The RIB: The Stonebound Heir by L.A. Barnitz (SPFBO XI)
This is a review of an indie book from the SPFBO XI competition, which hooked me from the first preview chapter.
Summary: Two young outsiders, each with a mysterious heritage, get involved in court intrigues in an Indian-themed fantasy world and quickly find themselves out of their depth...
The story opens with a young man chopping wood, then a mysterious woman approaches him to join an army she's recruiting for. Why was this woman interested in this boy? Why offer so much gold? Would there be payoff for this scene?
Oh yeah.
So, Sid (the young man mentioned above) and his foster sister, Lingli, are being raised in the wilderness by Red, a giant. Neither of them knows much about their past. Each has a mysterious heritage, which thankfully is revealed over the course of the book.
Sid has ambitions and an overconfident belief in his own destiny (a forest witch told him so)! When the mysterious woman approaches him, he says nothing to his guardian and instead leaves with the woman the next day. It turns out she’s the local rani (queen). Sid is given a job in the palace with the other recruits, and attempts to work his way up from kitchenhand to get a position as an elite guard.
Meanwhile, back in the forest, Red is assassinated. Distraught, Lingli leaves to seek out her foster brother, bearing an item that Red gave her to give to him. Lingli is an albino, and stands out amongst the other people of this Indian-coded fantasy world. People think she’s cursed, although any curse powers she have are kept ambiguous. As Lingli travels, she’s captured by horse merchants and has to bargain and survive to get herself to the palace.
From there, the pair meet and fall upwards into positions at the palace due to their skillsets. (I thought the palace should have had more skilled staff employed, but was willing to overlook this to support the social mobility of our two protagonists, as it’s more exciting to to see them in positions of influence rather than scrubbing floors!) Sid is promoted to being a scribe, while Lingli, a talented seamstress, works on the wedding dress for a princess. The book focuses on politics and the rani’s declining political power, due to a poor choice of alliances in the past, and several corrupt court members she’s unaware of. Some of my favourite characters are the side ones, like the librarian Master Avani, and Greta, one of the surviving giants who serves the rani. Barnitz is good at writing wise mentor figures.
Unlike other books where newcomers to a court triumph with strength of will, presence and talent, both Lingli and Sid struggle to best the local intrigues they get involved in; Lingli is pitted against a malicious princess, and Sid is swept up in a conspiracy of corrupt soldiers and officials who want to steal from the rani.
The book moves to a shocking conclusion, and I was keen to see what happened next.
There were some issues I had with the book: some of the climactic action sequences felt a bit rushed and confused, and some of the political machinations of court with the side character’s points-of-view could have been trimmed back to focus on our two leads. I skimmed past Lingli’s travel chapters a bit, but the horse merchants do factor into the story at a later point.
I also liked the hints that this fantasy world may actually be an abandoned sci-fi colony world where everyone's forgotten their past history (like Pern), but mentions of the giants (I loved these giants and their tragic backstory), monsters and special artefacts owned by each noble house keep it within the bounds of fantasy for now.
Recommended.