The Ebon Fen

I’ve been a reading machine ever since I bought my Kindle 2 this summer. It may have been a byproduct of leaving my editing job to join the codemonkey ranks; I must need to get my word fix somewhere. But one side effect of the Kindle has been an exposure to authors I’d never heard of before popping up as recommendations. And more cleverly, exposure to free versions of the first book of a series.

I was quite happily snared by this trap when Amazon offered, for free, The Briar King, the first of four books in Greg Keyes’ The Kingdoms of Thorn and Bone series. In short order, I’d devoured all four. (The last was the highlight of a recent plane trip and the accompanying layovers.)

The Amazon.com review:

The Briar King, Greg Keyes’s latest elegant entry into the world of high fantasy, lays the groundwork for what promises to be a mesmerizing four-book series–the Kingdoms of Thorn and Bone. Keyes spins his tale in a meticulously crafted fantasy realm on the brink of apocalyptic change. The Briar King, a legend cobbled from children’s stories and rural folklore, is waking from his slumber to an unknown but cataclysmic end. Dark agents are afoot in the land, stirring war and edging an ancient prophecy closer to fulfillment. In destiny’s path are a king’s woodsman, his headstrong lover, a bookworm priest, a cocksure swordsman, and the embattled (from within and without) kingdom of Crotheny. Keyes masterfully intertwines far-off courtly intrigue with the personal quest of the woodsman and his brave companions who seek to unravel the secret of the Briar King before all is lost.

What hooked me most about this series was Keyes’ fixation on the languages of his world and their evolution over centuries. Many of his world’s secrets are unraveled through the twisting of words over time–and rest assured, it’s not only the language that has been distorted.