Fiction Reviews
Lord of the Empty Isles
(2024) Jules Arbeaux, Hodderscape, £20, hrdbk, 357pp, ISBN 978-1-399-72497-5
One curse. Two sworn enemies. Thousands of lives in the balance… Five years ago, interstellar pirate Idrian Delaciel ordered a withering death curse – cast on Remy's brother, costing him his life. Now, Remy is ready to return the favour. Only when he casts the withering, it rebounds on him… Remy decides to infiltrate Idrian's criminal crew, hiding his identity as the whitherer…
Be careful what you wish for, are wise words which are always worth keeping in mind, but in Lord of the Empty Isles Remy Canta is so consumed by the death of his brother, Cameron, and his all-consuming desire for revenge, that his act of revenge backfires on him, resulting in the only way to possibly save himself is to get closer to the man he hates. The man who killed his brother, the man he intended to kill, but has ended up killing himself. Worse still, is that this man, this rebel, this renegade, is Idrian Deleciel, Remy’s childhood hero, the actual Lord of the Empty Isles.
Lord of the Empty Isles presents a really interesting idea, this central conceit from Arbeaux, who has devised a magical system where people are connected by invisible tethers. In this world, a death curse, or withering, has been cast on Remy’s brother, and as name suggests, being withered isn’t a very pleasant way to die. Remy plots his revenge, and finally gets all the ingredients he needs to cast his own death curse, but double-whammy, not only does the curse revenge rebound on him, he finds himself fate-bound to Idrian and the two of them are tethered with the only way to slow down the curse is to venture to the moons known as the Empty Isles and get close to Idrian and his band of rebels. Everything was so black and white through Remy’s eyes. Death and revenge. Revenge and death. But as he encounters Idrian he learns that everything isn’t always black and white and that what he has been told is a lie, spun by the planet who suppresses the moons, controlling resources and people. Idrian and his crew are trying to fight against that lie and trying to save countless lives by providing much-needed supplies to the moon-dwellers who find themselves trying to survive in a dystopian nightmare.
Ian Hunter
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