A history of many tens of thousands of years, full of civilizations grand and buried, has made the stage of the present conflict one of cycles in human behavior. Then, with that setting he has introduced the spectacle of magic both divine and arcane. He has crafted a world much closer to the medieval one of the mundane, both in law and order. Priest is, in the scribe Colville’s own words, a fantasy hardboiled. What truly connects these two stories is their ability to use simple techniques to emphasize the concept of the hero returning home and being content for the first time.īoth tales are about the kind of final transformation that comes with reconciliation with one’s nature becoming better able to stand both one’s own flaws and those of the home (and people) first left as a younger hero. But that only eludes to the nature of beginnings with older characters characters poorly used by the consequences of their past actions. The conceptual connection between the last review, ‘Kings of the Wyld’ (by Nicholas Eames) and today’s ‘Priest’ (by Mathew Colville) is that the perspective characters are both veteran former adventurers, who have retracted into themselves from the life they once led. I tried naming it, giving it words like nuanced and aged, but these things sounded too imprecise. There is a theme this week in the type of stories being reviewed. “What an awful way to live,” Sir Idris said. You murder the giant, so the farmers don’t have too. (A possibly SPOILER filled review of Priest, by Mathew Colville)

Priest by matthew colville