 | The third installment of Abraham’s The Dagger and the Coin series, The Tyrant’s Law may be the most enjoyable yet. Some of the pleasure comes from the expanded world: characters journey to the southern jungles, the eastern steppe, and the holdings of the scaled Timzinae race. This novel raises and explores interesting questions: the nature of “truth,” the tension between logic and love, if any dragons might have survived the last battle millennia ago, and what actually defines “nobility.” As is all the books of the series, the story starts with a prologue. We follow a young Haaverkin boy during his manhood initiation; he’s led to a sea cave within which a dragon sleeps. |
The book is told through the lens of four main characters:
- Former noblewoman Clara Kalliam is determined to help her sons re-establish themselves in Court and bring down Regent Geder Pallaiko.
- Geder Pallaiko feigns competence as Regent but knows he’s in way over his head. He pursues war against the scaled Timinzae while longing for a reunion with his true love, Cithrin.
- Cithrin pursues her apprenticeship at the bank in the Timzinae city of Suddapal and tries to avoid love-sotted Geder.
- Marcus Wester is on a quest with former priest Kit to find a relic that will kill the Spider Goddess — but first they have to survive the southern continent.
 | The widow Clara Kallium lives among the poor. She uses her meager allowance from her youngest son to cultivate relationships through favors and food, asking seemingly innocuous questions of everyone she meets. Even when endangered she keeps her cool: “My thanks,” Clara said with a nod, then turned and walked briskly back along the narrow street. Her throat felt thin as a straw and her heart beat like a sparrow. |
It’s great fun to watch her stealthily piece together fragments of information into a coherent picture, a clever sleuth using her wits to understand and undermine powerful enemies.
Her assessment of the Lord Marshal leading Geder’s army:
By being a man of talent, he made himself into someone to be won over. Someone to be wooed. And so he made himself vulnerable.
Clara’s deft characterization of a former servant:
Once, he had been a gardener’s assistant and plucked weeds from her flowerbeds. Now his hands were calloused and his face pale with brick dust and starvation.
Her assessment of the Lord Marshal leading Geder’s army:
By being a man of talent, he made himself into someone to be won over. Someone to be wooed. And so he made himself vulnerable.
Clara’s deft characterization of a former servant:
Once, he had been a gardener’s assistant and plucked weeds from her flowerbeds. Now his hands were calloused and his face pale with brick dust and starvation.
 | The author creates exquisite suspense as we watch Clara struggle with her noble upbringing and the harsh necessity of this world she’s been thrust into. As the story unfolds, we see that although Clara was born into the noble class, she has become her own person since her husband’s death and will never return to the proper noblewoman she once was: . . . in the heart of her disgrace and loss, there was another woman [who] had caught the scent of freedom unlike any she’d ever known, and she was dreadfully hungry for it. |
Her experience of a bed in a noble house after being so long among the poor:
She sat [on the bed] as she might have on the creaking frame she’d become used to. The mattress was so soft. She felt as though she were sinking into it. As if it were devouring her.
She sat [on the bed] as she might have on the creaking frame she’d become used to. The mattress was so soft. She felt as though she were sinking into it. As if it were devouring her.
 | Part of her dilemma is the handsome young huntsman Vincen Coe, who professes his love to her. Though disgraced, Clara is still aware of the gulf of years and class between them—but also the potential freedom. Taking Vincent Coe, huntsman and youth, to her bed meant that anything was possible. Anything could be done. |
Geder Pallaiko continues to fall deeper under the influence of the Spider Goddess priests. There are moments when he questions their illogic, but is quickly brought back under their spell, and as the story progresses, convinces himself of their irrationality.
 | One of the most disturbing (and timely/timeless) aspects of the story is how the scaled Timzinae are demonized and blamed for all ills in the world as justification for war, including a rumor that they were behind an assassination attempt against Regent Geder. This obvious fabrication takes on a life of its own as Geder begins an inquisition to find the Timzinae “conspirators,” feeding widespread hatred and justifying a pogrom against the innocent Timzinae. |
Geder pines for Cithrin, the only woman he’s ever had sex with—and for the simplicity of their time together. Throughout the story, Geder is a tragic figure, desperately lonely and subject to impulsive decisions that often have devastating consequences.
Here he is after confronting a traitor:
Geder walked after him, the warmth of certainty and fury making him twice his height.
And Geder broken by deep, primal grief:
Geder walked after him, the warmth of certainty and fury making him twice his height.
And Geder broken by deep, primal grief:
 | When he began to sob, it was a distant sensation, but with every breath it grew closer and harder. When the grief finally came, it was like nothing he’d felt before except once. When he’d been a boy and his mother had died, it had felt just like this. His body shuddered and tensed. His breastbone ached like someone and punched him and tears flowed down his cheeks like a rainstorm. He was sure they could hear him on the street, sure that they knew, and he wanted to stop, but he couldn’t. He’d started, and now he was too far gone to stop. He raged and he wept and he kicked the bed to pieces and ripped the pillow apart with his teeth and then collapsed on the floor, beaten and humiliated. |
 | Cithrin and her guard Yardem, a dog-eared Traglu, spend most of the novel in the Timzinae city of Suddapal. Here they arrive by boat in Suddapal: The air was thick with the scent of brine and tar, the creak of wood and rope. [Cithrin appeared] to be a woman at the height of her power, occupied in the privacy of her thoughts. In truth, she’d drunk too much the night before, and her head felt like a sparrow had built a nest in her skull. |
Her experience of the Timzinae:
The Timzinae smiled, the nictitating membrane sliding over her eyes, blinking and unblinking. . . . Magistra Isadau, voice of the Medean bank in Suddapal, was slender with flecks of grey at her temples and the first dusting of frost on the scales of her face and neck.
The Timzinae smiled, the nictitating membrane sliding over her eyes, blinking and unblinking. . . . Magistra Isadau, voice of the Medean bank in Suddapal, was slender with flecks of grey at her temples and the first dusting of frost on the scales of her face and neck.
 | Although Cithrin considers herself a cosmopolitan woman of the world, she has difficulty adjusting in Suddapal: Walking through rooms and corridors filled almost exclusively with dark-scaled bodies and twice-lidded eyes, she felt conspicuous. She was aware of her slight frame and unscaled, pale skin in a way she had never been before, and she disliked the feeling. |
Cithrin and dog-eared Yardem discuss using sex for tactical advantage:
“You were the one who told me sex is a woman’s natural weapon.”
Yardem’s ears shot forward. “I never said that,” he said. . . . “We were talking about fighting, and I made the point that, on average, men have longer reach and stronger arms, and weapons are based on reach and strength. A woman who wants to fight has to train harder to come even. I can’t recommend sex in a melee.”
They were silent for a moment. Something was shifting in Cithrin’s chest. Unwinding like a tie rope on a spool losing tension. . . . “But you said—”
“No I didn’t.”
“Then who did?” Cithrin asked.
“Believe that was Sandr.”
“Oh,” Cithrin said. Then a moment later, “Sandr’s kind of a pig.”
“I’ve always thought so.”
“You were the one who told me sex is a woman’s natural weapon.”
Yardem’s ears shot forward. “I never said that,” he said. . . . “We were talking about fighting, and I made the point that, on average, men have longer reach and stronger arms, and weapons are based on reach and strength. A woman who wants to fight has to train harder to come even. I can’t recommend sex in a melee.”
They were silent for a moment. Something was shifting in Cithrin’s chest. Unwinding like a tie rope on a spool losing tension. . . . “But you said—”
“No I didn’t.”
“Then who did?” Cithrin asked.
“Believe that was Sandr.”
“Oh,” Cithrin said. Then a moment later, “Sandr’s kind of a pig.”
“I’ve always thought so.”
Marcus and Kit do the most adventuring. Their quest leads them into some truly harrowing situations. Kit’s ability to “persuade” others and Marcus’s skill with a sword help them survive more or less intact.
 | Marcus buys a mule from a tusked Yemmu for trek across the steppe, highlighting the author’s adept characterization of even minor characters: “Trying to keep clear of the war then,” the Yemmu said. “That’s wise. Uglier than a camel’s asshole, that is.” “There’s a charming image,” Marcus said. There are many wonderful moments of humor between Marcus and Kit. “The weapon is poison,” Kit said. . . . "In time, you will grow ill from it, and eventually, inevitably, it will kill you.” "It’s a sword, Kit,” Marcus said, lifting the green scabbard from its place. “They’re all like that.” |
I enjoy how the author uses story events to change and reveal his character’s personalities, his descriptions of the settings feel authentic, and the world is unique, as in this description:
On the floor the legions of the uncorrupted stood ready. The formation was the classic triangular units, twenty-eight slaves in a unit and twenty-eight units in a form.
On the floor the legions of the uncorrupted stood ready. The formation was the classic triangular units, twenty-eight slaves in a unit and twenty-eight units in a form.
 | What doesn’t work so well for me are the thirteen human “races.” First Bloods is the name given to what I’d consider “ordinary” humans. I picture Yemmu like orcs for their “great size and massive tusks.” The Cinnae are pale and slight, like classic white-blond elves in my imagination. Tralgu have dog-like ears and teeth: maybe like a Wookiee with pointy ears, but no fur? Some fur? Though the rest are described in the back of the book, they remain hazy to me, and I found it annoying to keep looking them up, including the Timzinae who are described as having “dark, insectile scales,” but an upright, human appearance. The derogatory term for them is “Roach.” |
At the end of the story, Marcus and Kit run afoul of the sleeping dragon from the prologue and Geder takes his army in pursuit of yet another betrayer. Clara is in unfamiliar circumstances, but she's come into her own throughout the story and we trust her to quickly turn the situation to her advantage. Cithrin, the survivor, undergoes the biggest emotional journey of the story. She starts her apprenticeship anxious to prove her banking logic, but is instead asked to expand her heart.
The Tyrant’s Law ends with images of the final dragon battle, which predated these stories by millennia:
Aastapal fell. The great perch-spires burned, and the library of stones shrieked in its pain.
The Tyrant’s Law ends with images of the final dragon battle, which predated these stories by millennia:
Aastapal fell. The great perch-spires burned, and the library of stones shrieked in its pain.
Read other books by David Abraham:
The Dragon’s Path, The King’s Blood, The Widow’s House,
The Spider’s War (also part of the Dagger and the Coin series);
Age of Ash, Blade of Dream (both set in Kithamar)
Read other gritty lived-in fantasies:
Memories of Ice, Fire Logic, City of Stairs, City of Blades, City of Miracles
The Dragon’s Path, The King’s Blood, The Widow’s House,
The Spider’s War (also part of the Dagger and the Coin series);
Age of Ash, Blade of Dream (both set in Kithamar)
Read other gritty lived-in fantasies:
Memories of Ice, Fire Logic, City of Stairs, City of Blades, City of Miracles
