R.J. Barker’s Mortedant’s Peril fuses his effective baroque and rugose sense of secondary world worldbuilding into a murder mystery and conspiracy plot.
Irody Hasp has a problem. Sure, he can talk to the dead and using that power is making a living even if it’s a hardscrabble one. But, then a coincidental choice of client leaves his apprentice dead…and Hasp in the crosshairs. He’s on the hook for his apprentice’s death and if he can’t solve it, not only will Irody die, but the city he loves itself might suffer grievous harm.
This is the story of R.J. Barker’s Mortedant’s Peril.
Right off, I am going for the heart of what I’ve loved in Barker’s writing since the Wounded Kingdom trilogy: his worldbuilding. Ever since I picked up Age of Assassins and was introduced to his work, I’ve been enthralled by how he creates a world and brings it to life. I used the words baroque and rugose quite deliberately in the opening, since there is a strong and load-bearing strain of the weird and alien and eldritch about the worlds he creates. Be it the tainted lands of the Wounded Kingdom trilogy, or the dread oceans of the Tide Child Trilogy with its unusual mix of fauna and flora, or the waking Wildwood and its panoply of warring Gods, the settings Barker uses are alien, weird and a cut more strange than typical fantasy worlds.¹
So how does this newest novel and series start stacking up against his previous works? We get Elbay City, The City, a tiered confection and also a hive of scum and villainy, where the rich are on top, and above them is the Palace and the dread, rarely seen ruler of the city, the Roundhorn. I’ve already seen comparisons to Minas Tirith, but I don’t think that’s quite the right analogy. Instead, what the city reminds me of is Charisat, from Martha Wells’ City of Bones. The parallels in the two novels’ worldbuilding fit a lot better. Charisat is also a tiered city. It also is in a wasteland just like this city, although Elbay has defenses, and a safe road (only used on official business). The hardscrabble existence of the lower tiers of the City correspond quite well with the lower tiers of Charisat, where the residents are literally digging themselves out of an impending doom.
And like many fantasy cities, there’s no place else to be. Elbay is not quite the “last city on Earth” but there is definite danger in going elsewhere, anywhere.. And in the mind of Rasp, and many others, where else would you want to go, anyway? His home is the one true central location, a city that doesn’t have peers. Oh, we get some mentions of other cities and lands, but everything important is here. And aside from one mission outside of its gates, the narrative stays entirely within this tiered city.² Each of the areas we visit feels distinct, interesting and is immersive. Irody himself doesn’t live in the very bottom of the city, but he does not live anywhere near the realms of wealth and power. The contrast between the first tier, third tier and top tier residents is thrown into sharp relief as we visit them throughout the book.
Mortedant’s Peril goes further, though, in its worldbuilding. In addition to a tiered city with arcane defenses, we get a conflict of three cornered factions, including some strange and eldritch Gods (which appears to be a growing theme in Barker’s work). The center portion of this city, the citycore, is a multitiered labyrinth and dungeon, with what might be a real sleeping God in the center. The utter strangeness and alienness Barker can bring to his worlds is encapsulated in the citycore and in a rich and interesting city, this central locale stood out. We also get to the Palace and the ruler of the city and their servants, and the strange and uncertain nature of powers beyond humanity continue to add that touch of the eldritch to the city. The Roundhorn is a strange and interesting being, whose very nature is not quite clear, not to Hasp, and not to others in the city. Barker does a great job in showing a creature that has the very long and inhuman view.
In keeping with the worldbuilding, besides the city itself, we get a couple of different magic systems, including the titular Mortedancy, where certain people can read the last thoughts of a person. It’s like a D&D Speak with Dead spell, although far more limited and less effective. There are also other magics including the ability to power objects, defenses and more.There does seem to be a learned aspect to the several magical abilities, one is not born to one, but can be trained to do a particular kind of magic. This does give the very weak potential of upward social mobility, which becomes part of the characterization and themes of the novel.
I’ve already mentioned the ruler, The Roundhorn, as a character, and, again, Barker keeps them quite alien and interesting, intelligent but definitely not human. Keeping in that theme, before I talk about Irody himself, I want to mention the other nonhuman character and another reason why I invoked Lovecraftian adjectives. That would be Whisper. Whisper is an Oster, one of the sea people with white skin marked with black, armored and dedicated to their task.I thought of them as armed and armored Deep Ones. Early in the novel, we meet Whisper and see Whisper assigned to Hasp. And this extremely martial character provides some of the situational humor in the book, as well as some of the pathos. That latter starts to come into play when we start to learn more of Whisper’s history and why she is in the city.
Okay, so let’s turn to our narrator, protagonist and point of view. Irody Hasp. Our narrator is himself in the line with other Barker protagonists. He has some power, in fact. Irody is good at it, even pushing the boundaries, and also has interest in spirit magic, which we also see in the novel. Mortedancy and the Mortedants, themselves, being the weakest faction in the city, are not well trusted since their abilities cannot be easily verified. Irody is also on the outs within his own organization. And thus he gets a shady deal to ply his trade, and so falls into the plot of the novel.
Irody has a sheaf of characters around him, from his doomed lowborn apprentice, to his apprentice’s sister Mirial, to a nagging landlady, his boss in the Priory, and many more. It’s a well populated novel, with characters well-rounded and three dimensional. The set of characters and cast helps give the feel of a murder mystery, of which I will speak shortly. The basics of these characters might be tropes and archetypes you will recognize from such novels and stories, but they are tuned and suited to his secondary world fantasy city quite well. Each of the principal characters gets an arc and growth, and the supporting cast does excellent heavy lifting in making the novel come alive.
Going back to the plot, this is a murder mystery novel and takes as much from the mystery genre as it does from fantasy. While twisty plots and mysteries are something that have been in Barker’s writing from the beginning, this is the novel that decides to really commit and hew to the form, structure and conventions of a murder mystery. We have a character in a city who is not a traditional detective, but gets wrapped up into a narrative where he has to do detection in order to save his own skin—quite literally in this case. A rogue’s gallery of characters and settings, a plot which slowly unspools and invites the reader to try and figure out what is really going on along with Hasp and his team. Baker cleverly writes the mystery and lays down clues throughout the narrative. I am not as well versed as I might be in the mystery genre, but I found it a fair mystery to try and disentangle along with Irody and his team.
The worldbuilding, characters and the murder mystery all together make Mortedant’s Peril a page-turning novel, and the intriguing start to a new series from Barker. If you like the peanut butter of Mysteries mixed into your Fantasy chocolate, this is the place to start with Barker’s work if you haven’t tried it as yet. More, please!
¹ Although the worlds are not in the latter days of Earth, per se, Vance would be a touchstone for the vibes I get from Barker’s worlds. Or Clark Ashton Smith, perhaps even more accurately.
² I am reminded of Dragon City, a novel and a rpg setting by Matt Forbeck. Last city on the continent, a tiered mountain city where the rich and powerful (mainly elves and humans) . The rest of the world is lost to a Necromancer and their undead horde. You just don’t go outside the bounds of the city, it’s near suicide. So all of the intrigue and action are compressed into a single city and space.
