Spirit Gate

Crossroads #1

by Kate Elliott

IN A WORLD TORN APART BY
WARFARE AND BETRAYAL,
A NEW DARKNESS HAS RISEN

For centuries the Guardians ruled the Hundred, but these unearthly beings have faded from human sight. Only the reeves, patrolling on enormous eagles, still represent the Guardians' power. But there is a corruption in the land that not even they can control, and fanatics are devastating villages, towns, and cities in a drive to annihilate all who oppose them. No one knows who leads them or why.

Outlanders Anji and Mai are on the run with a company of dedicated Qin warriors, when they meet an unusual reeve. Together they can take on the devouring horde; and they must make the attempt, or the land will certainly be lost. But a young woman sworn to the Goddess holds the ultimate key...

Genres: Fantasy, Fiction, Epic Fantasy, High Fantasy, Science Fiction Fantasy, Ebooks, Adult

630 pages, Paperback

First published October 17, 2006

About the author

As a child in rural Oregon, Kate Elliott made up stories because she longed to escape to a world of lurid adventure fiction. She now writes fantasy, steampunk, and science fiction, often with a romantic edge. She currently lives in Hawaii, where she paddles outrigger canoes and spoils her schnauzer.

Reviews

[Pauline Ross · Rating 1 out of 5]

Fantasy Review Barn

I love this book. Or perhaps I should say - I did love this book, for a whole two chapters. It featured a wonderful, independent, self-assured female protagonist, who was completely comfortable in her own skin. Hurrah! A character I could really root for!

And then she’s never seen again. She existed for a whole two chapters purely to motivate a male character, who then mopes and whines and drinks and whinges (while also enjoying himself with other women) for (get this) nineteen years. I was so mad I almost gave up on the book altogether at that point. But OK, there are some points of interest in miserable Joss. His job, for instance, which requires him to ride a giant eagle (cool or what?). His friends are intriguing, too. And the world-building is detailed and interesting, although the author insists on hitting us over the head with endless minutiae. So, fine, I’m grumpy about losing my female protagonist, but I’m along for the ride.

And then we switch yet again to some other part of the world, which isn’t even on the map (aaargh!), and we have a whole other culture to learn about, and a new set of characters - quiet Mai, who’s deeper than she looks, her mysterious new husband Anji, and Mai’s uncle Shai, who’s - well, stupid is the first word that comes to mind. And they’re trekking endlessly and for no obvious reason through trackless desert, while periodically being attacked by bandits, sandstorms and demons. Why? What are they even doing there? Why are there no sensible roads between one populated part of the world and another?

It’s an odd thing, but in fantasy a group of travellers can never cross a desert without being hit by a sandstorm. You can bet they will run out of water as well, and only find an oasis in the nick of time. If they pass through hill country, they’ll be attacked by bandits. And any journey undertaken in winter will encounter a terrific snowstorm. If the author had cut out all this extraneous travelling and contrived drama, and just skipped to the real action, the book would be a quarter of its length, but it would rattle along nicely.

So here we are at 30% of the way through, and we’re still travelling endlessly with Captain Anji and Mai and Shai, no sign of the interesting eagle riders, and all that’s happened is that Mai has been inexplicably smitten with love for her dull husband, Shai is learning to use a spear and…zzzzzzz. What? Sorry, hard to stay awake. Oh yes, and nice Captain Anji has been keeping Very Big Secrets from his wife.
You know what? I don’t care. I just can’t get invested in any of these characters. I know something’s going to happen eventually, and I totally approve of epic fantasy that sprawls itself over whole continents at a glacial pace if it has depth (which this has), but it also has to have characters that carry the story. For me, these just don’t cut it, not when the most promising one was written out after two chapters. Lots of people love this series, and I’ve been told that this book gets better at the halfway point, but I just don’t have the will to keep going. One star for a DNF.

[Marc *Dark Reader with a Thousand Young! Iä!* · Rating 4 out of 5]

Re-read review, admittedly similar to the original. TL;DR: Still love it. Still a tough book to read. It’s tough, but it’s worth it.

I'm a more virulent reader now than when I first hit this in 2016, and I can more clearly comment on the structure. It starts with one story, and then it jumps to, well, the same story, but from a very different perspective and a different time. Then just as you ease into that, it starts a whole different story, very different. After a while this new story tells you that it's leading back into the first story, and it does . . . but now through a whole new character with his own story, and the book sticks with that other one for a good chunk of time.

It’s tough, but I love it. The writing is excellent, evocative, often poetic, but it doesn't flow easily and demands to be read with attention. I love the richness of the world of the Hundred, only enhanced by the completely different lands the book diverted into for a time. I love the complexity, the adultness of it all. Religion, economy, law, daily life, all unique, self-consistent, realistic, and shown to the reader masterfully through character POV as it should always be. You won't be force-fed any information, and the lack of specific explanation about certain things (e.g. Magic and Mayhem) may drive you batty, but if you keep your eyes on the page and let the richness sink in and let the story unfold at its own pace, you're in for a treat, and the sequels make it all worth the effort.

I loved it the first time as much as I do now, and I promise those tough bits are going to be worth it. I still remember launching straight into book 2, and upon reading the very first page of book 2 reacting as follows: “Fuck. Yes.”

My original review is below.
*****************************

Yes, there are multiple jarring shifts in narrative in the first half of this first installment of a trilogy. My advice, indeed my plea to readers is: stick with it through the first book and read at the least the first chapter of the second. If you are not hooked at that point, then you can part ways without malice. Personally I enjoyed the sharp shifts in perspective, not in and of themselves, but rather in the tantalizing way that they promised to reveal more of this fantasy world, its nature and customs.

This story is a luscious slow burn. Kate Elliott reveals an imaginative, believable, grounded world slowly, slowly through the eyes of multiple characters. The 'Crossroads' trilogy is written in multiple third-person perspectives, shifting often between multiple characters' point of view as they experience disparate events and apply their characters' filters and reactions to these. Not all of the perspectives are from likable characters or 'good guys', and not every major character gets his or her own voice. At times, major events unfold only through the distant or peripheral observation of a character who is removed from the heart of the action. As a result, the dramatic weight of some events is muted; but in exchange, the emotional weight of those events is stronger as you see them through a particular character's eyes. I cannot recall reading a fantasy novel or series with more of a character-heavy focus in recent memory.

I picked up this trilogy in hardcover from my local library's book sale, without knowing who Kate Elliott was but figuring that for a couple of bucks for the whole series I was willing to take a chance. Fortunately the whole trilogy was there else I would not have picked it up. It sat on my shelf for a few months until my rate of acquisition of books had so outpaced my reading of them that I had to devote time and attention to the works that I had picked up for some tantalizing reason or another. This novel started off as a slow read, meaning that it was taking me a lot of time per page to progress initially, being so rich with characterization and detail that I was compelled to concentrate on each sentence to draw all of the beauty and meaning available from it. Perhaps this was because I read this coming off a string of pulp novels. Despite the slow pace, I yearned for more daily, and particularly in the second and third installments devoured the text at a hungry pace.

This was my first experience reading Kate Elliott and I would welcome reading her other works in the near future. Kate, if you happen to see this, sorry that you didn't get any $$ out of my enjoyment of your work in this instance, but I hope that my support of my local library makes up for it. I will be recommending your work to others, be assured.

[Zitong Ren · Rating 1 out of 5]

Ahh, Spirit Gate. What a disaster. Maybe people will say that I’m not used to reading adult fantasy, which sure, go ahead, but it is not that I have not read adult fantasy before that I did not enjoy this book. There is clearly a quite mixed reaction for this book from fellow readers, with some loving it, and with others hating it. I for one, did not like it at all.

To begin with, the premise was actually pretty cool, there are flying eagles and riders and maybe some sort of magic and these mythical guardians from another time. The way that it was written, eh, not so much. Right at the start, I really didn’t get the whole, what do you think of having a baby thing from this character. Then, there is this guy called Joss, who spends his entire time commenting on every single woman’s body that he comes across and spends much of the book trying to get people into his bed. It straight up was not necessary and was actually quite weird to read especially when lots of people were like half his age. Really not necessary and added zero importance to the story.

Next up, we seem to follow lots of characters in this hundreds of pages travel journey that is just incredibly stereotypical and boring and absolutely pointless to the entire central plot(whatever that may be at this point) and was a complete waste of time. They go through basically all the normal basic things that happen when a group of people need to travel somewhere. There is also no sense of scale given here at what is precisely going on as there happens to not be a map where travel in involved which does not help the read and saying things like its north, or west is very vague and does not help especially when we spend a good chunk of the book in areas that are not on the map.

There was so much unnecessarily filler like material such as talking about slaves and selling things at the market that does not contribute anything really? The amount of actual history and world building for the Hundred, which is where this book is located is minimal, but I guess we need to learn all about the traditions and customs of a culture that does nothing for this sort am I right? Well no, I’m not. I’m a huge sucker for history and world building but not for random useless stuff for a place that it not physically placed on the map at all. That does not help.

Then we have the ending. I don’t want to spoil anything but it would have appeared that the last hundred pages or so had been building up towards a particular point and instead of getting this epic thing that I hoped, it was over in about two seconds and the thing did not even feel like anything at all. Instead of feeling full of energy and excitement, it left me empty and wondering, is that it? And yes, everyone it was.

I didn’t have the greatest expectations when going into it, but I still hoped that I would like it but unfortunately, the book was not for me. 3/10

[Nick Fagerlund · Rating 2 out of 5]

I'm kind of sad that I didn't like this enough to finish it, because it had all these clever little flourishes that I dug. Like the way it seemed to be setting up the eagle reaves as a Pern-y wish fulfillment companion animal thing, and then described the eagles as "smart as pigs... but no smarter." Or the way the author killed off the putative main character at the end of chapter 2. Or how the most impressive force for maintaining order in the Hundred is actually totally weak-ass and only has power to the extent that the populace thinks they do.

But I read for characters, not world-building, and I ultimately didn't give enough of a shit about these people to keep slogging. Mai was boring and over-perky; Mongol captain Anji was boring and perfect; Mai's brother was boring and dumb-ass; and Joss showed a bit of promise, but not enough, and his dead ladyfriend was totally going to get better. About the only guy I really liked was The Snake, a total asshole who just happened to be on the right side and good at his job. But alas, there was no way he was gonna carry the remaining half of the book, so I stopped. Too much other good stuff on my plate.



Things I learned/re-learned from this book: Made-up swears sound extremely silly. Use them sparingly, make sure they roll off the tongue, and for Christ's sake, leaven your made-up blasphemies with some good old-fashioned fuckshits.

[Brownbetty · Rating 4 out of 5]

Kate Elliot reminds me of a slightly less noir George R.R. Martin, but full disclosure: Martin's too dark and slow-moving for my taste, so this is not quite the endorsement it might be from someone who loves Martin unreservedly. I have always wondered why Elliot seems to have missed the acclaim given Martin.
A lot of the action is political, but some of it seems to be spiritual, which is not to say that people can't suddenly die from sepsis. (See, this is why it reminds me of GRRM!)

Once again in Shit I Ought To Have Been Told On the Cover: this is book one in a series. Thanks, publisher, I really enjoy being tricked into reading the first book when I would have waited until the rest were published, had I known.

I had some difficulty getting through this book, partly because Elliot follows a large cast who don't really interact with, or in many cases, know about the existence of each other for much of the book. But part of my difficulty was that this was a fairly complex book: four, perhaps five fully realized cultures, several political systems, and multiple religions are interacting, not in a simplistic way, and Elliot never stops the action to explain things to you, so you either catch on as it whirls past or you hope it gets clear later.

Elliot isn't showy about it, but her book tackles, and manages to portray holistically, I think, colonialism, debt-bondage, slavery, race, and gender, in more or less that order.

It's not terribly clear from the cover-art, but nearly everyone in the book is some shade of brown which is treated as completely normal, and I do remember hearing Elliot explain on a panel last year that she actually had to fight to get the person depicted on the cover to be given some colour.

[Wealhtheow · Rating 3 out of 5]

I wanted to like this book more than I actually did. Elliott has created numerous societies, each with their own distinct gender roles, politics, religion, food, etc. The societies and people are clearly all non-Western--they wear silk, eat yogurt, have brown hair and skin. There are POV characters from each of the big three (the Qin, the Hundred, and the Sirnakian Empire), and no one country or society is painted as morally better than the others.

BUT. Elliott spends so much time building her world (and seriously, she describes every town, every wharf, every meal) that even by the end of the book there were huge plot holes and I still didn't love any of the characters. The basic plot is that some sort of shadowy menace is slowly inciting chaos in the Hundred while slowly destroying the eagle reeves (people psychically bonded to giant eagles who fly around mediating disputes). Merchant Mai and her new husband Anji, the captain of the Qin army that conquered her homeland, travel into the Hundred in search of a new home. Emo reeve Joss tries to figure out why his homeland is descending into lawlessness. Their paths only cross near the end of the novel.

This wasn't a bad novel, but I'm not interested enough to read the next in the series.

[ambyr · Rating 3 out of 5]

I have a Kate Elliott problem, and it is this: every book she's ever written has a summary that makes it sound exactly like the sort of thing I want to read. Complex characters, deep anthropological worldbuilding, shades of moral gray . . . yes, please!

And then I read the book, and I am reminded, yet again, that my brain and Elliott's writing mix like stiletto heels and a muddy field. I try to trudge through, because what I can see on the horizon is awesome, but it's a painful battle, staggering and squelching each step of the way.

And it's not that Elliott's writing is bad in any objective sense (except, perhaps, a tendency toward over description and occasional redundancy--ascending up hills, things like that). It's just . . . not how I think. Which is too bad, because the ideas that infuse it are awesome.

I liked this more than Cold Magic, so I'm going to try to finish the series. But it might take a while.

[Robin (Bridge Four) · Rating 3 out of 5]

This review was originally posted on Books of My Heart

Review copy was received from Publisher. This does not affect my opinion of the book or the content of my review.

3.5 hearts

Spirit Gate is the first book in the Crossroads trilogy, an old school epic fantasy.  The world has a very Middle Eastern type setting with sands, people with brown skin who eat yogurt etc.  There are many different religions with gods, some seem the same some are different.  There used to be guardians that distributed justice to the land although no one has seen one in 70 years.  The world is quite large and in our journeys with the characters we get to see much of it.  But being old school there seems to be a lot of rape and mentions of rape.  This a slave society and slaves are to be used how slaves have always been used.

The story start out so cool, I was really into the first few chapters.  The Reaves are an order of public servants.  Giant Eagles choose a person to be bonded to and they travel the lands arbitrating disputes and helping with the law.  The Reaves used to work with the Guardians who then distributed justice, but no one has seen a Guardian in generations, so long that we are to wonder if those are just stories or if they are real.

Joss, a Reave, attempts to go to one of the Guardian's sacred places to see if they can be found.  He and his Reave lover, Marit, travel to one such place and make a few discoveries but none that will help them in their current predicament.  When they split, Marit discovers the taint has come to the land and she may not get out of her situation alive.  Then we skip 19 years later...that always throws me for a loop.

The book really slows down then and we follow two separate sets of characters.  Joss, a broken man, 19 years later who lost the love of his life and never forgave himself.  He is still a Reave but they've demoted him time and time again as he breaks the rules still looking for a purpose.  The Reaves are stretched thin and something isn't quite right.  Joss and a small team are headed on the road to see if they can figure out why they haven't heard from some of the other locations and try to find support for the upcoming troubles just on the horizon.

The other set of characters was jarring to jump to.  Captain Anji and his new bride, Mai, travel from her home village to his new posting.  But all is not what it seems and soon they are forced to go into The Hundred lands with his army looking for a new life.  Along the way, they meet and team up with Joss to see if they can find a way to stop an army that is looking to destroy everything in their path.

‘If you are afraid, don’t do it. But if you do it, don’t be afraid.’

Pacing is going to be a big problem for some readers.  The start is strong but then after the 19 year jump the pacing slows as there are new character introductions and an entire new group of people are introduced.  Sometimes it was confusing because a chapter before would move in time but then we would move to a different character and it would go back to go over the same period of time for them.  When I read a book I follow that a lot better than when I listen so there were a few times I had to go back a little to make sure I knew where we were in the story.

Kate Elliot is a really good story teller and the start of the book is great and the last 100 pages or so really worked too.  There is just a lot of stuff in the middle that took awhile and might have meandered just a bit. If you have been reading fantasy for years like myself, there will be something in this story for you.  However if you've never read any older fantasy books this will have some thing that may bother readers with sensitivity to slavery, rape and sacrifice.  This could have done with a little slimming in the middle.

Fear is its own challenge, the first battle that must be won. And after that, the war on despair.

 Narration:
Zehra Jane Naqvi was a good fit for this story.  I have listened to her before for some of the works by Debbie Cassidy  Her voice lent well to the Middle-Eastern or South Asian feel of the characters and the story.  The performance was really good, her voice was distinguishable between characters and lent well to the overall performance.  I was able to listen to my usual 1.5x speed.

Listen to a clip: HERE

[Simcha Lazarus · Rating 4 out of 5]

I admit that when I started Spirit Gate I was a bit thrown off because I had expected this book to be somewhat similar to the others that I had read by Kate Elliott, which it is not. The style in which Spirit Gate is written is very different from that of the Crown of Stars books and it just took me a little bit of time to adjust, though once I did the story quickly immersed me.

Some readers may have trouble with the fact that the story doesn’t really focus on any one of the characters. I know that I usually find it essential to develop a connection with the characters in order to enjoy a book, but the scope of this story was so wide that it didn’t bother me that the connection I developed with each character was minimal. Though I did feel that I got to know each of the characters enough to care about what happens to them. The style in which Spirit Gate was written actually reminds me quite a bit of Steven Erikson’s Gardens of the Moon, though it was a lot easier to read. The epic feel to the story as well as the wide and detailed world building felt similar to Erikson’s novel, though the characters are not quite as intense. There is also the same kind of vague feeling to the story regarding who the villains are and what the danger is. There are some references to the darkness or shadows taking over the land but what those shadows are is never clarified.

The pacing is slow but steady and the regular shifting of the point of view helped keep me interested, as did the different conflicts encountered by each of the characters.

On the back of Spirit Gate there is a quote from Sci Fi Weekly stating that this book is “a treasure for readers who enjoy the journey as much as, or more than, the destination,” which I think is very aptly put. Where the characters are headed and what their purpose is in this endangered land, largely remains unclear, but it’s the journey on which each of them have embarked that is the focus of this book. Kate Elliott has skillfully woven a wonderful story here with fantastic world building and interesting characters and I highly recommend it to all fantasy readers who enjoy a good epic tale.

To read a more detailed review of Spirit Gate visit SFF Chat

[Emily · Rating 2 out of 5]

I don't know. I love the concept of Kate Elliot books, but always feel a little let down with the delivery. I'm never sure exactly why. In theory this sounds like a great book and maybe the second book will explain a lot more and make me feel more satisfied. I had read almost two hundred pages before anything other than the introduction of characters was over. In fact the first two hundred pages didn't even introduce the people who were the main characters. I don't know. I did finish it, but I'm not sure if I would read the second one or not. I'm not sure if I care enough about the characters to find out what happens to them. I did like Anji and Mai and even Joss, but for some reason I just couldn't connect with them. And when you did finally connect with them, the author would move onto another tangent of the story. Maybe that was it. i felt there were too many tangents and not enough focus on the main story, which I probably would have enjoyed on its own. And seriously I still have no idea who Bia is.

[Ashley Marie]

Waiting 70 pages to introduce the lead mentioned in your synopsis is quite a choice, and probably part of why this was a fail for me. Other Things I Didn't Like:
- The dialogue felt extremely inconsistent, veering from a formal, almost Shakespearean structure to something much more casual and modern in the space of a few lines.
- The font is tiny, and the book is dense. A solid way to overwhelm this reader.
- Time skips (although I had run into this when I attempted Black Wolves, so I was ready for it)
- Naming him Peddo felt icky-adjacent, lol
- Still very weirded out that the synopsis doesn't mention Joss at all

The payoff at the end of ch2 really had my attention, but jumping to Mai's POV circa ch5 threw me, as if the time skips weren't enough (although I appreciated sticking with Joss for that).

[James Harwood-Jones · Rating 4 out of 5]

Always enjoy Kate Elliott! Lost gods, tumultuous lands and giant eagles 🦅

I repeat

GIANT EAGLES!!

🦅 🦅🦅

Not a deep review as my shift is starting! Looking forward to book 2 :)

[Doc Opp · Rating 5 out of 5]

Elliott sure knows how to weave a masterful yarn. Very creative and suspenseful. Also with a more limited scope than her first series, so there aren't as many plotlines and characters to follow which makes it less confusing and more readable. I enjoyed the book so much that I went to 2 bookstores and a library to find the sequel. Which I really don't have time to read, but I'm making time by foregoing other important activities (like sleep)

[Karen ⚜Mess⚜ · Rating 2 out of 5]

DNF 31% y'all.

[Tim · Rating 4 out of 5]

Rather than throwing in the usual bells and whistles of the fantasy genre, the underappreciated Kate Elliott prefers to work with, well, a full band, intricate but not obvious, including some smaller instruments that don't sound like much but that contribute to the overall sound. Elliott's quite excellent previous series, the seven-volume Crown of Stars, was keep-your-distance daunting to those not that into 5,000-plus page epics and ripples-within-ripples plotting. It went off in too many directions, but in a way that made it the rich saga it was. Her Crossroads series, apparently another seven-volume beast but with a more palatable trilogy/standalone/trilogy format in the offing, cuts down on the fantasy fireworks even more than usual and seems likely to be more focused than Crown of Stars. We'll see.

Still, Elliott is all about meticulous world-building, character, intricate plotting and taking her own sweet time and, based on the opening volume (the first three are completed) she's right on course.

Figurative shadows are creeping across the Hundred, a vast land patrolled by reeves borne by giant eagles. The reeves are like police or rangers, but their numbers are decreasing. In addition, the Guardians, supposedly immortal beings who function as emissaries from the gods, unseen protectors, appear to all be dead. Or did they ever exist? No one alive has seen one (so they think). Spirit Gate's "viewpoint" third-person chapters follow, among many, Joss and his discovery of corruption among his fellow reeves; Keshad, who sells a person into slavery to free himself of his debt slavery; Mai, who lives far away from the Hundred and whose merchant family arranges her marriage to Anji, captain of the region's Qin conquerors. Anji, kept from ruling and exiled by his family's double-dealing, with Mai along and their relationship slowly blossoming, hires out himself and a band of Qin as protection for a caravan that brings him to the distant Hundred, and his skills make him a key figure in preventing a marauding army from sacking a southwest Hundred city sold out by its own council. Other POV characters are a reeve who's turned his back on duty, and Mai's uncle Shai, who as an unlucky seventh son can see and hear ghosts and who's on a quest to find the bones of his apparently dead brother.

Spirit Gate and the series itself present a tale of those entrusted with power and guardianship going bad; strong women; the subtle layers of slavery; death and rebirth. There's an undercurrent of the lack of choice in what your life becomes: reeves are chosen by eagles; slaves and masters sometimes are born into their roles, though freedom can be earned; the Guardians have had no choice in becoming such; the year of your birth and your birth order supposedly strongly influence your character and place in life; there are exiles and there are hunted. As expected, Elliott is deft in her handling of characters, down to the nonhuman ones. The relationships between reeves and their eagles feels right, and the beasts are treated not as cuddly carriers but as powerful, dangerous animals. As further evidence that we're not in rote Tolkien territory here, this also is one of the few fantasy series that actually acknowledges that living beings produce bodily waste.

The setting has an Asian/Middle Eastern sort of feel to it (nearly everyone is brown-skinned, and the rare blond-haired, blue-eyed types are regarded as — or perhaps actually are — demons), and the world Elliott creates has both monotheistic and polytheistic religions. Elliott also is particularly adept with her very capable female characters. They shape their own little (or big) worlds in their own subtle (or obvious) ways. Again, Elliott's methods are of the meticulous and not the slam-bang variety, though there is good action. Crossroads after what is a heavy scene-setter in Spirit Gate (which does drag occasionally and is, in truth, 3.5 stars) is be inferior to Crown of Stars, but then, Crown of Stars, despite its failings, was one of the best fantasy series I've read.

[Kelley · Rating 3 out of 5]

One thing I have to bear in mind as I review this book: this is the first volume in a trilogy. This is not the complete story. I have to consider these characters and their situations have much further to go, and room to grow. Yet sadly, this book and I got off on the wrong foot very early.

My edition has a beautiful drawing on the cover, of a woman with a giant eagle -- a female reeve. Like many who picked up the book, I'd imagine, I believed this drawing represented the book's central heroine, and being impressed with her at first sight, I was looking forward to reading about her.

Do NOT be fooled.
Female reeves may exist, but not a single one of them plays a central role. The one who might have been the heroine, whom we might easily be tricked into thinking is the heroine, is brutally killed before the first fifty pages are out, and afterwards, the only reeves with whom we spend any substantial time are men. Some reviewers have praised Elliott for this bait-and-switch, but the death of Marit made me so angry that it took me a while to reach the point where I could enjoy the book again. After Marit is wiped from the scene, it's quite a few pages before we meet the book's actual female lead, Mai. In total, her perspective covers about one fifth of the text. Since she's the ONLY female POV we get (after the unfortunate Marit, who really shouldn't count), a substantial majority of this text is dominated by men -- their perspectives, their deeds.

This wouldn't really be a problem, if I liked those men. But those men, oh, those men -- ugh! A repellent bunch. It was almost a relief to read about Horas, the vicious and corrupt reeve, because I knew I wasn't supposed to like him. The trouble is that the "heroes," those we're meant to root for, didn't strike me as a whole lot better: Shai the ghost-seer who perceives no problem with pimping out his female slave to half a cavalry regiment because hey, she's "demon get" and so she must deserve whatever she gets; Keshad the dealer in maiden-flesh who has no issue with buying his and his sister's freedom at the expense of that of two young girls, and who hasn't much use for any woman who isn't his sister; Joss the unapologetic playboy, who comes from a part of the world where women have substantially more rights and freedoms but still views them as nothing more than potential bed-mates to be discarded as swiftly as possible. Joss, we're supposed to believe, "loved" Marit and was heartbroken at her death. Yeah, right. Based on what I know of him, I have no doubt that the sole reason she's special to him is because she died, and that had she lived, she would have become just one more in the long parade of abandoned and forgotten sexual conquests. Not a single male POV character in the entire novel has even the most remote inkling of how to treat women with anything like affection or respect. So I found it very unpleasant to be in their heads, and found this book difficult to get through.

But now, the good news:
This novel confirmed the good impression The Spiritwalker Trilogy made on me: Elliott excels at world-building. The details of the societies, their mores and their religious faiths, are fascinating. Also, it's a pleasure to see an epic fantasy in which only one (minor) character is Caucasian. Racial and ethnic diversity is always a pleasure to see.

While the male characters disgusted me, I was far more pleased with the female characters-- what we got to see of them, at any rate. Once I finally managed to forgive Mai for not being Marit, I grew to appreciate her as an observant, introspective, resourceful character, curious and quick to learn. She still has a huge moral blind spot when it comes to the evils of slavery, but again, this is only the beginning of her story, and I expect her experiences will lead her in time to a better understanding. She's the kind who can grow and change. I also appreciate Zubaidit, particularly since she's so different from Mai. The Smurfette Principle is usually not an issue with an Elliott novel. (I can understand why some readers might not like Bai, however, not so much because of who she is but because we don't get inside her head; instead, we see her through the eyes of male characters, and with the exception of her brother, they're quick to train their male gazes on her to reduce her to a collection of shapely, desirable body parts. She's heroic and active, but it's kind of hard to tell, with the way the men look at her.) Miravia, whom we meet near the very end, also shows heroine potential. There's a "'strong female' fantasy novel" somewhere in this story -- probably in the next volume.

I doubt I'll read this volume again, but I will check out the sequels, because I do admire Elliott's writing, and I'm holding out hope that they might just give me what I'd like:
1) More female POV's besides Mai;
2) At last, a female reeve as an important character;
3) A less repugnant male character, one who just might be capable of extending a hand of friendship -- friendship! -- to at least one of the women.

[Benjamin · Rating 3 out of 5]

Decent, but I wasn't blown away. The best part of the book was some strong characterization. Not every character got this, but most of them did. When the book was focused on this and not the bigger picture, I quite enjoyed it.

Despite the good stuff, I had some major reservations with some aspects of the world-building. First, I couldn't figure out exactly why the reeves were supposed to be so important, and so when things start to go wrong for them right off the bat, it didn't make any sense why it was a problem. The source of their authority is supposedly the Guardians, but even by the end of book we still don't know enough.

In particular however, I had a hard time believing the "rot/corruption" had spread over the Hundred for over twenty years, twenty years, and still no one has much of a frigging clue even when two armies suddenly show up out of nowhere. Are there no foot or horse messengers? (Finally mentioned towards the end.) Why does no one speak up when they have the chance? Is no one playing both sides against the middle? I think the real issue here is that it felt like these things were skipped over merely for the sake of the plot to create a false sense of drama.

It may not sound like I liked the book at all when I did. It's just hard to explain when there's a lot that doesn't make sense. A lot of people probably won't have the problems I did, but personally I can't give the book more than three stars. I will probably finish the trilogy since I already have the sequels. I won't put a high priority on it though.

[Fayley · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is the first book of a 3 book series and Kate Elliot again proves her ability to write fantastic female characters. The world building is interesting, believable and real.

The characters are complete multiple faceted and like able, I cared about what happened to them. Throughout this series Kate Elliott explores the path and consequences of power-lust and the corruptibility of people. The start is a bit weird in that it introduces characters that seem irrelevant for the remainder of the book, but keep going it's definitely worth it. Book 2 is a bit dark and has some harrowing war scenes you may need to skip.

[Sean · Rating 2 out of 5]

My god, Kate Elliott loves the sound of her own writing. Too bad I didn't—and too bad I didn't like the unlikeable characters, the glacial, wandering plot or the confusing geography. Give this one a pass.

[Kathi · Rating 4 out of 5]

7.5/10
A good book with interesting characters, a variety of plot lines to follow, plenty of things to puzzle over, some clues strewn here & there, & a bit of action & romance. Mai & Anji are wonderful characters.

A few quibbles:
The map should have included the lands where Kartu Town & the Qin lands are located.
It bothered me that the central mystery (just what is the “darkness” taking over the north?) was not fully solved by the end of the book, although I understand that, since this is a trilogy, there have to be unanswered questions or there would be no need for books 2 & 3. Still, there seemed to be little concerted effort through most of the story in solving that mystery, regardless of how short-handed the reeve halls are.
Didn’t Shai think it was important to mention that he saw his dead brother riding a winged horse? Didn’t he think it important to mention that when he killed Yordenas, there was no ghost—and then no body at all?

[Strix · Rating 5 out of 5]

One of the best books I've read this year. Ends at a satisfying point, with the way open for more. Incredible writing. Incredible everything.

[Caroline · Rating 2 out of 5]

I struggled to pay attention while reading this, I think mostly because of all the descriptions of scenery. The book also bounces around a lot between characters. The cast becomes more stable about a third of the way into the book or so, but even so I didn't feel that invested in any of the characters by the end. I'm having trouble figuring out what I liked less here than other slow-moving fantasy books with lots of characters. I guess it just didn't connect with me.

[Res · Rating 2 out of 5]

The one where strangers from various lands come together to fight something that's only beginning to come clear at the end of the book. (Because this is one of those books where 'trilogy' means 'a single novel that happens to be published in three volumes.') Joss the reeve rides a giant eagle and fights crime and is incorruptible and grieving like the hero of a Western; pretty Mai takes a foreign husband and thus gets to leave her repressive culture, bringing along her kinsman, Shai, who can see ghosts; Keshad will go to any length to buy his freedom from slavery.

This is an epic. And the reason I don't like epics is because the Big Story crowds out all the small stories.

There are so many small stories here that I'm so very interested in -- what will Keshad do if he achieves the goal of his entire life at twenty-three? Is it possible for Mai and Anji to have a good marriage in spite of their cultural differences and the fact that they're strangers? Will Shai ever find a place for himself in the world, or discover what happened to his missing brother?

But all that is shoved out to the edges of the story to make room for the defense of the city of Olossi, which in turn is only the thin edge of the defense of the Entire World from the Mysterious Gathering Darkness. And, honestly, I'd sacrifice four hundred pages of the Entire World in exchange for four detailed pages of, say, Mai and Anji settling a disagreement about whether to eat beans or rice.

This is a matter of priorities, of course, and readers who like epics may enjoy this a great deal. I was never bored, exactly, though the length and the level of detail were dismaying at times, and there needed to be about 75% less gratuitous geography.

I adored the worldbuilding, especially the various religions. And In general, I cared about and believed in all the characters, with a few exceptions: First, Keshad totally changed when Zubaidit came on the scene, becoming cowardly and passive. Second, Zubaidit herself wasn't at all believable, maybe because we never got her POV and maybe because she just happened to be where every problem was, and just happened to have the skills to solve it. Third, I quickly lost patience with Joss; I get that he's disabled by grief and alcohol, but even so, after nineteen years of bucking a corrupt system, you'd think he'd either develop a little tact and political skill or else realize that what was called for was basically a revolution.

Yay for having a likeable secondary character be gay; boo for sidelining him with an injury and going three hundred pages without even telling me whether he was alive or dead. (Also boo for only *one* gay character, out of about four hundred named characters in the book?)

(Jo Walton rec)

[Nathan · Rating 4 out of 5]

Want deep world building that doesn't seem pretentious? Want differing cultures without the cliche of monolithic fantasy "races." And would you like a pretty good story to go with it? I must say, Kate Elliott my a have a book to hook you on a series.

The setting is fairly unique. The main story takes place in a land called the Hundred, which is home of the Reeves, giant eagle riders. They follow the laws set by mysterious Guardians, enforced by the Reeves for generations, but things are of course changing. Down south there is a Empire that doesn't get a lot of play in the story, and a nomadic horse culture that currently rules a strong merchant based culture.

There is also a fair amount of spiritualism, which usually doesn't appeal to me, but Elliott wove it in without it taking over.

There were a few cons. The characters are all good looking boys and girls, and some follow cliches early on. The tortured soul of a hero and a female that seems to be a direct knock off of Dany from ASOIAF are the worst offenders. As the book goes on they gain some personality, so not a major gripe.

Biggest issue was a bit of bad editing about halfway through. Through he whole book we follow multiple PoV's chronologically(that is the time line is constant, switching views). But in one section we follow the same character to a end, then go back in time and have another character wonder what he is up to. Takes away the tension.

Still, loved the book, cant wait for the next.

edit after finishing the sereis:For series review, go here.

[Catherine Fitzsimmons · Rating 1 out of 5]

This is the story of a struggling land succumbing to bandits and civil war in the wake of the disappearance of the legendary Guardians that once presided over the land and kept peace.

Despite the interesting cover image, Spirit Gate was very disappointing. None of the characters was very likable, most were painfully cliche or annoying, and the writing came across as juvenile, which was the biggest deterrant to enjoyment. It got off to a bad start as the main character in the opening of the novel reeked of Mary Sue, went into detail with things that had no relevance whatsoever to the story and which ultimately didn’t matter because said character was killed not three chapters in to the novel. By about halfway through, it got a little better, but not enough to redeem it, only to make it tolerable. There was far too much setting description bogging down the story, usually about setting aspects that had no relevance to the story or even the scene in which it appeared, and the use of capitalized words as names – the Barrens, the Wild, the Thread, the Cliffs, etc. – was severely overused.

In short, it was not an enjoyable read and it does not come with my recommendation. I am not interested in continuing the series this book began and I am sorely disinclined to pick up any of the author’s other books.

[Kristina · Rating 4 out of 5]

As a massive fan of her Crown of Stars series I was always reluctant to start this series in case it failed to meet my expectations. It is a totally different type of world created this time, using an Asian/Middle Eastern styled fantasy setting instead of a European one. The detail for the world is meticulous and the characters are well developed. She flicks between narratives in a way that makes you want to read the next chapter to get back to that character but pulling you into the next part of another's journey too. Meaning I read book one much faster than I anticipated. Luckily as I did wait so long to read this the trilogy has all been written and I don't have to wait to find out how it progresses.

[Tulara · Rating 5 out of 5]

I really liked this first book of the series. The characters are well-rounded and you can never count anybody out just because they die. Ok - no spoilers here, but I do like fantasy and magic (the world could do with more) and this is a good read - it's the kind of book that kept me reading into the night - and I like that. The next book is still in hardback, so I have a little wait for my next all-nighter.

[Monica · Rating 3 out of 5]

This was a very interesting and unique fantasy story. It would have been rated higher for me if the plot was a bit faster-paced. Unfortunately it felt like it was unnecessarily slow-paced in the middle of the novel. I loved the setting though, and the characters were intriguing. I might give this series another read sometime when I have gotten through my giant to-read list!

[Jay Brantner · Rating 4 out of 5]

I don’t know why the algorithm has pushed a bunch of one and two-star reviews to the front, but it’s unfortunate, because this is a pretty strong start to an epic.

Now I do love big sprawling epic fantasies, and if you aren’t in the mood for three 700-page books, you should give this one a miss. But it’s good.

If I’m counting correctly, there are seven POV characters that get slowly added as the book goes on. One is an antagonist whose POV isn’t great and is probably extraneous, but he also only gets a couple chapters later on. But the tension is well-established early on with our first two perspectives, giving the story some momentum to carry through the introduction of two new characters who aren’t at the time in an exciting position (although they will be).

Meanwhile, in the background, we’re being fed information about myriad religions and political entities and factions and schemes and all sorts of things. It was tough to keep straight, and you don’t have to in order to enjoy the book, but Elliott is clearly building something that started to come good towards the end, and which I expect will continue as the series progresses.

Part three (of the seven parts), which runs from roughly the 15-30% marks is a bit slower, but things really pick up around the 40% mark and make Spirit Gate hard to put down. And, despite being a first book and setting up as much as it resolves, there’s a real climax!

First impression: 15/20. Full review to come at www.tarvolon.com

[Harold Ogle · Rating 5 out of 5]

"Spirit Gate" (Kate Elliott) - review

Recommendation: A great novel that combines the fantasy of the "Harper's Hall" series with the creeping doom of "A Song of Ice and Fire."

Critique: Spirit Gate is the first book of a trilogy. It follows five characters: Joss, a reeve (a sheriff and arbiter who patrols a region with a giant eagle); Mai, a beautiful young merchant; her uncle Shai, the youngest brother of seven who gets no respect and can see and hear ghosts; Keshad, a caravan merchant slave who is gambling everything on a chance to buy freedom for him and his little sister Zubaidit, who was sold to a temple as a child and has been trained to be a courtesan assassin.

The world-building is very engaging; none of the characters are white, though it's not entirely clear that the names of characters - which map to real-world cultures - completely correspond to the people of those real-world cultures/nations. The people of the Hundred are all explicitly described as black, but the people of the Empire are Indian or Arab (very dark skin and wavy black hair), and though the Qin share the name of a real-world culture, they can be imagined as either southeast Asian or Poly/Micronesian (golden skin with completely straight black hair).

So the setting is very atypical, the characters are all very distinct from one another but all quite endearing, the plot is pretty good, and the writing is excellent. All that said, it's not clear for most of the book that the reeves are not technically eagle riders. That is to say, they're not riding the eagles. Instead, they strap themselves to the eagles' breasts like infants in a baby carrier, or as if each reeve had a giant backpack that was actually a living creature. It's never really clear in the text how this is supposed to work; the reeves have enough freedom of movement to throw javelins and fight with spears, neither of which is something you could do while pressed up tight against a living creature above and behind you. The text describes how the reeves "strap their legs into the harness," which makes sense if you think that the reeve is riding the bird, with legs straddling its neck. But if their legs are strapped in while they are below the bird, they'd be hanging upside-down! The illustration on the cover shows a person (not a black person as described in the book, but rather a strange humanoid tree person) wearing the eagle like a backpack. My daughter loved to ridicule this art the entire time I was reading this novel. Who can blame her? Wearing a bird like a backpack is extremely silly.

That makes it sound like I had major issues with this book; not at all. I point it out here because it was the biggest thing that stood out as false or jarring in an otherwise stellar novel that entertained me from start to finish. It is very, very good.

As always when the trope appears in books, I love the idea that the big threat is something that we know as the readers of the novel, but the main characters remain ignorant of the Real Issue and instead focus on lesser, trivial-by-comparison, issues. The book is VERY well-written. But I have to say that I was bothered a bit by the way this trope was presented in this novel. Given that the Guardians' undead status is firmly established in every citizen of the Hundred, it's hard to believe that none of the Hundred characters even take a guess that the Guardians are involved somehow. Yes, they think the Guardians have all been killed. But when the evidence grows that all the legends of the Guardians were foretelling this specific sequence of events, you'd think that some of them might entertain the idea.

Review: In ages past, supernatural immortal demigod beings called Guardians united a hundred city states into the nation called "The Hundred." They created a long list of rules for every aspect of the society and inscribed them on Law Rock: a huge tor in the center of the nation. To uphold and enforce the Laws, the Guardians tamed giant eagles and created the system of Reeves who ride them to hear disputes and pass down judgments. The eagles select their riders from the populace of the Hundred, and those people are then trained and live their lives bonded to the eagles, whose lifespans far exceeds humans'. The first chapter fairly elegantly introduces enough of this history for us to have a rough idea of what's going on, and then it pulls the rug out from under us (and the characters). Joss is with an older reeve, his lover Marit, and they lament that more and more people are greeting reeves with hostility and suspicion rather than honor and gratitude. Frustrated that the Guardians have abandoned them, they break the Law and visit one of the Guardian strongholds...where they find an inhuman corpse! Marit climbs up to the body and touches its cloak, and she has a vivid vision of a Guardian's last moments as it was hacked down by a warrior with an axe. With their entire worldview of the inviolate, untouchable, immortal Guardians shaken, they split up to carry the news. But on the way, Marit stops to carry out her regular duties, which involve a routine check of an area, Iliyat, where some other reeves had disappeared. She finds a bunch of locals who have built a temporary encampment. The Iliyat people act really shady, but she doesn't react fast enough and she and her eagle are captured. She discovers that Radas, the Lord of the region, has radically transformed in his mien and behavior, apparently possessed by an evil force who is bent on destroying all traces of devotion to the Hundred's gods. Marit is scheduled to be mass raped, but she has a hidden dagger and enlists the aid of another girl to help her...but the girl, in her terror, interprets "escape" as "suicide." So she kills Marit and then herself. When Marit doesn't appear, Joss returns to find her, but the
Iliyat locals have cleared away their temporary encampment. It is only months later that they find where Marit's bones were buried, and they never found her eagle.

Eighteen years pass. Grieving, Joss throws himself into a hedonistic lifestyle of drunken debauchery to cover his pain. Things have gotten much worse, with more and more territories rejecting the reeves and the number of reeves dwindling, and nobody knows about the evil forces responsible. Another sign that people have forgotten the Law is that the wealthy (who are permitted to indenture slaves) have been charging their slaves many compounding fees so that the slaves are not manumitted after the required 8 years of service.

Meanwhile, in a country far, far to the southwest of the Hundred, the Qin people have been conquered by horseclans. The beautiful daughter, Mai, catches the attention of the horseclan's captain, Anji. Anji pays the bride price to her family, they get married, and then Anji takes her with his cavalry and head out to return to the east. With them is sent two others: a freakish woman - a slave whose white skin marks her as the spawn of a demon but also makes her an object of lustful obsession to nearly everyone who lays eyes on her - and Mai's uncle, Shai, who is a bit of a sad sack not just because he's always been treated as useless because he's the youngest of seven brothers, but because he's in a semi-permanent state of fear because he can see and hear dead people's ghosts. The patriarch of the family gives Shai a mission: find out what became of their beloved eldest brother, who dishonorably abandoned the family and his duties years ago to go traveling to the east. Anji, Mai, Shai, and the cavalry troop suffer many hardships returning to the Empire, and during a sandstorm the white slave girl wanders into the desert and is lost. Later, when the troop finally arrives back in the Empire, they discover that the Emperor has died and the struggles for succession have begun. Anji, who is actually the son of the old Emperor's favorite concubine and is thus a Prince of the Empire, has been in hiding for years so as to not be considered a contender for the throne. As he has no interest in becoming Emperor, Anji decides that they will all travel north out of the Empire into the Hundred. On the way, they have a brief interaction with two interesting characters: Keshad, a slave of a wealthy Hundred businessman who has been entrusted to make his master a profit; and an Imperial priest, who horrifies Shai to no end when Shai sees the priest banishing some dead people's ghosts, destroying them so that they don't pass through the Spirit Gate.

Keshad has been saving his money for years, working to gather his own goods that he can sell on these business trips, buying and selling again and again for fifteen years or more so that he can buy his freedom from his 8-year contract and earn enough to buy his little sister Zubaidit out of sworn service at the Lady's temple, where she has had to grow up as an entertainer, prostitute, and assassin. The plan gets accelerated when Keshad finds the white slave girl in the wilderness and hides her in a secret compartment in his wagon so that no one would grow covetous enough to steal her from him. He realizes the effect that she has on everyone, and that she would be considered incredibly valuable to the Temple where his sister is ensconced.

The situation in the Hundred has deteriorated even further: an actual army has been gathered in secret in the north, hidden in caves and forests where the reeves can't observe, and has laid siege to the largest city in the north, having conquered much territory in the north and east of the nation. The commander of the reeves gives Joss some authority to investigate, and Joss flies south to see why one of the reeve's Aeries, Argent Hall, is not responding to summons or communiques.

Having outdistanced the troop (because he headed straight for the Hundred rather than heading into the Empire), Keshad reaches the Hundred only to find that the area is controlled by corrupt guards. He is spared from disaster by the presence of an itinerant monk, a motley devotee of one of the Hundred's many gods, who still garners some fearful respect: they dare not steal from a merchant when the monk is around. But the guards are clearly in cahoots with the dark powers spreading through the Hundred, because that night, after Keshad has crossed the border, a murderous gang of bandits attacks the caravan, clearly looking for Keshad and his white slave. He defends his wagon with the help of another merchant's guard and the monk, who are both killed in the fighting. Keshad would have been killed, too, except that Anji's cavalry arrived and efficiently slaughtered the bandits. It turns out that Joss had met Anji on the road some hours earlier and the two had an instant rapport and respect for each other. So when Joss saw the bandit troop riding to attack another village (as it seemed), he flew back and implored Anji to help. The foreign soldiers made short work of the murderers, and they captured the border guard captain for his obvious collusion with the bandits. Keshad's prize was still safe. They held a funeral service for the monk and the next day, Keshad, Mai, Anji, and all the cavalry headed on to the city of Olossi with their captive while Joss parted ways to continue on to Argent Hall.

Argent Hall's reeve commander had grown ill last year, and had died suddenly. A replacement had appeared and taken charge, but this person was actually a revenant sent by the dark powers...in particular, a dark woman (who, it is strongly hinted, may be the revenant of Marit). This revenant commander had cut off all contact with the other reeves, had murdered the reeves sent from other aeries as well as any reeves of Argent Hall that had objected to his takeover, and had inducted thieves, crooks, thugs, and psychopaths as replacement reeves (thus showing that the process of eagles choosing their riders is FAR from foolproof). Joss arrives and is immediately captured. A beautiful assassin - Keshad's sister, Zubaidit, all grown up - arrives in Joss' prison cell and pulls a knife on him; he attacks her and manages to overwhelm her mostly by luck, for her skills are formidable. He escapes back to his eagle and they fly away when the criminal reeves of Argent Hall are too drunk to even notice. But when Joss and his eagle land in Olossi, they are captured and thrown into prison.

Zubaidit wakes up and leaves Argent Hall, making her merry way along the trade road disguised as a musician. She plays a merry tune on her flute as she passes through the merchant caravans (unaware that she was passing her brother's wagon) and shoots a poison dart at the imprisoned guard captain as she strolls past, killing their prisoner. So when the troop arrives in Olossi, they do not have a guilty party, and so it is the word of a bunch of "foreign killers" that the guard captain had done anything wrong at all. So Anji, Mai, Shai, and the others are all put on trial, and the Olossi council decides that they must leave immediately: as dangerous foreign soldiers, they cannot stay in the Hundred.

Keshad just barely manages to buy his freedom from his master through some shrewd negotiations and cunningly withheld information. He then goes to the Temple and brazenly asks them to return Zubaidit. They ask for more money than he could ever provide, and he is crestfallen for a moment...then he produces the white slave girl and the temple's matriarch agrees to make a trade. Zubaidit and Keshad enjoy a reunion, but both of them have changed drastically since they were children first sold off into servitude. He has become a crafty, conniving, paranoid merchant, and she has become a cold-blooded killer and courtesan. Realizing that both the temple and Keshad's former master might try some sort of revenge, they leave Olossi. On the way, they run into bandits: an advance scouting party of a huge army that is approaching to occupy the city (a move which had been arranged with the collusion of the senior members of the Olossi city council). Keshad survives by disguising himself as a bandit, donning the symbol of teh dark powers that they all wear, and Zubaidit survives by charming one of the corrupt reeves of Argent Hall, who are also working with the dark powers. She plays upon his lust and vanity until she can escape, and she gets Keshad out, too, but not before he has a run-in with "the woman:" the revenant who is the general of this southern army, who arrives on a flying horse made of smoke. She terrifies him and the two siblings return to Olossi, realizing they're hemmed in on all sides by a hostile army.

The junior members of the Olossi city council execute a coup, aided by the news brought by a courier that the surrounding villages have all been massacred. This news shocks everyone, including the senior members of the Council who'd met with the dark forces in secret to arrange for the peaceful surrender of the city. The newly-formed city council invites Anji and his troop back into the city to help with preparing a defense, with the explicit agreement (drawn up by Mai) that if the city survives, each soldier will be granted a plot of land and resources to start a farm at new citizens of the Hundred.

Joss returns with a flight of his fellow reeves, and together he and Anji create a plan to eliminate the threat posed by Argent Hall. They draw the eagles out into a long chase and series of skirmishes (which is horrific to all the reeves, as the Law says that "no reeve shall harm another" and "To harm an eagle is the basest of crimes"). While Argent Hall's eagles were all away from the roost, Anji, Shai, and the rest of the troop scaled the walls of Argent Hall to secretly enter and capture the place while it was only lightly manned. Shai stumbled across Argent Hall's commander (no one has ever seen him with an eagle) and ran him through with a scimitar...he is puzzled, though, because he sees no ghost. Anji and the rest of the troop celebrate Shai's prowess in killing the enemy leader, but later, when they return to show off what he's done, they find that the revenant has just got up and walked away, like revenants do.

Without the advantage of the eagles scouting the air for them, the enemy proceeds to the gates of Olossi and are taken by surprise by a bunch of dramatic tricks and traps that Anji and the citizens of Olossi had set to slow down/eliminate the invaders. After some fierce fighting and a fire that burns a large section of the city, the city's defenders finally manage to rout the enemy army. The reeve commander arrives and appoints Joss as the new commander of Argent Hall. Anji and his troops get their plots of land. But then the itinerant monk appears at the Temple in Olossi, seemingly unharmed now, though he was trampled to death by bandit horses a week earlier. He speaks with a dread authority to the matriarch and all the other priestesses, reminding them of the ancient legends about the Guardians of the Hundred: how they rode on winged horses and strove with each other for control. They were called immortal because they would live on in others' bodies, souls jumping from body to body. He has arrived now to welcome the new incarnation of a fellow god: the white slave girl. The novel ends with him announcing that the war for the soul of the guardians will continue.