The Hammer

Starred review from February 14, 2011
Which matters more, intent or outcome? Parker (The Folding Knife) explores this dilemma in an understated tale of vengeance, along with the social paradox of keeping the peace when justice demands stirring up old crimes. In the backwater colony of an empire whose culture is borrowed from the Italian Renaissance, we encounter Gignomai met'Oc, youngest son of an exiled noble family. Gignomai decides to repudiate his inheritance and escape to the wilderness to start a factory that will break a trade monopoly that impoverishes the colonists. In the process, he triggers a series of events that will lead to an accounting for his family's secret and independence for the colony. Parker offsets the inevitability of the plot, foreordained as a Greek tragedy, by a continual inversion of types, like peasant mobs who need to be shamed into storming the castle and savages who speak more elegantly than Gignomai's father. While the revenge plot and mocking tone would do credit to a Jacobean drama, Parker maintains a cool and detached atmosphere, giving the work the feel of a stately court dance and not a blood-racing tarantella.

January 1, 2011

Gignomai met'Oc's family, exiled from their home across the sea, lives atop a mesa overlooking the colony that both despises the family and relies on them for protection against possible attacks by the land's native population. As a third son, Gignomai finds himself useless and goes about finding a purpose in life--to bring independence to the colony and exact a terrible revenge for a tragedy he witnessed as a child. The pseudonymous author of "The Engineer" trilogy (Devices and Desires; Evil for Evil; The Escapement) weaves a dark tale of rebellion and revenge set against a backdrop reminiscent of the colonization of North America in the 18th century. VERDICT Compulsively readable, this grim fantasy should appeal to the author's followers as well as general fantasy fans.

Copyright 2011 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

February 15, 2011
Parkers latest fantasy is a stand-alone novel set in a new fantasy world. The metOc people, losers of a civil war 70 years previously, are trying to maintain their noble lifestyle on an isolated plateau while coexisting uneasily with a group of colonists who have arrived on the planet, where they raise prime cattle to ship home. Highly educated Gignomai, the youngest son in his family, has no role, unlike his oldest brother, Stethnomai, who keeps the farm running, or Ludo, who organizes the guards. When Gig is willing to question the establishment, he sets off a chain of events that will change the lives of everyone living in the colony. Parker has created a compelling, sometimes disturbing world filled with fascinating characters; both the world and its inhabitants should appeal to readers of Felix Gilmans similar The Half-Made World (2010).(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2011, American Library Association.)