The Moonsteel Crown by Stephen Deas

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The Moonsteel Crown is a highly enjoyable read – I usually switch between several fiction books at a time, but I had Stephen Deas’ latest novel in high enough rotation that I finished it in 3 days. What seems like a plot that has been done to death (low lives recruited to commit a crime, nothing goes as planned, everyone wants them dead, etc. in a medieval-ish setting) is a wonderful read with fully developed protagonists and an extremely dense plot. The three slum-dwelling protagonists: a novice priest kicked out of his order, a sword-monk who deserted her training, and a superstitious thief, are very sympathetic characters, and the story does not set aside any of their plot lines for so long that the reader risks forgetting what is going on. The plot is complicated by the politics of the empire, which the protagonists have little interest in, and their backstories, which are their main concerns.

If I could improve anything in The Moonsteel Crown, it would be to include a map of the city and a map of the empire. I would also have liked a clearer indication of when the interludes set in the past occur relative to the main action; but neither of these things interfered with my enjoyment of the book.

A fantasy novel of the traditional swords and sorcery type. The world-building is pushed early and often, making the plot seem secondary to all of the information readers need to take in at the very beginning to understand the novel's politics, factions, religions, industries, classes, and so on; it would have made for a better and less fraught read if this had been introduced more gradually and naturally. The plot is fine, I suppose, but neither it nor the characters are particularly compelling. Everyone's got secrets, everyone's hiding from someone, everyone's got great skills at something. It was more like reading about somebody's D&D campaign than a novel.