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Broken Man #2
Dark Heart
The thrilling second instalment in Russell Kirkpatrick's Husk Trilogy. When the gods want to kill you, where can you hide?Noetos has an artefact that everyone wants. Now reunited with his children, he flees up the coast, pursued by powerful forces intent on his destruction at any cost.Meanwhile, Lenares becomes leader of the Cosmographers after her mistress Mahudia is killed. Lenares has a particular affinity with numbers and she senses something very wrong in the world. trained to read the presence of the gods in the landscape, she can find no evidence of the Father ... but how is it even possible that he could be dead?And Stella discovers that Husk's plans are far more complex than any of them can imagine ...
614 pages, Kindle Edition
First published July 1, 2008
8 people are currently reading
242 people want to read
About the author
Russell Kirkpatrick
14 books79 followersRussell Kirkpatrick was born in 1961 in Christchurch, New Zealand, where he lived until 2000. He is a geography PhD graduate of the University of Canterbury, and currently lectures at the University of Waikato in Hamilton. During the 1990s he was fortunate enough to work on two major atlas projects, as Deputy Editor of the New Zealand Historical Atlas (Readers Choice winner, Montana Book Awards, 1998), and as author of Contemporary Atlas New Zealand (Montana Book Award finalist, 2000). He has been involved in four other published atlas projects, and continues to work on atlases when he can. His latest project is an atlas of Bahrain.
In February 2004 Across The Face Of The World, the first book in Russell's Fire of Heaven fantasy trilogy was published by HarperCollins Voyager Australia, and has been sold into a number of overseas countries. The second volume, In The Earth Abides The Flame, was published in August 2004, with the concluding volume, The Right Hand Of God, published in February 2005. Across the Face of the World was published by Orbit in the UK in May 2006, and the second and third novels will follow at six-monthly intervals. He is now at work on another novel, The Path of Revenge.
Apart from cartography and writing, his major passions are reading, music - anything except country & western and polka - and sport. He plays golf to a 2 handicap. Russell is married to Dorinda, and they have two fine young men, a bichon frise, assorted cats, a ridiculously large Lego collection, a decent Cornishware collection and - finally - a new house in a gully. The perfect hideaway for a writer.
In February 2004 Across The Face Of The World, the first book in Russell's Fire of Heaven fantasy trilogy was published by HarperCollins Voyager Australia, and has been sold into a number of overseas countries. The second volume, In The Earth Abides The Flame, was published in August 2004, with the concluding volume, The Right Hand Of God, published in February 2005. Across the Face of the World was published by Orbit in the UK in May 2006, and the second and third novels will follow at six-monthly intervals. He is now at work on another novel, The Path of Revenge.
Apart from cartography and writing, his major passions are reading, music - anything except country & western and polka - and sport. He plays golf to a 2 handicap. Russell is married to Dorinda, and they have two fine young men, a bichon frise, assorted cats, a ridiculously large Lego collection, a decent Cornishware collection and - finally - a new house in a gully. The perfect hideaway for a writer.
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Displaying 1 - 12 of 12 reviews
April 27, 2015
I flew through this book. Excellent characters, fantastic world building and that cover!
January 1, 2023
Still really enjoying this series, and I'm looking forward to book 3 (which I haven't brought on holiday with me, alas!). Kirkpatrick has created a beautifully detailed and fascinating world with complex characters.
There's quite a lot of violence in this book, some of which feels unnecessarily gratuitous, and it suffers from the usual book 2 syndrome of fantasy trilogies, where everyone is busy getting into place for the final act. But overall, a great read, and I'm hoping/expecting book 3 will have a strong payoff.
(As a side note, the blurb on the edition I'm reading appears to have been written by someone who has not actually read the book, and makes no sense in light of what actually happens...?)
There's quite a lot of violence in this book, some of which feels unnecessarily gratuitous, and it suffers from the usual book 2 syndrome of fantasy trilogies, where everyone is busy getting into place for the final act. But overall, a great read, and I'm hoping/expecting book 3 will have a strong payoff.
(As a side note, the blurb on the edition I'm reading appears to have been written by someone who has not actually read the book, and makes no sense in light of what actually happens...?)
February 12, 2015
After reading "Path of Revenge", the first in Russell Kirkpatrick's "Broken Man" trilogy, I worried that his idea may not be strong enough to survive a story arc that looked set to last through three nearly 700-page novels. By the time I got to the end of "Dark Heart", the second in this trilogy, I knew I had no need to be concerned.
Husk is still in his tower, using his magic and the strength he can draw from others around him to take revenge on the immortal who has enslaved him. However, as his strength and power grow, so events out in the world affect those people who he is tracking and assisting on their way towards him. These people are being guided so that they can aid his revenge and whilst he talks to and assists them, they don't realise that they are being moved like pieces on a chessboard.
What Husk doesn't realise is that there is also a squabble going on between the Gods. The Son and the Daughter combined many years ago to thrown the Father out of the world and now they are battling for supremacy, like any siblings. Husk is trying to control the people he needs, but the Gods are also trying to use them for their own ends and the two forms of magic sometimes interfere with each other. This causes freak weather and some of the characters being removed briefly from the world and put back in it somewhere they didn't expect. What's worse for Husk is that the three people he is trying to control keep encountering each other and risk ruining his plans by talking about it and figuring out what is happening to them.
In the mean time, all the characters are having their own problems. Having been plucked from the world and deposited in a place she has never seen before, the cosmographer Lenares has lost her ability to use her numbers to figure everything out and this sets her off balance. Meanwhile, Noetos' past has come back to haunt him as the people who killed his family many years before have now come to see him as a threat. Stella's life is turned upside down by the arrival of someone she both loves and hates and this puts both Conal and Robal, who have their own feelings for her, on edge.
Once again, Kirkpatrick keeps the pace high and keeps events streaming on. Things are not quite as relentless as they were in the first part, with the groups of characters occasionally coming together and sitting down to try and make sense of things. Whilst this does slow things down a little, this is balanced out by the characters being placed in far more danger than they were in the first part, so when the pace does pick up, it's usually down to something exciting going on that you can hardly bear to take your eyes off.
Once again, the story is split into sections, with each part dealing with the journey of a separate character. This again works well at keeping the tension going, especially as each part generally finishes at a point where the characters are in some kind of danger, but the sections aren't so short that you've not had chance to settle into their part of the journey and so when they do find danger, you care about what happens to them. This doesn't work quite so well when all the characters are together or when some of them end up as part of a different group, as the sections then lose a little of their distinctive touches and become a little similar.
Fortunately, the same can never be said of the characters themselves. Each has a distinct personality and they are so well written that at points I was able to distinguish who was speaking simply by the way they said or did certain things. They all have their own demons haunting them as well, which makes their stories distinctly different, even though their journeys coincide at several points and their destination is the same.
I was a little worried at the start when a lot of magic was being used that there would be a little too much deus ex machina and the story would lose some of the human edge. Whilst there were a couple of points that did seem a little like the former, for the most part this is a very human story. The pace may have been lower, but there were some delightful twists to the story, with poor Lenares in particular getting a number of nasty surprises. However, I did find that Torve's reaction to a certain event fascinating, especially given all that had happened to him up until that point, as he came in for psychological as well as physical torment at several points.
Overall, I didn't think that "Dark Heart" was quite as strong as the first part in the trilogy, but it came very close. Even despite that, Kirkpatrick's characters and his eye for a story are so strong that even if this is second best, it's far better than many I have read. Kirkpatrick writes with the eye for a well drawn character of Kate Elliott or Karen Miller, but with a far better sense of pacing and the imagination to keep throwing new things into the mix than either, which makes his work more enjoyable that nearly everything I've read in the fantasy genre, particularly recently.
This review may also appear, in whole or in part, under my name at any or all of www.ciao.co.uk, www.thebookbag.co.uk, www.goodreads.com, www.amazon.co.uk and www.dooyoo.co.uk
Husk is still in his tower, using his magic and the strength he can draw from others around him to take revenge on the immortal who has enslaved him. However, as his strength and power grow, so events out in the world affect those people who he is tracking and assisting on their way towards him. These people are being guided so that they can aid his revenge and whilst he talks to and assists them, they don't realise that they are being moved like pieces on a chessboard.
What Husk doesn't realise is that there is also a squabble going on between the Gods. The Son and the Daughter combined many years ago to thrown the Father out of the world and now they are battling for supremacy, like any siblings. Husk is trying to control the people he needs, but the Gods are also trying to use them for their own ends and the two forms of magic sometimes interfere with each other. This causes freak weather and some of the characters being removed briefly from the world and put back in it somewhere they didn't expect. What's worse for Husk is that the three people he is trying to control keep encountering each other and risk ruining his plans by talking about it and figuring out what is happening to them.
In the mean time, all the characters are having their own problems. Having been plucked from the world and deposited in a place she has never seen before, the cosmographer Lenares has lost her ability to use her numbers to figure everything out and this sets her off balance. Meanwhile, Noetos' past has come back to haunt him as the people who killed his family many years before have now come to see him as a threat. Stella's life is turned upside down by the arrival of someone she both loves and hates and this puts both Conal and Robal, who have their own feelings for her, on edge.
Once again, Kirkpatrick keeps the pace high and keeps events streaming on. Things are not quite as relentless as they were in the first part, with the groups of characters occasionally coming together and sitting down to try and make sense of things. Whilst this does slow things down a little, this is balanced out by the characters being placed in far more danger than they were in the first part, so when the pace does pick up, it's usually down to something exciting going on that you can hardly bear to take your eyes off.
Once again, the story is split into sections, with each part dealing with the journey of a separate character. This again works well at keeping the tension going, especially as each part generally finishes at a point where the characters are in some kind of danger, but the sections aren't so short that you've not had chance to settle into their part of the journey and so when they do find danger, you care about what happens to them. This doesn't work quite so well when all the characters are together or when some of them end up as part of a different group, as the sections then lose a little of their distinctive touches and become a little similar.
Fortunately, the same can never be said of the characters themselves. Each has a distinct personality and they are so well written that at points I was able to distinguish who was speaking simply by the way they said or did certain things. They all have their own demons haunting them as well, which makes their stories distinctly different, even though their journeys coincide at several points and their destination is the same.
I was a little worried at the start when a lot of magic was being used that there would be a little too much deus ex machina and the story would lose some of the human edge. Whilst there were a couple of points that did seem a little like the former, for the most part this is a very human story. The pace may have been lower, but there were some delightful twists to the story, with poor Lenares in particular getting a number of nasty surprises. However, I did find that Torve's reaction to a certain event fascinating, especially given all that had happened to him up until that point, as he came in for psychological as well as physical torment at several points.
Overall, I didn't think that "Dark Heart" was quite as strong as the first part in the trilogy, but it came very close. Even despite that, Kirkpatrick's characters and his eye for a story are so strong that even if this is second best, it's far better than many I have read. Kirkpatrick writes with the eye for a well drawn character of Kate Elliott or Karen Miller, but with a far better sense of pacing and the imagination to keep throwing new things into the mix than either, which makes his work more enjoyable that nearly everything I've read in the fantasy genre, particularly recently.
This review may also appear, in whole or in part, under my name at any or all of www.ciao.co.uk, www.thebookbag.co.uk, www.goodreads.com, www.amazon.co.uk and www.dooyoo.co.uk
November 20, 2023
Another great read as the group continued trying to find out about the 3 gods and the hole in the world.
September 1, 2011
This is the second book in this series, and I think I may have enjoyed it more than the first. It did lag (or perhaps I did) in the middle a little for me at least, but the pace otherwise was good, and the story engaging.
I do have one complaint, and perhaps it is intended, but one of the main characters seems to be universally despised or disliked at least, BUT I CANNOT FATHOM WHY. His actions seem normal, or relatively, but yet everyone reviles him. No he is not sympathetic at all, but he is understandable Yet the other characters in the book don't understand him at all. This may be intended, but in the context of the book, and knowing people, it seems to be not realistic to me.
In any event, I don't intend to write spoilers, and this is probably not much of a review, but its as much for me to vent as anyone to read!
I do have one complaint, and perhaps it is intended, but one of the main characters seems to be universally despised or disliked at least, BUT I CANNOT FATHOM WHY. His actions seem normal, or relatively, but yet everyone reviles him. No he is not sympathetic at all, but he is understandable Yet the other characters in the book don't understand him at all. This may be intended, but in the context of the book, and knowing people, it seems to be not realistic to me.
In any event, I don't intend to write spoilers, and this is probably not much of a review, but its as much for me to vent as anyone to read!
November 24, 2014
c2008. Not sure why but it seemed to flag in the latter part of the story and then suddenly all the loose ends kind of got sorted out and then boom.. the book finished. I seem to recall this happening in the last trilogy by Mr Kirkpatrick as well. Still some sparks of brilliance though which means that I will be hunting for the 3rd and final book in the series. "So what you are saying is truth, but it is not true. You need more than your own knowledge to decide whether something is truth."
February 12, 2009
I love it, and can't wait for the third book. Unfortunately, it doesn't come out in North America until Late 2009. I have to try and get the UK version. This book builds on the Broken Trilogy perfectly. The characters are coming together, and you can begin to see their path more clearly. I couldn't ask for more.
December 30, 2011
Would give a 3.5 if that was available. Pretty good read, Kirkpatrick is weaving the story together quite well. He has left some of the Dune elements behind which is a good thing. Looking forward to finishing the trilogy and see how he wraps up the entire saga. Some interesting characters in the book, #3 should be good.
January 1, 2010
I finished this book last night and it left me to scrape my jaw off the floor. The previous four books were good, I thoroughly enjoyed them but Dark Heart was his best so far. There were so many revelations and twists in this installment that kept me reading more and more.
April 14, 2009
It took me a while before I decided I would continue this series. The fourth book just wasn't as exciting as the first three, and along comes book 5. Much better! More action, more twists and turns!
January 17, 2010
Hated the first, loved the second and can't wait for the third....just downloaded it to Kindle
June 9, 2013
Prefer book 2 with the characters settled in more
Displaying 1 - 12 of 12 reviews