In Short
The Spirit Eater, by Rachel Aaron (Book 3 of the Eli Monpress series)
Orbit Books, Fantasy, 422 pages, paperback edition.
My copy: Purchased.
Pros: Amazing worldbuilding, well-rounded characters, great pace.
Cons: Some repetitive, annoying behaviours from protagonists at times.
In a line: Gentleman Thief’s entourage battling to evade capture… And not blow up the world.
“I am The Lord of Storms. I cannot be killed and I do not give up.”
Score: 8/10
The Spirit Eater is the third book in the Eli Monpress series, and easily the most impressive to date. Aaron shores up the few weaknesses in her earlier books, expands her world, deepends her characters, and comes up with some excellent new challenges for them.
Aaron’s last book, The Spirit Rebellion, ended with a near-criminal level of cliffhanging. Awkwardly, The Spirit Eater doesn’t actually address how Eli manages to escape from the predicament he was in immediately. In fact, it’s actually not gone into in any detail through the third book at all. considering the suspense that Aaron built in the second book, this is a letdown.
The story starts with our heroic group – Eli Monpress, the thief, Josef the swordsman, and Nico the demonseed – tracking away victorious from their conquest over the Duke of Gaol. Miranda Lypress, the spiritualist, is given recognition of her work in Gaol by promotion to an unlikely area – a department within the governing Council that tracks down enemies of the state with signfiicant bounties on their head. Eli hasn’t made the top of their list yet, but the few in front of him are committers of atrocities and murders, as opposed to increasingly-popular thefts.
Eli heads Home to rest and recuperate before plotting his next move. Home is, in true Monpress style, a city that’s had its trade routes bypassed by the construction of the kingdom’s highway some leagues away. When the township fell on hard times, Eli sinmply bought the entire town – homes, people, livelihoods and all – and, in exchange for funding the inhbitants, has a town where he can let his guard down and relax for a while. Fanatically loyal and grateful, the people of Home welcome Eli and his crew back amongst them.
Their peace is hard to come by. The demonseed inside Nico is awakened and working vigorously against her. Her restraints, crafted by Master Shaper Slorn, were damaged in her previous adventures and need work. And the trio is still unable to find a permanent answer to the demon growing inside her.
The demonseed is not just a concern for Nico. Demons feature heavily in this book. We re-visit Slorn’s imprisoned wife, who’d been battling the demon inside her whilst trapped in a valley by her husband. Sted, the vicious warrior from The Spirit Rebellion who’d nearly killed Josef and Nico, seeks her out to try and gain the power of a demonseed for himself. The League of Storms takes an active role in this story, unleashing their fantastical powers. Things are certainly building to a pretty fantastic finale.
The scope of each of Aaron’s stories expands outwards with each novel. We’ve grown from a self-centered thief and his rompish adventures to something much grimmer and more gritty. Aaron’s lush and populous world is threatened, and the Gods of the realm seem incapable of taking decisive action, trapped into observation and inaction by their own peculiar natures. The enemies of spirits and free folk are amassing and multipyling, and even the Leage of Storms has limits on what it can hold back.
Coupled with the machinations of mortals, and dangerous cracks are springing up in the world. Miranda is sent with a team of unreliable, mysterious companions to negotiate with the most highly wanted bandit in the kingdom, and instead of capturing him, finds that she’s been sent to negotiate the terms of his acceptance into the nobility. His thirst for power has led him to surround himself with dark figures, including one familiar, but more deadly than before…
Josef, Nico, Eli and Miranda are all feeling familiar and well-rounded by this point. Miranda is a curiously unsympathetic figure of morals and authority in the story. Unfortunately, she seems to swing erratically between powerful authority and shrill helplessness. Despite her much-vaunted Spiritualist training, Miranda is perhaps the least capable of the figures in the story, and I found her to be annoying at times. Josef, too, has moments where his stoicism prevent him from being a truly fleshed-out swordsman, but he gets enough ass-kicking in in The Spirit Eater that I think I’m just being picky.
The Spirit Eater has everything we’ve loved from the earlier books and more. Heroic swordfights. A titanic battle between a strong-willed woman and an implacably corrupting demon. Gladiatorial combat. Magic being unleashed with pyrotechnics that would make Michael Bay blush and go back to baking-soda volcano models.
Some might raise an eyebrow at the darker tone. There’s certainly more pain, betrayals, hopelessness and abandonment in this one than the previous books. I think it’s likely to get darker before things clear up, though. Aaron’s said that this series is going to be five books, and there’s a long way to go. Eli is still much the incorrigible thief as before – avoiding and twisting out of situations of responsibility and selflessness, holding his life together only through of his unshakeable feelings of loyalty. I imagine the challenges awaiting them all in the future will end up either making or breaking him as a classic anti-hero.
Regardless of the darker tone, I’ve enjoyed The Spirit Eater more than either of the first two books, and I’m eager for the others. Rachel Aaron has also kindly given an interview, here, which I encourage you to check out for some hints about what’s coming in the next two books! The Spirit Eater rates eight golden coins.
Reviews of the earlier books in the Eli Monpress series, The Spirit Thief and The Spirit Rebellion, can be found on Write-Thing as well as the interview with Rachel Aaron.