T.A. Pratt, Dead Reign (Bantam Spectra, 2008)
Marla Mason is having a bad day. In her fifth year as chief sorcerer of the coastal American city of Felport, she still hasn't become perfectly accustomed to the trappings of power. Felport is a city of layers -- outwardly, it's an ordinary city populated by normal people. In reality, however, it's secretly controlled by a shadow government of sorcerers, witches, and other supernatural entities who conduct all their political power struggles without bringing them to the attention of the "ordinaries," who don't know they exist. Keeping the magical citizens of Felport in line is a tough job, and the arrival of Death on the scene doesn't make it any easier.
Yes, Death. Centuries ago, the previous incarnation of Death lost a powerful weapon in a game of chance with a sorcerer. This new incarnation (Death's son, if you will) wants it back, and it just so happens that the sword is actually masquerading as Marla's dagger of office. In a human's hands, it can cut through any physical substance. In a god's hands, it can cut through abstract concepts. However, the god's honour dictates that he can only possess the sword if Marla gives it to him willingly -- he can't simply take it. So even though he could kill Marla with a thought, the dagger would simply be passed on to the next chief sorcerer and Death would have to negotiate all over again.
So Death asks nicely, or as nicely as a god of Death can. When Marla refuses, Death magically bars her from her beloved city of Felport and, in an interesting twist, tries to run things in her place and see if he can't do a much better job of it. After all, he is a god, albeit a young one. And he might as well take in the sights and explore the pleasures of the flesh while he's at it. Marla, physically incapable of entering the city or passing on any information to her followers on the inside, takes a page from Death's book and decides to invade the presently-leaderless underworld in revenge.
With this bizarre magical mash-up of Trading Places and Death Takes a Holiday, this third book in T.A. Pratt's series starts off with a bang. While not the first book in the series, new readers shouldn't find themselves too lost. Pratt's focused, yet bitingly funny style swiftly labels backstories and recurring characters with succinct sentences of explanation, and then proceeds to the meat of the story without becoming bogged down in exposition. And yet, Pratt still manages to convey a sense of world-building -- for instance, while Felport is ostensibly a democratic American city, the secret sorcerer rulers operate with decidedly aristocratic attitudes.
The pacing is fast, and the writing electric, evocative, and incredibly funny, yet Pratt never sacrifices character development, description, or structure in favour of speed or quick laughs. Marla has to endure some deep spiritual sacrifices to defeat Death, and yet, by the novel's end, even the newest reader to this series (such as this reviewer) should understand Marla's character enough to grasp the significance of what she goes through and gives up.
Reading a novel that's this quick-witted, smartly-paced, and inventive on its third go around bodes well for the series as a whole. While one does not necessarily have to have read the previous two books (Blood Engines and Poison Sleep) to understand and enjoy this latest instalment, given Dead Reign's zinging humour and structured story, you might not be, er, dead wrong in assuming the other books will be just as enjoyable.
