well, except for the fact that he’s been hiding the identity of the young boy Drew, the son of King Severn’s deposed nephew and true king of Ceredigion. It’s been a struggle for Owen, who – despite losing all contact with his family and having to stand by while the love of his life is married to another man – still believes that loyalty to a cruel king is better than treason. But he’s watched Severn turn into exactly the kind of horrible person that everyone always believed he was, and Owen is putting plans in place in order for the true heir to claim the Hollow Crown. Until that heir is old enough to rule, Owen will have to grit his teeth and continue to go along with Severn’s schemes.
Severn’s latest plan to make sure no other kingdom (or anyone, really) has more power than he does is to start a war with one of his allies. Still playing the loyal duke, Owen travels to nearby Brythonica to give Severn the pretext to invade by making an insulting demand that’s sure to be refused: the marriage of Owen with the reclusive Duchess of Brythonica.
The Duchess’s response to Owen’s proposal is the very last thing he expected. Now things are going to get really complicated.
What to say about this book without giving away any of the many plot twists? Everyone has their own agenda (some benign, some definitely not), there are family connections and traditional allies and betrayals for both. Just when you think it’s going to be smooth sailing for the rest of the book, someone is found out, or someone shows their true colors, or someone appears out of nowhere to save the day. Or someone dies. That happens a lot; it’s not as bad as a George R.R. Martin book, but don’t imagine that anyone is safe.
Wheeler ties in historical themes and ancient prophecies based on the legend of Arthur, and mixes in his unique inventions of Fountain magic and fortune telling, and a mysterious chess board (well, here it’s called a Wizr board) that can change the course of a battle and can only be controlled by someone with royal blood.
And in the middle of it all is Owen, trying to figure out what the hell he can do about all of this without making anything worse.This is the darkest book of the trilogy, and there are times when Owen is almost crushed by the hopeless feeling of knowing that just about any choice he makes will be the wrong one.
Things have gotten a lot more serious than just worrying about being branded as a traitor (although that’s a huge concern, and it doesn’t help that his closest confidant Etayne – the King’s Poisoner – keeps trying to convince Owen to just let her poison the king and be done with it, something which honestly sounds like a really good idea). History keeps repeating, elements of the present echoing throughout Ceredigion’s past, and it all has to do with the Wizr board Owen has been hiding from the king. A piece that’s removed from the board can just be replaced by another one who might not be any better. Worse, Owen’s found that there are entire kingdoms that have been torn apart and drowned when the rules of the game are broken.
Wheeler shows the same talent here that he has in the previous two books with creating some lovely images. Most of these have to do with magic (a silver bowl on a stone in the forest, or the surprising effects from a magical ring), and my favorites had to do with Sinia, the Duchess of Brythonica. In fact Sinia ended up being my favorite character in the book. She’s beautiful, naturally, but there’s something almost poetic in the way Wheeler describes her and the scenes where she appears, whether she’s laughing as she rides a crate that’s being lifted up the side of a cliff (Owen’s terrified, which is hilarious), or strolling across a sandy beach, barefoot, to a place where an entire section of the beach is covered in tiny glass pebbles (actual glass; there’s a story there). And it doesn’t hurt that Sinia is also fiercely intelligent and very, very magical.
It would be easy to slip into a trap with a character like Sinia to make her a Mary Sue or a Deus Ex Machina. The Duchess can also see the future, which is an amazingly difficult thing to write into a story without making everyone wonder why the character couldn’t just prevent all trouble in the first place. Wheeler avoids that by not overusing her abilities, and by giving some very good reasons why she can’t just tell everyone everything she sees.
“What if preventing an immediate evil only caused a worse one the future? If we always knew what would happen to us, would we ever have the courage to act?”
I was almost dreading the end of the book, since I knew the author wasn’t going to make it completely painless. Owen is part of not one, but two love triangles (yes, Evie makes several appearances. As much as she still cares for Owen, she’s actually happy with her husband and her children. Which Owen admits is both what he wanted for her and exactly what he didn’t want to know). It was inevitable that someone would get their heart broken. But Wheeler manages to wrap it all up perfectly: a little sad, kind of wistful, oddly happy, and not at all what I expected. And just in case you thought there wouldn’t be anywhere else to go with this setting, there’s an epilogue which shows that there’s still a lot more story to tell.