The Khai pit their older sons against each other in a struggle to become the lone survivor that will inherit the rule of their cities, and they send their younger sons to train as poets, learning to magically bind abstract concepts to do their will. The story is set almost entirely in the cities of the Khaiem, a rich land built out of the rubble of a once great Empire, stretching from tropical ports in the South to frozen mountain fortresses in the North. The Long Price Quartet takes place in a world with two dominant powers–an Eastern power (with clear East and Southeast Asian influences) consisting of several allied cities of the Khaiem, without much technology but with extremely powerful (albeit also extremely limited) magic, and an imperialistic Western power of Galt (with clear Germanic influences), without magic but with rapidly advancing industrial technology. He did and more, and my all-time top five has become a top six.
But, deep down, I wasn’t sure that Abraham would be able to top his opener. I knew that the common consensus was that the last three books were much better than the first, and the first had been my favorite book of the past year.
When I reviewed A Shadow in Summer–the first book of Daniel Abraham’s Long Price Quartet–back in December, I said that I expected the series to become a favorite. As such, I will try to faithfully review the series considered as a whole without spoiling any individual book.
They are meant to be helpful for people who have not read the series at all, or perhaps who have started and are unsure about whether to continue. I haven’t done many of these, so I’ll start with a word about my series reviews.
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