Before the Nightside and Eddie Drood series Simon R. Green wrote several novels in quasi-medieval settings full of threatening dark forces and political enemies, loosely gathered into the Forest Kingdom series. (Blue Moon Rising and the Hawk and Fisher stories are in this series.) Blood and Honour is set in the same world, in the Kingdom of Redhart.
Our hero, Jordan, is an actor sadly fallen on hard times, now a travelling player working small town streets for a few ducats. Three men offer him 10,000 ducats to impersonate Prince Victor of Redhart as he contends with his brothers for the throne. Jordan is no fool and rejects the offer until he learns that Victor is aware of and approves; of course he gets a higher fee too.
Once in Castle Midnight (don’t you love the name?) Jordan finds the role is even harder than expected. And yes, he is playing the villain.
Winning Characters
Jordan is a man in a hard place. He figures out fast that Victor will kill him the minute he can and he knows for sure that Victor’s brothers will be happy to see him dead. Not only that, but with the king dead, the Unreal is oozing into the castle, deadly to everyone whether actor, servant or king.
Jordan has a pretty good idea what a king ought to be, caring of his people, fair, honest, noble. Neither Victor nor his brothers is anything like this ideal and Jordan doesn’t particularly want any of them to succeed their father. Jordan has a few very tough choices to make and unerringly chooses the path to bring peace and restore goodness.
I enjoyed Jordan immensely. He turned a horrible situation into something that may turn out just right, yet he never whined (or at least not much) and he faced the problem without blaming everyone else. He took action when action needed to be taken. And he never lost his sense of perspective or duty or honor, even when those around him failed to remember theirs.
Green does an excellent job showing us the characters, not telling us. We see how weak and despicable Victor is when he blithely orders all 25 kitchen workers hung because he was poisoned, not caring that many were children, not even caring that he just killed off the people who make the meals and everyone likes to eat. We see how evil Dominic and oldest brother Lewis are by their attacks and use of undead and Unreal.
Plot, Setting and Writing Style
Blood and Honour moves fast and we feel like Jordan must, with everything turning to ruin, no good way out. The Unreal are fascinating as are the ghosts and factions in Castle Midnight. I stayed up late to finish this!
I’ve had mixed feelings about Simon R Green’s writing before. He does an excellent job with story and people complicated with creepy settings. Many of his later books are downers, where you end the novel feeling like you need to take a bath and go look at rainbows and springtime flowers just to get up the next morning. Blood and Honour isn’t like that. Yes, there are evil, undead nasties, greed, dark sorcery, castles with bloody fangs in the walls, sharks and treachery. But Jordan brings clarity as to what should be done, how things ought to work, and his clear thinking keeps us readers optimistic even when everything is going to ruin and damnation.
(See my review of Tales of the Hidden World for more about Simon R. Green’s darker stories.)
I didn’t realize until checking Amazon to write this review that Blood and Honour is book 2 in the Forest Kingdom series. Reading Blood and Honour prompts me to get my copy of Blue Moon Rising out and re-read it, then get the other books in the series!
5 Stars
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