What’s a villain to do when he’s already lost?
So, you’ve torched a few peasant villages, conquered a country or two and led a rampaging army across the continent in the name of revenge — only to lose to the hero in a dramatic final battle. What happens when the story doesn’t end there?
That’s the question plaguing Killean Onryn, shapeshifter and reviled traitor. Until that is, he’s kidnapped by a group of mages who want him to steal back a magical relic, the Realm Pearl, and retrieve its creator from a notorious Pirate Lord.
Faced with more irritants than one ex-war lord can reasonably be expected to tolerate, Killean must utilise all his ruthlessness, cunning and willingness to set fire to everything and anything in his path, to burn through the web of intrigue ensnaring him. All while vainly trying to ignore the elaborate magical conspiracy sweeping the continent. His only goal? To come out on top. Because if there’s one thing the Lands of Magic need more than a good hero, it’s a truly excellent villain. And this time, Killean isn’t going to accept defeat.
What’s a villain to do when he’s already lost?
So, you’ve torched a few peasant villages, conquered a country or two and led a rampaging army across the continent in the name of revenge — only to lose to the hero in a dramatic final battle. What happens when the story doesn’t end there?
That’s the question plaguing Killean Onryn, shapeshifter and reviled traitor. Until that is, he’s kidnapped by a group of mages who want him to steal back a magical relic, the Realm Pearl, and retrieve its creator from a notorious Pirate Lord.
Faced with more irritants than one ex-war lord can reasonably be expected to tolerate, Killean must utilise all his ruthlessness, cunning and willingness to set fire to everything and anything in his path, to burn through the web of intrigue ensnaring him. All while vainly trying to ignore the elaborate magical conspiracy sweeping the continent. His only goal? To come out on top. Because if there’s one thing the Lands of Magic need more than a good hero, it’s a truly excellent villain. And this time, Killean isn’t going to accept defeat.
The massive fireball hurtled through the air, blazing like a green-gold comet. Killean vaulted over the broken spine of an old stone wall and hit the dusty ground on the other side with a bone shuddering thud. He rolled over the parched soil, pricked and poked by the stubble of broken stone and pottery littering the ground. Evidently, it was going to be one of those days.
The fireball smashed into the wall, the magic shattering against the old stone. Spatters of greenish fire leapt over the wall to set the dry stalks of dead grass alight before sputtering out just as quickly. Interesting. Having immolated his fair share of inanimate and not-so-inanimate objects with fire magic, Killean knew that true adepts could keep their fires blazing for a lot longer than that. He rolled into a crouch behind the wall and waited. He heard heavy footfalls and a moment later a figure in a dark, hooded cape appeared, saw Killean and leapt over the wall with a wordless roar of inchoate rage. Killean was familiar with the sound. A not all that surprising number of people tended to roar in murderous rage on seeing him.
Unfortunately for this particular would-be murderer, Killean knew exactly how to deal with him. Snatching up a piece of pottery and a fistful of dry dirt he threw the dust into his attacker’s face as he straightened out of his ill-advised leap. Time slowed and Killean caught a glimpse of an oval of brown skin covering a painfully young face and a pair of wide, wild eyes inside the hood before the cloud of grit and dust hit. Blinded, the figure lost his balance, batting at his face.
Killean could have been sporting about all this. His assailant was obviously an amateur and very possibly a child. But if Killean was the type to be sporting, he wouldn’t have nearly as many people trying to kill him. Snatching the hood from the boy’s head, he shimmied behind him, jerked the boy’s head back and notched the sharp edge of pottery against the soft and tender skin just under his jaw.
His attacker was a boy somewhere between a well-built twelve and an underfed fifteen, by Killean’s reckoning. The boy had the sense not to struggle, his muscles coiled like high pressure springs, as he held very still, throat working soundlessly. Grimacing to show all his teeth he kept trying to see Killean out of the corner of his eye, as if that would do him any good. He looked like a panicked colt; a creature of wild, twitching nerves barely held in check. His soft, tightly coiled black hair was shorn close to his skull. He wore no marks of affiliation to any country or clan, but that meant little. Only the profoundly foolish or, conversely, the immensely competent would challenge Killean openly. This boy may well be a fool but competent he was not.
Catching the boy’s gauntleted wrist, Killean twisted his arm behind his back. The gauntlet was part hardened leather and part plate armour. It was a very nice piece of work. The kind that no arcane armourer worth his salt, would waste on a skinny twig of a boy like this. Metal studs over the knuckles had been set with pale green peridot stones, Killean noted, interest well and truly piqued. He had seen the design before. The fire was new however, and it made him curious. It had been a while since anything had stirred his curiosity, which was why he decided to show mercy.
‘Why are you trying to kill me?’ he asked the boy withdrawing the shard but keeping a firm grip on his captive with one arm braced over his chest.
‘You murdered my father,’ the boy gritted out through his teeth.
Killean nodded slightly. That was more than likely. He’d killed a lot of people. ‘Name?’ he asked, glancing around for something he could use to knock the boy’s brains out if it proved necessary. Mercy, after all, was a matter of definition.
‘Ashinue Rogu of the Dancing Deer clan,’ the boy declared proudly.
Killean cocked his head in thought. ‘Doesn’t ring a bell,’ he said finally. ‘I killed a lot of warriors in the war. Dancing Deer. Manic Monkeys. Annoyed Aardvarks. And others from clans even more ridiculous. I was on first name basis with very few of them.’
‘You’re a monster,’ the boy accused fighting against Killean’s hold.
Killean rolled his eyes, released the boy, allowed him to upset his own balance by trying to twist around to face him, and then shoved him over into the dirt and planted a knee into his back. ‘You are not the first to tell me that,’ he said conversationally. The boy wriggled like a squashed bug, unable to stop Killean wrenching his gauntlet off and flinging it aside. Whoever had trained and dispatched this child should be ashamed of themselves.
‘Boy, answer my question,’ he said when it became apparent the Dancing Deer wasn’t going to give in. ‘Where was your father slain?’
The boy twisted his head and spat at him. At least, he tried to, gravity was not on his side. Killean did him the courtesy of ignoring the fresh spray of spittle liberally covering the boy’s face. Snarling through his embarrassment the boy saw fit to criticise him. ‘You don’t even remember all the people you’ve killed, do you?’
‘Of course, I don’t,’ Killean replied irritably. He was sure he’d said that already. ‘I commanded an army. I besieged towns and cities. Do you think I asked for a census before I put each one to the torch?’
Why was this so hard for people to understand, he wondered tiredly. It had been war. A very personal war, true, but one with impersonal casualties. Which, he supposed made it a fairly ordinary war at that. Killean respected revenge, he’d have to be a hypocrite not to, and he accepted responsibility for the deaths he’d ordered and the lives he’d dispatched personally. He had never asked anyone he’d deprived of a relative for forgiveness. He had earned their hatred. Still. Expecting him to know the names of every person who had fallen in the name of his war was ridiculous. He wished the righteous fools who came looking for him would grasp this point. He could give them a fight, but he could not give them closure.
‘You’re evil,’ the boy told him.
Killean nodded. He didn’t consider himself evil, but what did that matter? He had done terrible things, he would not deny that, and any righteousness he’d claimed in the beginning had been well and truly spent by the time the war was done. He made no bones about his sins. Had his side won, he’d be a hero now. Instead, he was a villain forever more. Those were the wages of war. ‘The consensus suggests I’m also mad,’ he told the boy. ‘I’ve heard rumour the good and just in the Land of Three Rivers believe my madness exonerates me of evil. It wasn’t my fault, you see. I was too mad to know better.’ A bitter smirk twitched his lips.
The boy grew still. His eyes were very wide as he strained his neck to look at him. ‘Why would Three Rivers defend you? You tried to raze their land to the ground.’
Very true. It was a sore point for Killean that he’d ultimately failed. He sighed. ‘Have you heard of Nadil Shiny Scale?’ he asked.
‘Of course. He’s the legendary hero who defeated you.’ The boy scoffed, ‘Everyone knows that.’
Killean glanced up at the purple striped sky. Dusk was fading into true night. It would be too dark for this nonsense soon. ‘He likes me,’ he said.
There was a beat of silence before the boy bleated, ‘How can the great hero like you? You’re enemies.’
Killean’s lips twitched again. ‘I’ve tried to tell him that. Many times. He doesn’t believe it. Personally, I think someone dropped him on his head as a baby. Possibly repeatedly.’
It would fit perfectly well with the rest of his trite, rags to riches tale. In fact, he wouldn’t be at all surprised if the head bashing had been on purpose. If Nadil were here now, Killean would happily bash his head in. He’d always had that effect on him.
‘You were going to slaughter everyone in the land of Three Rivers,’ the boy complained. He seemed inordinately hung up on stating the obvious. Killean knew the rumours people told about him as well as anybody else. And for the stuff that was actually true? Well, he’d been there. It wasn’t like he was going to forget anytime soon.
‘My goal was to capture the capital,’ he told the boy. ‘I wanted to break their military and destroy their economic base, indiscriminate death and destruction wasn’t essential to that goal,’ – although it had been a common side-effect – he sighed and admitted, ‘I understand your point. Sadly, Nadil has never been moved by logic. He thinks we’re friends.’
‘That’s madness,’ the boy declared.
‘I agree,’ Killean said. ‘But as I’m a publicly acknowledged maniac my opinion doesn’t hold much weight.’
Of all the punishments his enemies could have inflicted on him after his defeat, all of which he had earned to one degree or another, the label of mad was without doubt the most irritating. True, irritation should not be on a level with death by lava, or having his soul ripped out and tossed to the four winds so his spirit could never know peace, but the virtue of incineration was that it didn’t last long, and spiritual oblivion was at least definitive. The accusation of madness rendered all his deeds, good and bad, suspect, and declared Killean a victim of his own mind. He’d rather be hated than pitied, and Killean wondered, not for the first time, if that was why the High King of Three Rivers had let the rumours spread. Torvin had always been a tricky bastard.
Gaze roaming over the lonely plain as his attention wandered, Killean let his eyes track over the broken pillars of old stone and the crumbling remains of a once vast settlement laid out like a patchwork of rubble and shattered tile in front of him. Had he been of a more poetic state-of-mind he might have found a metaphor for life amid the ruins. Instead, Killean’s gaze focused on the enormous stone arch rising taller than the rest of the ruins. It was formed of two massive standing stones with a shorter stone laid over the top like a lintel.
The archway was a transportation portal to one or several of the other lands. It connected the lands of the Temporal World to the wild and mostly ungoverned Timeless Realm. Unlike the cultivated portals in civilised countries, only the brave and desperate ventured into the Nameless Plain to use the archway. Killean had been contemplating whether he was desperate enough to risk the magic of the Timeless Realm as a shortcut when the son of Ashinue Rogu attacked him.
The boy spoke, finally answering the question he’d almost forgotten asking. ‘You attacked the Land of Green Peaks. My father was one of the castle defenders you slaughtered.’
‘Ah.’ Killean breathed out carefully. He released the boy and stood. Abruptly agitated.
The boy stood warily. Killean retrieved his gauntlet from a patch of thistle growing around the base of the wall and threw it to him. ‘I’m going to give you one shot.’ He pointed to the stone arch. ‘If you can hit me before I reach the portal, I’ll give you the fight to the death you want.’
The young buck of the Dancing Deer clan gawped at him. ‘That’s not how this is supposed to work,’ he objected. ‘This isn’t a duel. I’m here to kill you.’
‘And I’m neither suicidal nor looking to kill you, so that option is off the table. Next time you go looking to ambush a man, do it right.’ Killean told him frankly. ‘I do respect your right to vengeance, however, so if you can prove your magic is up to the task, I will give you the chance you seek.’ Or enough of a thrashing to convince the boy to never again pick fights with insane war criminals in dark and isolated locales. Killean had never been that stupid at this boy’s age.
The boy’s face scrunched in confusion. ‘You’re patronising me,’ he said.
‘I’m really not,’ Killean said pushing his hair out of his face as a whispering breeze swept across the plain.
Patronising the boy would be braining him with that gauntlet of his and dumping his unconscious body on the doorstep of the nearest healing mission he found. Killean should know. He’d had to do exactly that to several war orphans when their skills proved unequal to their bloodlust. Killean was not always guilty of the crimes he was accused of. One man could only do so much, and it wasn’t as though he’d fought the war alone, but the attack on the Land of Green Peaks he remembered well. Green Peaks had been neutral in the war and his mission to infiltrate the treasury had been an unmitigated disaster. He’d been impatient and under pressure that day. He’d let his rage get the better of him and that was shameful.
‘One shot?’ the boy asked, pulling on his gauntlet and extending his arm toward Killean.
‘Yes.’ Had the boy been serious, or half-way competent, he’d have already taken his shot while Killean stood far too close to find cover. But this boy wasn’t a seasoned warrior or a hardened killer. He was just a boy whose happiness had been destroyed by war. Killean could relate. He’d been one of those once.
The boy sucked in his bottom lip. He adjusted his stance. His movements too deliberate and stiff to be well-practiced and Killean suppressed a wince. He estimated that this boy had less than three years true training behind him. All the same that fireball had been impressively large. It had eaten the distance between them swiftly and would have had no trouble devouring flesh if the dumb kid had only known how to aim.
He wouldn’t dismiss the boy out of hand just yet. His control might be lacking but the magic fire he commanded wasn’t to be taken lightly. Killean was in a position to know. He’d been able to wield magic fire before the gift had been stripped from him after the war. He eyed the boy’s gauntlet speculatively, the barest inkling of a plan forming around the edges of his thoughts.
‘Run,’ the boy said, his arm quivering.
Killean did not run. Instead, he dropped to his hands and knees on the ground. Stretching his spine, he felt his flesh flow like water and warp like air as he claimed his wolf skin. It was only then that he deigned to run – and even then, it was more an ambling gambol. He heard the boy shout behind him, half-surprise and half-outrage, and his ears pricked. Either the boy had forgotten Killean was a shapeshifter or he’d never been told, which was, again, more evidence he shouldn’t be roaming around picking fights alone.
Killean’s paws pounded over the uneven ground nimbly as he picked up his pace and loped toward the giant arch. It was good to run again. He heard the sizzle of air and a scream of magic and dove to the side, rolling over and leaping to his feet just clear of the impact point.
The ground he’d been running on exploded in green fire. Hot splinters of rock and pottery struck his flank but failed to penetrate his shaggy coat. Killean launched forward, increasing his pace to a full sprint. He wasn’t surprised when the boy broke the terms of their agreements and fired again. Killean ran in a zig-zag path, occasionally giving him a good shot at his flank, but only because he was enjoying himself.
The boy pelted his path with a barrage of smaller fireballs, all of which missed. Green fire ate across the ground, leapt into the air and formed a wall between him and the arch. His tongue lolled between his jaws in a wolfish grin. Clever boy. There was hope for the young buck yet.
Pretending to stumble just ahead of the firewall, Killean let his front legs crumple under him and rolled tail-over-head. His second form shift took him like the snap of fresh linen shaken out on a cool spring morning. His body collapsed in on itself, fur melting into feather and broad wings bursting from his back. He took off into the air, sailing over the fire.
‘Not fair!’ Killean heard the boy yell as he circled above in his hawk form before arrowing through the night toward the archway.
He landed on top of the lintel and immediately set about preening his breast. The air lit up with a wash of green fire. Killean took wing as the fireball smashed into the lintel, dripping trails of emerald flame to the ground.
The boy had a job getting across the burning plane, but finally made it to the base of the archway. ‘You have to come down eventually. Then I’ll get you,’ he shouted, narrow chest heaving under his homespun shirt and the tatters of his cape. His gauntleted fist spat sparks of green fire. Killean circled the arch lazily, enjoying the updraft, waiting for the fire to burn itself out before he landed.
He did not realise there was anything wrong at first. The magic of the arch was subtle, whispering up through the stone in a gentle murmur as Killean perched on the rim. A sudden surge of energy under his feet was his only warning as the air between the vertical pillars shivered and broke into a rippling wall of haze. Killean cree’d a warning to the boy but it was too late. The magic bowed out from between the pillars, ballooning like a soap bubble, catching the boy instantly. Killean dove toward the portal, chasing the magic as it spilled back from whence it came. He smashed through the bubble after the boy.
He had never liked portal travel. It was almost instantaneous, but therein lay the rub, because that split-second lag between here and there made all the difference in the Timeless Realm, ironically. In every portal jump there was a moment where the traveller was held suspended outside of time and place, trapped in a realm where nothing and everything happened at once.
Some parts of the Timeless Realm were ruled by rampant chaos, but the partially tamed landing sites connecting the portals were places of still, sensationless sterility that he could almost believe had been designed to drive a shapeshifter mad.
The time spent actually in the Timeless Realm lasted barely longer than a slow blink, but for a being like Killean who lived to feel the ground under his feet or the currents of the air under his wings that moment was entirely too long, which summed up the Timeless Realm entirely. Too much and not enough, in perpetuity.
He and the boy were spat out inside a large, wood and paper walled room, made cloudy by a mixture of pipe smoke, the fireplace set into the backwall, and the fumes from the lamps hanging from the low ceiling. Killean reclaimed his man form and his enchanted coat and trousers as he hit the ground. He rolled with his momentum and landed in a predator’s crouch, arms extended and a thin pen knife in each hand. The boy landed in a sprawl of limbs, his chin hitting the rush matting like it hurt.
A group of men stood clustered in a semi-circle in front of Killean. Half of them were old, with wispy greying beards hanging from their chins and arms folded across their chests so their hands were hidden in the hang of their ornate sleeves. The rest were obviously soldiers. The points of several sword blades jabbed in his direction and the men behind them wore elaborate helmets and masks moulded to resemble the sour faces of aggrieved carp. Their white tunics were overlaid with scale-like armour made from magic hardened chips of mother-of-pearl, the smooth surface reflecting the dim light from the lamps.
Killean looked beyond the men to the emblem of the nation of Jumping Carp painted on the back wall and dropped his blades with a sigh.‘I know for a fact that I have never attacked any of you,’ he said. ‘Why have you kidnapped me?’
‘You are Killean-the-Swift,’ one of the wizened elders said. He wasn’t sure if that was meant to be answer or greeting.
‘Onryn,’ he corrected in a low voice. ‘I am Killean Onryn of the Striking Talon clan.’
‘A clan that no longer exists,’ scoffed one of the other old men.
Killean stared him down. He had pouches under his eyes deep enough to hold his small change. ‘I’m aware,’ he replied evenly. ‘I was there when they were slaughtered to the last man, woman, and child.’
‘Not the last child. You survived,’ a querulous female voice called out from the back ranks. ‘And you’ve certainly caused enough trouble for the rest of us in the fifteen years since.’
Killean narrowed his eyes trying in vain to see through the wall of old men. ‘Mamie Cat, is that you?’ he called.
Mamie Cat elbowed her way through the press of flesh. Short, fat and redoubtable, Mamie Cat wore robes of deep blue with a broad sash of lurid pink patterned with some kind of flower never seen in nature. Her hair was a froth of tight corkscrew curls that framed her face. That face was round and heavily jowled and her rich brown skin was grooved with laugh lines. Her small, shrewd eyes peered at him. ‘Of course it’s me, boy, who else would it be?’ she demanded.
Killean deemed that a foolish question and didn’t answer it. He studied the men again with more interest. Since the inexplicable commutation of his execution to ten years imprisonment, of which he’d only served five before the High King decided to pardon him – a decision that baffled many to this day – he’d spent far too much of his time being kidnapped by men just like these.
Most of those other men remembered his war record and that he’d served another man for most of that time – which they assumed made him eager to serve them – but conveniently forgot that he had lost his war in the end. He’d been planning to do to these men what he’d done to all the others. Put on a show of force and break out before they could tell him what they wanted, but Mamie’s presence changed things.
Killean did not have friends. He was, after all, varying degrees of evil and insane, neither of which enhanced a man’s social life. He was also a recently released prisoner and a convicted war criminal. Traits that did not endear him to anyone. But Mamie and her clan of smugglers might be the closest thing he still had to an ally. The Silk Paw clan had once been allied with the Striking Talon, but more than that, Mamie had been his mother’s true friend.
There were so few people alive who remembered his parents fondly. Mamie might be the last to remember the Onryn with kindness, and she had used that old connection mercilessly to take advantage of Killean since his release. Mamie knew as surely as he that he’d preserve her life merely to keep the memory of his parents alive and with Mamie here, he had no choice but to listen to these old men.
He decided that the bearded old man in the conical hat with the wide brim shadowing his face was the leader of the group. Wisely, he had chosen to stand to the far left of the semi-circle of men and had not drawn attention to himself by speaking. His unadorned golden robe, bound by a thick sash of fine white silk, marked him as a man of means and discernment among the nobility of the Jumping Carp.
‘Obawai and his consortium have use of your services. You’ll be a good boy and listen to what the nice men have to say, won’t you, Ilin?’ Mamie asked sweetly using his old boyhood nickname.
As a child he’d struggled with the flowing syllables of his name and only been able to pronounce “Ilin”. His mother had thought it sweet and funny and picked up the naming convention. His older brother, Kindean, had become “Indin”, his father, Tinnian, had become “Inan”. Reminding him of that happier time, Mamie twisted the knife expertly. Killean would admire the manipulation if he wasn’t on the receiving end.
He pasted a sharp toothed smile on his face and simpered, ‘Of course, Mamie, anything for you.’
‘You see, gentlemen,’ Mamie turned to the men triumphantly. ‘I told you my boy would be reasonable.’
‘Who is the youth,’ one of the armed men demanded, pointing the tip of his blade toward the young buck.
The boy, who had so far proved he possessed an iota of intelligence by staying quiet, straightened his spine and drew breath to speak. Killean beat him to it. ‘A thief from Green Peaks,’ he said. ‘I captured him for his bounty. The spell you put on the portal drew him in with me.’
‘Green Peaks is no friend to you. Why would you stoop to catching petty criminals for them?’ Obawai asked.
Killean smiled thinly. ‘No one is a friend to me, nor I to them,’ he replied. ‘I intended to deliver him to the outpost in Frolicking Squirrel.’
A shiver of relief ran through the gathered consortium. Frolicking Squirrel was a mostly lawless country with a weak High King but several powerful assassin clans who made their money hunting down criminals for other countries. Killean had come to an agreement with the clan of the Sly Fox after he’d taken several commissions against Killean that had left the clan facing a personnel shortage and Killean with a bad mood. He worked for the clan occasionally in exchange for the leader’s solemn oath not to take any further contracts on his life. If the men of the consortium had dragged him here then they had most likely done their homework and knew about his agreement.
‘He must be a better thief than he looks, to command a bounty high enough to warrant your skills,’ one of the other old men said.
Killean roughly snatched the boy’s gauntleted arm, pulling down his sleeve for the men to see. ‘A gauntlet stolen from the royal guard,’ he said. ‘Green Peaks have offered a substantial reward.’
The boy wrenched his arm back and huddled into himself, glaring at Killean. Which was fine, so long as the boy kept his mouth shut. Killean was trying to save his life but if he got it into his head to use the gauntlet, he’d leave him to the Jumping Carp soldiers.
‘How did you know where to find me?’ he asked Obawai, changing the subject to something more interesting.
It took precise magic and a lock of hair or drop of the target’s blood to pull a target through a portal deliberately. Killean knew Mamie Cat had supplied the necessary items, although how and when she’d acquired them, he’d soon enough leave a mystery. All the same, unless Obawai and his men had primed every portal on the main continent – an improbable feat – they had to have known he’d cross the Nameless Plain. Considering Killean had planned no such thing, this should have been impossible. But here he was. He wanted an explanation. The only reason he’d crossed the Plain was because a river burst its banks and flooded the main road at the border crossing with Red Mountain.
Killean narrowed his eyes in suddenly understanding. ‘You flooded the river to divert my path.’ Shaking his head, he added, ‘You must be desperate.’
The men puffed out their chests like a group of spiny fish. ‘Do you have any idea who you are talking to, boy?’ said a man with liver spots and skin the exact shade of a rotted lemon.
‘No,’ Killean told him honestly. All he knew was that he faced a group of old, self-entitled men who wanted something from him but were taking their sweet time to get to the point.
‘You speak to the patriarchs of Jumping Carp’s most influential mage families,’ Mamie told him, voice quiet and serious. ‘These men own most of the wealth in the country. They have the ear of the High King.’
‘Had,’ Killean corrected her with a smile. ‘If they still commanded so much power, they wouldn’t need me,’ he said confidently.
‘How so?’ Obawai asked, cocking his head inquiringly.
Killean let his gaze sweep over the assemblage. ‘My reputation proceeds me, gentlemen,’ – far more than theirs at any rate – ‘I made my name overthrowing kings. My reputation was forged in revolution and the quest for revenge. People happy with their king do not seek me out.’
The Life and Times of the Traitor Killean Onryn starts out where every heroic epic ends—the hero ensconced in the hearts of citizens while the villain is properly deposed. In the case of Killean Onryn, that meant a five-year imprisonment in the Timeless Realm—nomenclature: the “Silent Hell.”
Our story begins when our villain is inexplicably set free and must reorient to a world where certain of his powers have been shackled and more than a few people want him dead. In fact, he is in the process of dealing with a boy bent on revenge when he is kidnapped by a clan who intends to use his skills for a particular purpose—fetching the Realm Pearl and its creator from the Blue Crab pirates. With his would-be assassin as his shadow, Killean must dodge those who do not welcome his presence while plotting ways to achieve his own ends. But Killean’s past doesn’t stay in the past and he must reckon with those he betrayed and whose lives he destroyed.
Cunningham's magical world is simple yet sophisticated, making it easy for readers to immerse themselves in the story.
The magic system is well-worked and avoids the deus-ex-machina effect that some fantasy novels fall prey to. Shape-shifting and the magically accursed (an intriguing lens to see magical powers through) take the forefront of this fantasy and are employed in a satisfying way. This makes The Life and Times of the Traitor Killean Onryn the perfect book for those who want to dive into a fantasy world, but don't want to have to endlessly refer to a list of characters or glossary.
There are a couple of spicy scenes for those looking to satisfy a romantic itch. Conversely, I would recommend a warning to those who prefer their books without explicit content. While the plot is fast-paced, it relies on witty dialogue equally as with action scenes.
The gem of this book is its main character. A. R. Cunningham has created a villain readers cannot resist. Killean boasts the roguish charm and quick comebacks, but he also betrays a more tender side which he attempts to hide—winning his way into readers’ hearts. In a story of betrayal, treachery, and revenge, Killean achieves a delightful balance between being wickedly brazen, cunning, and introspective.
Cunningham doesn’t just make the villain entertainingly subversive, she reminds her readers that he is a villain. The destruction he caused has ripple effects on his present quest, and the author uses this to create a tempting blend of intrigue. The pacing includes strategic flashbacks that propel the plot forward. While too many flashbacks often slow a storyline down, Cunningham uses them to offer timely retrospect that heightens the suspense and allows readers to weave together Killean’s past—why he turned traitor, the actions that made him a villain, and the true reason he was defeated five years ago—with his present. The ensuing journey is one in which no one can be trusted—least of all the protagonist.