Liz Williams, The Iron Khan (Night Shade Books, 2010)
There's something comforting about a consistently good series, about an author who continually produces intelligent, creative and entertaining stories again and again. One looks forward to their books, and can buy them with the certainty that they will be worth reading. Perhaps that is why there is often nothing more disappointing than when a must-read series produces the inevitable title that fails to live up to the energy of the previous books. While Liz Williams' Detective Inspector Chen series is one of the most inventive series out there, regardless of genre (and in this case, it's a gumbo of sci-fi, fantasy, horror, and mystery), The Iron Khan fails to hit the mark.
The story begins when Mhara, the young Emperor of Heaven, summons Chen to investigate the disappearance of an age-old mystical Book that is, essentially, a blueprint of Heaven. If anyone were to try and rewrite the Book, they might end up destroying or completely reworking Heaven. However, the Book is also a sentient force, so it could have stolen itself -- either way, its absence puts Mhara in a tough spot.
Meanwhile, Seneschal Tzu Irzh runs into some hinky supernatural phenomena while exploring the Gobi desert with his fiancée Jhai, and gets roped into a plan to defeat an immortal tyrant who's looking for a way to rewrite the curse that restricts him to certain geographic locations.
While that's going on, Chen's pregnant wife Inari and Celestial Warrior Miss Qi find themselves abducted by the maddened ex-Empress whom Mhara defeated in the last novel, and learn that the former monarch's gathered some pretty powerful allies from other Hells to help regain control of Heaven.
As in her other books, Liz Williams works with both a new geographical setting (the Gobi desert and the steppes) as well as new Hells (each religion/culture has a different one) and how they can accidentally overlap in multicultural cities. Her writing style remains a compelling mixture of wry humour and flawless manners, not unlike an internationally-minded Jane Austen. However, in this novel she finally manages to stretch herself too thin, with too many conflicting storylines (there's a flying city involved, and a warrior's pact, and time-travel, and magic foetuses, and jolly English ghosts, and immortal clubs -- I could go on).
While it's easy enough to figure out what's going on within the scene you're reading, fitting it into the bigger picture of the narrative is a frustrating puzzle, even at the action-heavy but abbreviated ending. As well, with the exception of the major villain, most of the characters our heroes run into are very polite, understanding, easy-going folk, and there are several incidents where a problem is solved a little too easily or conveniently. The result is that The Iron Khan manages to be both confusing and a little dull.
While not a wretched novel, The Iron Khan is certainly a low point for the series, and definitely not a novel to start with. It is worth reading to continue the series, although one hopes that Liz Williams' next Detective Inspector Chen novel will regain its focus.
