Priest by Matthew Colville
I am not a fan of the fantasy genre, but I do read fantasy books because, as a member of the regular cast of the Orbital Sword podcast, I am often (almost too often) required to delve into fantasy for the sake of the show. That is not to say that I don’t appreciate what I have read for the show, most of it has been quite good and I am grateful to my co-hosts, David and Scott, for opening up a new type of reading adventure to me.
I think that one of the reasons that I don’t appreciate fantasy as much as some of my friends do is that the books seem so damned long. The last fantasy novel I read was a thousand pages! Normally, it doesn’t matter how long a book is, I can relax and enjoy it, but not when I have to have it done for a recording date; not to mention that I have a life that requires me to do a considerable amount of adulting. I realize that the genre requires space for world building and character development because the author is creating something that doesn’t physically exist.
So, I was in the middle of a fantasy book and looking at reading another one for the Orbital Sword when a friend, Patrick Cox, contacted me informing me that he had sent me a gift via Amazon.com, an ebook no less. Patrick asked me if I would read this book and tell him what I thought about it. I have to admit, I hung my head when I realized that Priest was another fantasy book, but when I learned it was only five-hundred pages, I was all the more happy to comply with my friend’s request. So Patrick, this one's for you, and thank you for the book.
Priest by Matthew Colville centers around a character called Heden (pronounced hey-den). The story opens with Heden rescuing a young prostitute from jail, he takes her to his home, an inn that he has stocked for business, but never opens. After he sets the girl up to live in his place, he is sent on a mission to investigate some trouble to the north. There, a group of knights known as the Green Order, have been charged with the task of protecting a forest and a large city from an ever advancing army of monsters bent on taking over the area.
A bishop sends Heden on the mission to learn what has happened to the Green Order as they appear not to be doing what they are charged to do. Heden arrives on the scene and learns that the leader of the Green Order has been murdered and the knights are so full of despair over the loss, they will not act. At the same time, They also will not tell Heden what happened to the leader of the order, and a frustrated Heden finds himself in a race against time to reactivate the knights in time to save the thousands of inhabitants of the city.
I am guessing that this is probably a pretty typical trope in fantasy, and it works well here. However, the way that Colville presents the material was very appealing to me. For the most part, the story is written in plain modern language. Only once in a while do characters fall into a more formal language called “knight’s cant” that is laced with thee, thou, and thy. This happens infrequently when the knights are angered or want to get a more grim point across. The book actually reads more like a hardboiled detective murder mystery that, if the protagonist fails his mission, will result in a huge disaster. Along with the detective story, there is quite a bit of veiled humor in the dialog, sometimes so subtle that the reader has to really watch for it. Those aspects, the language used and the unstrained humor, are what spurred me on to read this story. Well, that and the main character, Heden.
While Heden may be presumed to be the priest referred to in the book’s title, he describes himself as an ‘arrogate,’ or one who assumes the power of being something one is not. As far as I could understand, Heden is a defrocked priest, but under the authority of the church, he has the limited authority to assume the title and make judgements as they are assigned to him by a church authority. So under the authority of the bishop, Heden assumes the power of being a priest for the duration of his mission.
Heden lives in a polytheistic society and has talents that are needed by the bishop, whose religious affiliation is not specified. Heden has his own goddess he follows, but she only seems to be there to help him when needed, well at least most of the time. One of the hallmarks of fantasy is the use of magic. While that usually takes many forms, at least in the books I have read, it would seem that the handling of the arts in Priest are also based in the religious aspects of the story. The deity that Heden follows is Cavall, and when Heden needs to use magic, he calls on Cavall in the form of short prayers that make things happen. It is apparent that Cavall has huge power and Heden uses that power only in desperate and seemingly hopeless situations. Heden’s use of Cavall’s powers were, in my mind, a blatant use of the deus ex machina device to rescue the character from impossible situations. I’m not saying that is a bad thing, but with its limited use, it seemed appropriate to the story.
Outside of the use of magic, I liked Heden as a main character. He is a cynical person who does seem to live by some moral code that is his own. For instance, he has no ulterior motive for rescuing the girl at the beginning of the book beyond saving her life. He says that if she were to continue living as she had been, as the favorite of a certain high-ranking patron, she would be dead within a few years when this patron tires of her and wants to move on and choose another favorite.
Another reason I like Heden’s character is that he is absolutely accurately portrayed as the hardboiled detective type. He uses few words but is always thinking, and only we get to know what he thinks and where it leads. Heden and his portrayal nostalgically reminded me of the film noir detectives of years past. He doggedly searches for the answers that he has been sent to discover, but is thwarted at every turn as no one will give an inch. Just as it seems we might discover ‘who done it’, the reader, along with Heden is pushed away. This continues to the end of the story where the plot twist is revealed and the person behind the whodunit is also revealed. I am not going to spoil the book here, but I will say that I had my suspicions about who the antagonist was and was not disappointed in the reveal.
While Priest was a fun book to read, there were a few things that seemed a bit off. There were a few characters that appeared and then disappeared for no apparent reason. Heden would talk with them at some length trying to get answers, but would get none. Just when it seemed that Heden had kindled a positive relationship with these briefly appearing personas, they would make some flippant remark and depart the scene. While colorful and well written, those characters advance the story. Priest is just the first of a series of novels in this world and perhaps the characters I refer to will appear in the sequels.
Another point of disappointment for me was in the lack of character development in Heden himself. There is very little backstory on him, mostly that he was once a priest and no longer is. Somewhere along the way, he has developed compassion for others and some pretty good investigative skills. He is very stoic for most of the story, but every now and then he has some very bad panic attacks and bouts of anger that might seem like he is suffering from some form of PTSD. Perhaps this is also dealt with in the later books, but for now, while I liked Heden as a character, he did not become one that I found myself investing in or caring about beyond a superficial level.
Never the less, I did enjoy the story and had some fun reading it and would be open to picking up other books in the series sometime in the future. I would recommend this book as gateway into the world of fantasy because of the plain language making it easy to understand, helping the reader to focus on the story.
Well, there it is…
Qapla’!
Edited by Benjamin Arrowood
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