New Author Spotlight: Mazarkis Williams

New Author Spotlight is a series designed to introduce authors with 3 books or less in the different SF/F subgenres.

Today's spotlight shines on Mazarkis Williams!

His debut novel is:
The Emperor's Knife (Night Shade Books).
 

Here's the cover copy...

There is a cancer at the heart of the mighty Cerani Empire: a plague that attacks young and old, rich and poor alike. Geometric patterns spread across the skin, until you die in agony, or become a Carrier, doing the bidding of an evil intelligence, the Pattern Master. Anyone showing the tell-tale marks is put to death; that is Emperor Beyon's law...but now the pattern is running over the Emperor's own arms.

His body servants have been executed, he ignores his wives, but he is doomed, for soon the pattern will reach his face. While Beyon's agents scour the land for a cure, Sarmin, the Emperor's only surviving brother, awaits his bride, Mesema, a windreader from the northern plains. Unused to the Imperial Court's stifling protocols and deadly intrigues, Mesema has no one to turn to but an ageing imperial assassin, the Emperor's Knife.

As long-planned conspiracies boil over into open violence, the invincible Pattern Master appears from the deep desert. Now only three people stand in his way: a lost prince, a world-weary killer, and a young girl from the steppes who saw a path in a pattern once, among the waving grasses - a path that just might save them all.

Check out his book if you enjoyed any of the following:

• The Dragon's Path by Daniel Abraham (Orbit)
• The Braided Path by Chris Wooding (Gollancz)
• Transformation by Carol Berg (Roc)

Book Review: The Emperor's Knife by Mazarkis Williams

Pros: political intrigue, action, middle eastern setting, fantastic world building

Cons: abrupt ending

The Emperor's Knife follows many threads as a disease that tattoos its victims, and then takes over their minds, becomes more prevalent in the Cerani Empire.  Lord High Vizier Tuvaini has learned that the childless Emperor Beyon has been touched by the disease, a death sentence by his own law.  Beyon's younger brother, and heir, locked in a tower for 15 years, has gone mad, talking to himself and able to see patterns in the marks on his brother's skin.  He has discovered two things: that he is able to use magic and that there is a master behind the plague.

Tuvaini sends the Emperor's Knife, Eyul, the only assassin permitted to shed royal blood, to a wise hermit in the desert, several days' ride away, to see what must be done.  But Tuvaini is not a patient man, and has his own plans for the throne.  Meanwhile, the emperor's mother has sent for a plainswoman to marry her younger son, in hopes of maintaining the royal lineage.

This is a fast paced novel with a lot of political intrigue and action.  There's a little something for everyone: assassination, magic, romance.  The world building is superb, focused on the desert Empire, but mentioning things beyond the desert, lands with people who have different skin tones, religions and cultural practices.  We see this directly in the religion of the Yrkmen and their one god and with Mesema and the people of the Felt.

The characters are all complex, with desires, regrets and fears.  From the assassin Eyul, who was forced to kill children at the start of the book, to Tuvaini, who wants to see the empire thrive and expand.

For the start of a trilogy this book is surprisingly self-contained.  The ending is abrupt, but closes off many story threads, creating a book that could easily stand alone.

If you liked Daniel Abraham's The Dragon's Path this is the debut for you.