Equal parts historical fiction and epic medieval fantasy, the second volume of Keck's trilogy (after 2006's In the Eye of Heaven
) finds heroic liegeman Durand Col and his liege, Lord Lamoric, invited to the court of King Ragnal to reaffirm their homage oaths along with other noblemen. They get there late, only to find that the paranoid ruler has imprisoned the earlier arrivals and begun a bloody campaign to eradicate traitors. Fleeing, Col finds himself once again battling the opportunistic duke of Yrlac, but the greatest treason of all is perhaps Col's hopeless love for Lamoric's wife. Combining meticulous detail and grand-scale storytelling, Col's mud-covered, flea-ridden adventure succeeds in large part by avoiding the conventions and clichés that doom so many comparable fantasy epics to mediocrity. The less than satisfying ending, however, isn't so much a conclusion as a pause before what should be a momentous third and final novel. (Feb.)
