Book Review. Horseman. Shayne Silvers

2018’s not been a bad year for me reading urban fantasy. We had a new entrant into the Dresden Files for the first time in what seems like forever, Kevin Hearne completed the Iron Druid Chronicles and Simon R Green completed both the Nightside and Secret Histories series, while there was a new Alex Verus book from Benedict Jacka. While on the indie side of the scale, Steve McHugh, M.D Massey, Orlando Sanchez and Craig Schaefer continue to pump out high quality books. And then there’s Shayne Silvers.

Funny story. My new year’s resolution was to read through the entire Nate Temple series before the end of the year, I achieved it with the end of Nine Souls some weeks back. At the end of that book, Nate Temple escaped from Hell, though in the process accidentally freed King Arthur’s bastard son, Mordred from his prison cell who immediately absconded with the eponymous nine souls. This book continues from there, though with the intermission from several other books in a different series, the Fire and Feathers series also from Silvers and the Phantom Queen series from Silvers and Cameron O’Connell. I’m not entirely au fait with these two series and it feels like I’ve missed pieces of the story. I’ll probably need to remedy that before I declare my NYR complete. It’s a complaint, but a very minor one and one of my own making.

So, about Horseman. Mordred is back and looking for some items in Nate’s possession, bringing back to bear a plot device lurking in the series for some books now. At least it feels like elements of the story are moving towards a resolution, as much as anything ever can be resolved in an ongoing series. Always new threads are being laid, some startling revelations and as usual, things are never quite as they seem, Team Temple bounce from one crisis to another, from attending a Fae tea party in hilarious fashion, to Nate’s encounter with Anubis still unhappy over the events of the last novel, multiple confrontations with Mordred including a quite frankly jaw-dropping throw-down in the Duelling Ground, a battle scene worth the price of the book alone. One thing to come out of it is the knowledge that things are very much going to get worse before they better, a conclusion comes that nobody saw coming. In a recent post on Facebook, Silvers said this was the first book in what amounts to a trilogy, so perhaps I knew there wasn’t going to be quite the sense of resolution others in the series had, but even so, it left on a tremendous cliff-hanger. The game is well and truly about to be changed in the Temple-verse.

Absolute masterful. This is reminiscent of Jim Butcher back at his best when Jim Butcher actually wrote urban fantasy. Astonishingly good. Roll on December and Book 11, Legend. Somehow I think I should go and catch up with the rest of the Temple-verse now.

5/5.

Thanks for reading.

OJ