Joseph Delaney, Spook’s : The Dark Army (The Starblade Chronicles #2), Red Fox/Random House Australia, 4 Jan 2016, 290pp., $17.99 (pbk), ISBN 9781782954446
Joseph Delaney introduced young Tom Ward, the sight-gifted seventh son of a seventh son, in The Spook’s Apprentice in 2006. He was apprenticed to old John Gregory, the local spook, a fixer of supernatural problems, especially the suppression of troublesome boggarts and malign witches. The popular series, set in pre-Industrial rural England, ran to thirteen books and also included three ancillary volumes. Now, as a spook in his own right after the passing of his old master, Tom remains a likeable young fellow in a new Spook’s series – The Starblade Chronicles – of which The Dark Army is the second volume. This new series appears to be a seamless continuation of Tom’s life as a spook; it references old genealogies and histories and features familiar characters.
As in all fantasy series, there is a history behind the lives and activity of the characters that drives the story on and enthralls the reader to the very end. However, Delaney is careful to lay out the narrative ground in a way that settles the new reader easily into each volume while accustomed readers will instantly be at one with the characters. Each novel, though implying unfinished business, is a very satisfying complete adventure.
In The Dark Army, Tom is magically resurrected from mortal battle injuries and is thus popularly deemed the obvious heroic choice to lead Prince Stanislaw’s army northwards to thwart the fearsome bestial Kobalos warriors from crossing the river boundary and sweeping south to the County. However, his old experienced ally, the witch Grimalkin, has her reasons for contriving the disastrous mission into Kobalos territory. All the while the Kobalos god, Golgoth, is freezing the land into a deadly perpetual winter as his armies advance. To add to Tom’s difficulties in besting the Kobalos mages, battling their formidable foot soldiers, and dodging hideous burrowing creatures, is the tense relationship between his jealous apprentice Jenny and his re-emerged former girlfriend, Alice.
Delaney is a fine writer; he keeps a fairly small cast and a taut rein on the history and circumstances of the fantasy so that it remains clear and sufficiently easy to follow. In no way is the intrigue and suspense, much less the action, diminished; the images his prose evokes makes for cinema-like reading satisfaction. A map and a substantially annotated glossary also enhance the reading experience.
Reviewed by Kevin Steinberger