THE SOLAR REALM

In Black’s SF debut novel, a ruthlessly efficient assassin must deliver a powerful relic to the next in the line of succession following an empress’s murder.

A coup by a treacherous Chancellor and his hordes results in the death of the formidable Empress. Now, the Imperial Orb, an artifact of immense potency, must pass to her royal heir. The rightful successor is 17-year-old princess Jenanine Blackwater, who’s uninvolved in her kingdom’s conflicts and, aside from healing skills, painfully lacking in magisterial magical arts. Kora, known as the Silver Slayer, is the Imperial factotum tasked with delivering the Orb to Jenanine. She’s the most fearsome of a caste of solder-assassins—many of whom, it seems, are on the bad guys’ side. Depending on their home worlds, Slayers wield weapons based on water, ice, wind, rock, or other natural elements. Hailing from the harshest planet—one that’s “barren and brutal just like its people”—Kora has a host of deadly talents. After crash-landing on Jenanine’s world, Kora and the Orb become targets in a skirmish between dragon-rider Witches and the Muri, whose youthful Prince Cameron makes impulsive choices that place his life in peril. Then again, just about everyone in this novel is in danger thanks to the Chancellor, the Shara-La dragons, and the vampirelike aliens who’ve insinuated themselves into the clergy. Black’s high fantasy novel offers virtually nonstop combat in a realm where interplanetary travel and aliens mix with magic-wielding beings, royalty, and brutish warriors. Various players alternate first-person narration, with the notable exception of lethal, enigmatic Kora; intriguingly, most can’t see past their petty provincial-nationalist feuds, which are often laced with racial overtones, to see the crisis’s bigger picture. The violence is unsparing and often head-spinning: “Twisting my body, I bump her off and swipe at her leg with my blade. She hisses in pain as metal cuts the skin on her thigh, but before she can get back to her feet, two arrows lodge themselves into her sternum.” An open ending leaves many bloody plot points unresolved.

Characters wreak havoc and homicide on an epic scale in this breathlessly paced action-fantasy.