Hanuvar’s adventures continue in this second volume from Howard Andrew Jones, this time even further in the heart of the Dervan territory. The old general must reconnect with old allies and turn old enemies into new friends. In this volume, however, there’s a new wrinkle in that Hanuvar has been blessed/cursed with a restored youth; the change is temporary, rapidly reversing, and a potentially fatal.
I’ll admit that I was a bit worried about this new twist in Hanuvar’s character, as part of what made him so interesting in the first volume was being an aged hero who couldn’t necessarily rely on his strength and fighting prowess the way that he once had. However, this new facet means that Hanuvar is forced to be more clever in playing his clandestine roles. Howard uses this as an opportunity to vary the stories he’s able to tell with Hanuvar a bit more, beyond “the old soldier in disguise.”
The best stories in this volume, like in the previous, tend to be the more mundane adventures, with the standouts being a treasury heist and foiled assassination attempt on the Dervan Emperor. My only real quibbles with Hanuvar have been that stories with stronger supernatural elements often cheat Hanuvar out of earning his ending, for better or for worse, and the supernatural elements do not inform the shape of the Dervan, Volani, and other various cultures within the setting as strongly as I feel like they ought to.
This second volume feels a bit less pulpy; it’s still strong and well-written fantasy with Sword & Sorcery elements, though it leans more into long-form storytelling as various intrigues unfold across several stories. While at no point did I ever get bored with it, this volume felt longer than the first. By the last few stories, I ready to be done, if for no other reason that I had lot of other books and manuscripts that I needed to tackle. The overarching meta-plot of this volume unfolds much more slowly, and there is a lot of thematic, if not narrative, repetition. Getting the age curse lifted is probably the most compelling main narrative; the process of Hanuvar building his network, handling logistics and infrastructure, and tracking down various groups of Volani slaves has a bit of a tendency to drag outside of the enemy-to-lover subplot between Hanuvar and Volani aristocrat whose father might be what you’d call “a collaborator.”
Like the first volume, the stories where Antires is there for Hanuvar to play off of and vice versa tend to be the best. Some of the new characters are fun; unfortunately, a lot of my favorites tended to be either bit players or killed off sooner than I’d like. A very minor villain from the first volume returns, and I would’ve loved to have seen more of her, but sadly, she gets killed in her reappearance.
Overall, the second volume of Hanuvar is strong recommend from me, and I’ll probably be picking up the third volume later this year. If you enjoyed the first Hanuvar book, you’ll probably enjoy this one. If you didn’t like Lord of a Shattered Land, you’re not going to like more of the same but marginally less episodic. Even if I hadn’t received the second volume as a review copy from Baen, I probably would’ve picked it up based on the strength of the first one. I do feel like the series could’ve stood to be broken up a bit more, into six shorter volumes, but Baen is known for its thick brick hardcovers if not pulp sword & sorcery.
Still, it’s a good book.
Speaking of good books, don’t miss out on JD Cowan’s Star Wanderers, on Kickstarter now!
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