A review by skycrane
The Black Coast by Mike Brooks

5.0

This book was really good. It starts with a big old fantasy map with tons of little towns and cities labelled, but for the most part it's a story about a single small village and its few hundred inhabitants. The seafaring Brown Eagle clan show up demanding to be allowed to settle, and the town of Black Keep, half-emptied by plague, is unable to resist them. So most of the story is about Daimon and Sanna's attempts to get their people to live together, despite their cultural differences and long history of conflict. Some of the differences are obvious or stereotypical, you have egalitarian, violent barbarism versus hierarchical, peaceful civilization. But there are a lot of subtle or surprising differences as well, with their competing views on gender and sexuality being particularly interesting. I really liked how both Daimon and Sanna at times either rebel against or conform to their societies' views of honorable behavior. In a sense, they both sacrificed honor to save their people, but there are still expectations they have to uphold if they want to keep their people's respect. And of course, there's a personal element, where they try to navigate an uncomfortable but necessary relationship.

That only takes up most of the book though. There's also chapters about the assassination of royal pretenders, a supernatural creature conquering the seafarers' home islands, and a street urchin who falls in love with a prince. It's all really good stuff, and the pacing of the different plot threads is well executed.