Joshua Palmatier's 'Shattering the Ley'
The first novel of a new fantasy series from local professor Joshua Palmatier, Shattering the Ley juggles - with mixed success - a wide cast of characters and a complex web of political intrigue and ideological conflicts, as well as a distinctly original system of magic.
The book opens with Kara Tremain, an ordinary girl who works as an apprentice to her father in the magical city of Erenthrall. Her life seems set to progress in an orderly fashion: finish school, finish her apprenticeship, and take over her father’s business of repairing clocks. Not only does he repair ordinary clocks, he also repairs the ones powered by the magical ley: the lines of power - controlled by a mysterious cadre of magicians who report to Erenthrall’s Baron - that keep the city running. But a chance encounter with Ischua, a gardener who is more than he appears, sets her on a much more difficult and dangerous path. Kara, it turns out, has a powerful magical gift that destines her to become a Wielder, one of the magicians who works steadily to keep the artificial system of ley lines that power the city under control.
Meanwhile, a young man named Allan has recently joined the Baron’s personal guard, a fearsome group known as the Dogs. It’s been his lifelong dream, but now that he’s accomplished it he’s begun to have second thoughts about the Dogs’ brutal methods. It’s too late for him to back out, though: once a Dog, always a Dog, for death is the only way to leave the Baron’s service.
All this takes place against the backdrop of a fractious and unstable political system, the Baron’s tyrannical rule challenged by a group of rogue priests known as the Kormanley. They begin as a peaceful group, but as the Baron’s hold tightens and the brutality of the Dogs increases, they begin to escalate their tactics into outright terrorism. Add that to the fact that the Baron, as the man controlling the system of ley lines, is both needed and loathed by his fellow nobles, and the situation becomes ripe to explode.
Palmatier’s world-building is first-class, and is probably the best aspect of the novel. He has created an unusual magical system with an impressive degree of internal logic, which is used in different ways by a variety of people: the Wielders and Primes who manipulate the ley lines directly, the scholars at the University who study the ebb and flow of the lines that make up the Tapestry, and the mysterious, ominous Hounds: the Baron’s assassins who use the Tapestry to conceal their presence and hunt their prey. The complicated political system is well drawn, and the slow turn of the Kormanley - from something that most closely resembles an environmentalist group to violent destructive terrorists - is unnervingly well executed. While there are good people in Palmatier’s world, the large-scale conflicts are never a matter of black and white; both sides commit appalling atrocities in pursuit of what they consider the greater good.
The plotting is somewhat uneven; while the action scenes move along at a thrilling clip, the overall structure of the plot is a bit muddled. There are two significant time skips in the book, and the second one leaves the author scrambling to update the reader on what has been going on in his characters’ lives in the intervening time. This leaves some of the major characters feeling less than fully developed - particularly Kara, who ages from a pre-teen to a woman in her late twenties over the course of the novel without really seeming to change much at all. While her mentor-student relationship with Ischua is well fleshed-out, her romantic encounters often feel stilted and unconvincing. On the other hand, the tense, suspicious interactions between the Baron and his people are fascinating.
All in all, this is an entertaining work of second-world fantasy in a creative and detailed setting with well-written action scenes. While there is some room for improvement as far as character development and structure goes, these are relatively minor flaws that did not impede my enjoyment of the book. The second book in this series, Threading the Needle, was released this summer, and I look forward to seeing where Palmatier takes this story.
Joshua Palmatier is a professor of mathematics at SUNY College at Oneonta. In addition to the Ley series, he has published five books and numerous short stories. Find out more at joshuapalmatier.com.
