Toby Frost is one of our writers (that’s how it works with Little Wonder – once you’ve written me a play I own you forever.) He’s also well known for his Space Captain Smith series of novels and for being an all round great bloke. Recently, he took the incredibly brave move of branching away from his publisher (with whom he still works) and self-publishing his passion project – a set of complex, multi-faceted urban fantasy novels known he has called the Dark Renaissance series. The second in the series, Blood Under Water, has recently been released and because we love Toby and his work, here’s a review of a book you definitely aught to go and buy.
This is an excellent, dark urban-fantasy adventure story. The story twists and turns, the characters are vivid and believable (whether hero or villain, a line that blurs plenty of times), and the author never lets the enormous depth and complexity of his world building get in the way of the pace of what is a real page turner.
Giulia, thief-taker come world-saver, is a complex protagonist. This book goes a long way to help explain the decisions she made at the end of the first, exploring her profound sense of self-loathing without ever getting into navel gazing. Another thing I like is that, while Giulia is unquestionable a badass, you never know in any fight or action sequence whether she is going to win or not – or even if she should win or not. This leads to a constant sense of suspense that is a lot of fun and quite different from your typical hero-always-wins fantasy novel.
One thing that’s doesn’t quite click for me is her Melancholia, a manifestation of her mental health problems that she visualises as distinct and treats with tinctures. This is pretty cool, and it’s great to have a hero with mental health issues, but the Melancholia feels independent from the story at times. I suspect that in future books this will become more integrated to her character and the way she makes decisions – at the moment she sort of needs the drugs, takes the drugs, and that’s ok.
But that’s part of what is making this series great. All of the characters, even Hugh, our brave and bold Anglican knight errant, carry scars and emotional problems and personal limitations – both the dramatic and the mundane, real life stuff we all struggle with – that continually bite them in the arse, both here in this book and one suspects in the future. Blood Under Water functions extremely well both as an interesting book in its own right and as part of a series. Frost has earned my trust as a reader, because of the way he’s taken small curious details from the first book– the odd friendship between Giulia and Hugh, Hugh’s sometimes strange responses – and fully justified them in this one. I’m sure the Melancholia will only grow, and I for one can’t wait.
If you’re looking for fantasy that not only gives great action and an imaginative world, but also deep, sophisticated characters who feel like real people, look no further. Buy this book.
