Readers of traditional, ‘high’ fantasy fiction will no doubt already be familiar with Fiona McIntosh. Over the course of three previous trilogies, the author has built a solid reputation for fast-paced epic tales of palace intrigues, derring-do and double-crosses. Royal Exile, the first in a new trilogy, continues this vein of competent, yet highly conventional epic fantasy. The writing is straightforward and explanatory, with the plot unfolding in short, episodic chapters. The action is crisp and surprisingly brutal, with central characters regularly (and graphically) dispatched throughout. This ruthlessness is often surprisingly missing from epic fantasy, but McIntosh wields it with relish and aplomb. The nasty end so many characters suffer lends urgency to the exploits of those remaining, and goes some way to disguising their essentially two-dimensional nature. Fans of McIntosh (and there are plenty) will not be disappointed, and this book can confidently be recommended to the ‘I like Tolkien, is it like that?’ customer, but there is nothing particularly new on offer here.

Beau Taylor is a bookseller at science-fiction, fantasy and crime specialists Pulp Fiction in Brisbane

This review from Australian Bookseller & Publisher magazine is reproduced by kind permission of Thorpe-Bowker, a division of R R Bowker LLC. © Copyright 2008, Thorpe-Bowker

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