I’ve been spending time lately in Mark Lawrence’s Broken Empire, and perhaps my favorite sojourn to date was The Red Queen’s War Book 2, The Liar’s Key.
The “Liar” in question is the god Loki, whom we meet in an intriguing prologue set deep in the past inside a Silo-like facility where survivors of a nuclear holocaust—called the Day of a Thousand Suns by the time the main story takes place—await the day it’s safe to go outdoors. There, we also meet Kelem, one of their leaders, who proves to be the book’s ultimate antagonist and one of the series’ most compelling villains.
The Key itself is a device that can open any door, including doorways to other realms. Since the end of Prince of Fools, it has been in the possession of the Northman Snorri ver Snagason, the companion of the book’s protagonist and narrator, Prince Jalan Kendeth. Snorri wants to use the Key to open Death’s Door and reunite with his slain wife and children. Jalan thinks the whole plan is madness, and he spends much of the novel trying to escape that fate and return home to his life of wine, women, and pleasure.
Jalan and Snorri are the consummate odd couple. Snorri is brave, honorable, and heroic, while Jalan is a self-proclaimed liar, cheat, and coward. He almost always puts his own interests first, yet as the story unfolds, we realize there may be a spark of heroism in him after all. He’s also genuinely funny, and his escapades—especially his misadventures with young, pretty women—deliver several laugh-out-loud moments.
Amid this humor runs one heck of a fantasy adventure. Since the first book, Snorri and Jalan have been pursued by the mysterious Dead King, who seeks the Key to unleash Hell upon the world. His servants—necromancers, the undead, and worse—hound the pair and their companions: the Viking Tuttugu and Kara, a Nordic witch who also happens to catch Jalan’s wandering eye.
Their journey takes them across the Broken Empire, from Snorri’s home in the North to the Red Queen’s court in Vermillion, to the banking capital of Florence, and finally to Kelem’s lair deep within a haunting salt mine. A series of flashbacks also adds depth to the tale, thanks to a spell that Kara casts on Jalan, allowing him to glimpse the past through dreams.
These visions reveal his grandmother as a young woman in a thrilling scene that shows how she earned the title “Red Queen.” We also see the origins of her sibling, the Silent Sister, one of the powerful sorcerers who treat the world as their chessboard. And we learn the meaning of the Red Queen’s War, a long-running conflict with a necromancer known as the Blue Lady, who promises to be the series’ ultimate foe. The flashbacks add a true sense of history to the world, and all of it somehow ties into the actions of the Builders, the people who brought about the Day of a Thousand Suns and tampered with the fabric of the world in a way that threatens to bring about its doom.
By the end, I found The Liar’s Key to be a humorous yet gripping fantasy with a host of memorable characters set in a world that becomes more fascinating as each of Lawrence’s books unfold. One more thing: both The Liar’s Key and King of Thorns, which was the second book in Lawrence’s Broken Empire trilogy, were better than their predecessors, and I am expecting no less of the third book in each series.