Priest
By Matthew Colville
Priest is about a man named Heden, who is a man balanced between being a burnt-out hermit and a meaningful member of his community if he can decide who his community is of course. Heden has a lot of reasons for being on the edge of burn out. He's a former adventurer or “Campaigners” as they're called in this setting, who is suffering PTSD in a world without any real grasp on psychology. His former party members hate him, while at the same time clearly feel a deep sense of obligation to him. His social circle is made up of perhaps 3 people, with everyone else of consequence in the city he lives in regarding him as an object of fear, mockery, or confusion. All of this would be bad enough for anyone but Heden is also continuously thrown into jobs with brutal emotional and psychological tolls and even at the beginning of the book it's clear that it's wearing away at him. Part of the problem is there is simply no one else to send on many of these jobs as Heden has a combination of skills and abilities that are incredibly rare in his world, and the sheer bloody-mindedness to carry through these terrible works no matter what it costs him. He also cannot turn away from these jobs because he knows that anyone else will likely do a worse job than he will and still suffer the same burdens to their soul. Unfortunately for Heden, there's enough of a human being who cares for the people around him that he can't pass that metaphorical cup to someone else. To steal a phrase from a better writer, Heden believes it has to be him, someone else might get it wrong. Because of this, the bishop of his church is going to send him on a job that could possibly destroy him and have dire consequences for thousands of people if he fails. It'll also likely have dire consequences for him even if he succeeds.
Far north of Heden's city there's a haunted forest, full of creatures from a time before humanity. This forest is bordered by a small city called Ollghum Keep, whose inhabitants have followed a simple rule for keeping the peace between themselves and the forest. They stay the hell out of it. They also defer to the Knights of the Green, an order of divinely bound and blessed Knights who patrol the woods and maintain peaceful relations. They do this by keeping humans out and the various native creatures in. This is important as one group of these creatures, the Urq, creatures created by dragons to fight and kill humans have unified, and they're marching on Ollghum Keep. If they get there, they'll destroy it utterly and kill everyone, men, women, and children. The Knights of the Green, despite their small numbers, can stop it from happening. However, something has gone wrong, the commander of the order is dead and the order is paralyzed and torn apart with despair and internal conflict. Heden has been given a ritual prayer that will cleanse the order and allow them to select a new commander and march forward. For the ritual to work, he has to know what happened and forgive the Knights, and through his forgiveness comes the forgiveness of the divine. The problem here is that none of the knights will tell him what transpired and all of them are sunk into their own problems and ensnared in their own private vortices of guilt, despair, anger, and pride over what happened. The idea of admitting what took place and accepting the judgment of an outsider is simply too much to bear. It doesn't help that their pride and attitude towards Heden inflame his own class prejudices towards knights, but if he doesn't untangle this snare of resentments, secrets, unspoken regrets, loudly spoken oaths, and simmering anger then a lot of people are going to pay the price and it could mean the end of the Order of the Green and possibly the peace between the people of the woods and civilization.
The main danger to Heden in this novel is emotional and mental, as an experienced adventurer, he is carting around enough firepower to see off large numbers of enemies. This doesn't mean that Heden is never in physical danger, there are points in the book where he is confronting enemies who could kill him and come close to doing so. The conflict arises from the choice of what price is Heden going to pay to get this job done, or what price will he pay if he fails? There's also the bigger issue of the people of Ollghum Keep and the fact that their survival is literally riding on his shoulders and at times it seems like he's the only one who cares. Mr. Colville does a good job of showing us rather than telling us much of what's driving Heden. For example, while traveling north, Heden stops at a small village, where a carter and his family are attacked by monsters while he's there. A group of strapping village youths gather together and rescue the carter, but realize that the monsters have carried off his wife and son to the abandoned mine outside of town. If you have ever played a fantasy RPG, whether tabletop or video game you know where this is going. Heden, however, steps in and with a passing woodswoman takes the job, for a group of people he doesn't know and will never see again, all with no payment. Just to ensure a group of teenagers can stay starry-eyed youths for one more day instead of becoming hard-bitten adventurers, or worse, dying in the mud, surrounded by strangers. Despite this, he is still a deeply imperfect person, which we see when he temporarily turns a guardsman into stone because the guardsman wouldn't heed his warnings to back off and kept harassing him. Further complicating his character, there is the matter of the saint he gives his devotion to, which tells us more about him than a thousand monologues would. Mr. Colville uses these scenes and details to paint a portrait of a conflicted and troubled man who in many ways wants to withdraw from his fellow human beings but just can't bring himself to do so.
Mr. Colville is at his strongest when he can show instead of tell. For example, there is clearly a well built, detailed world here but we are told little about it. Instead, we have to piece together things from what we are shown and what comes up naturally in character conversation as Mr. Colville avoids info-dumping or overly expositional dialogue. While on the one hand, this can be intriguing and ensures the plot keeps moving without getting bogged down in details, it does leave some gaps in our understanding of just what is going on and how things work. For some readers this is great news, for others, it can be a distraction, as you have to fill in the gaps yourself. This style actually works pretty well as this is for all intents and purposes a mystery. Like Heden we have to parse things and try to work out just what happened in the woods that day when the commander of a small order of holy knights was killed and do so with limited information. Hell, we're left to puzzle out the structure of the world's religion and myth from incidental comments and events in the book. This can be frustrating for some readers but this story isn't about semi-mythical conflicts that happened thousands of years ago, though the wreckage and leftovers of those conflicts keep showing up. For myself, I honestly enjoy piecing things together from dialogue and character actions to see if I can reach my own understanding of the world, but not everyone is me. Along with that is the mystery of Heden's own history, why does his old party hate him but will fulfill any requests he makes of them? Why is he lurking in an expensive inn that he refuses to open to the public? Enough of his party survived and are all prosperous which means they were all able to cash out of the adventurer life with wealth and even some fame. Although given the reactions of some people to the name of their adventuring company, there's a fair amount of infamy there as well. It's what is left unspoken that seems to drive the relationships between all these characters, ultimately. Mr. Colville only gives us bare hints and clues to this. That said I can understand why Heden avoids thinking about those events or dwelling on his isolation from the people who would understand him best. (Guest Editor here to chime in for a moment. I personally adore stories with mystery to them, particularly ones that stay consistent within the world presented and don’t feel the need to explain each detail. While that may not be everyone’s cup of tea, I have felt a distinct lack of them recently and so welcome them when I can find them.) Some thoughts are too sharp to play with casually and too heavy to lift alone, especially for someone in Heden's state. If you don't understand what I mean dear reader, then I hope you never do.
In my view, this is a book about failure. From Heden's recurring failure to make any kind of peace with his past or with his fellow human beings, to the knight's failure to accept that they need to come clean and accept judgment before they can move forward, and even the failure of the people of Ollghum Keep to realize just how much danger they are in. Whether or not any of the characters will find the strength to overcome these failures and achieve a better state is something I won't spoil for you. Now this book isn't entirely perfect, as there were a few characters I was left wondering were even necessary. For example, the Squire Aderyn, who frankly disappears from the book halfway through it. I feel having Heden told by outside agencies that Aderyn was now gone from the tale was a very weak part of the book. I also didn't care for some choices like the Knight's Cant, where they speak a sort of Shakespearean English but not very well. Stuff like that took me out of the story and I found it irritating, though it does help that Mr. Colville does have the Knight's drop the Cant eventually and speak simply.
Now I will laud Mr. Colville for sticking to his guns on this story. He lays out the problem and the solution and he doesn't let his characters weasel out of it or come up with some last-minute alternate solution that lets them sidestep their failures. The only way out for his characters is to squarely confront their biggest flaws and failures and accept them. Mr. Colville also doesn't shy away from embracing the implications of that and following through when necessary, and I admire the willingness to do so. I ended up reading this book in two sittings because I had a huge problem putting it down, finding myself really drawn into it despite the problems I've listed. While the book might not be to everyone's taste if you're not put off by what I've mentioned then this is a book well worth reading. Priest by Matthew Colville gets a B from me. Despite some elements that don't work entirely, there's a hell of story here driven by damaged and compelling characters.
(Another note from the editor, stories regarding failure can be fantastically important. We all enjoy stories where the hero wins and the day is saved, but we are but mere mortals. We make mistakes, we fail, we lose. Sometimes, no matter how hard we try, how good our intentions, bad things can happen as a result of our actions. How we deal with our failures defines us as much as our triumphs, if not more so. Coming to terms with one’s failures is dreadfully important and something we rarely talk about openly, because we tend to see failure as an ending, a full stop, not a comma. To quote Dr. Manhattan, nothing ever ends. Life goes on and our failures affect not just us but the people around us, and until we face our failures and accept them, quite often more harm than good will come from it. We need to be able to move beyond our failures, not to ignore them or forget them, but to remember them so we can grow and become greater than we were. Not that we will never fail again or never cause harm again, but that we are willing to show the strength to stand up, tend to our wounds, and continue on with a little extra wisdom at our side.)
I’d like to thank our guest editor for joining us today while Dr. Allen takes a well-deserved rest (the retrieval squads will be sent after him Monday). Priest was selected by our ever wise Patrons. If you would like to vote for upcoming reviews, or recommend books for the review pile, then join us at https://www.patreon.com/frigidreads where a dollar a month gets you a vote on themes, books and more! Hope to see you there soon.
Blue text is your editor Cameron Johnson
Black text is your reviewer Garvin Anders.
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