Trust A Few: Haruspex Trilogy: Part One by E.M. Swift-Hook is a good book, with well-drawn characters, action and plenty of moral dilemmas. So why did I keep leaving it to play a game on my tablet? I’m not sure, but the story became less compelling about two thirds of the way through. It may have been me or maybe it was the fact that all the characters enmeshed themselves in the criminal underworld – not appealing – or that the true villain in the story appeared only a few times.
We have four main characters with a few others adding conflicts and challenges. Durban Chola sees Jaz as little more than a thug, a hard mercenary, a man who survived the worst military setting imaginable, but I see Jaz as the central character, the glue that holds everyone together. Jaz would say Avilon is the keystone, and the action revolves around Avilon, but it is Jaz who has the most complex character and is the engine. I kept hoping Jaz would find a way back to Vel’s cousin and her little girl, the two people he planned to make his permanent family until Durban yanked him away.
The setting is the underworld of an enormous city, in a world ruled by the Coalition and its CSF security forces. We know from the beginning that the security force wants something from Avilon but we haven’t seen what it is yet.
In fact it isn’t at all clear why the group doesn’t just leave. Jaz claims to be working on setting himself up to do just that, and Avilon will stay as long as Jaz, but it’s hard to believe they are both willing to kill people and do other evil just to build a stash. Durban will stay close to Avilon, but Charity has little reason to do so.
Trust A Few is hard to rate. I liked it enough to finish, but it did bog down for me and I’m not likely to seek out the sequels because I don’t care enough about any of the characters to see how they play out.
3 Stars
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