Picking up where the first volume
of Ron Fritch’s Promised Valley series left off, Promised Valley War leaps immediately from court intrigue into a
broader set of conflicts. Blue Sky, the hero of the first volume, returns from
the standoff in the first book to meet up again with Wandering Star, his lover
and the point of first contact, so to speak, among the hill people. Before
things can get too cozy, however, trouble arrives: Morning Sun, the valley
people’s prince, and Rose Leaf, his intended wife-to-be, have been kidnapped by
the hill people. Tall Oak, the valley people’s king, negotiates for their
release, but the hill people’s terms are too steep, and the valley people
prepare for war, a course Blue Sky and Wandering Star counsel against. As
preparations for battle continue, events take a horrific turn, and before long,
Blue Sky and his many friends among both the valley and hill peoples find
themselves struggling to keep both peoples from destruction.
While
some of the writing issues from the first book remain – namely, the tortuous
lengths the author goes to in order to avoid anachronism and the
sometimes-distant voice used throughout the book – Fritsch has clearly grown
more comfortable with his characters and his story, trusting in the groundwork
laid in the first book while not streamlining too much. As befitting the title,
there’s a lot more violence here, and while Fritsch makes it clear what’s
happening at all times, he never dips too far into graphic depictions,
maintaining a light touch with sex and violence without shying away from it. As
a result, the narrative moves fluidly and well, never overstaying its welcome
with any single plot point or development.
Fritsch
also displays a well-honed sense of character placement within the narrative,
adroitly focusing on some characters and giving others graceful and relevant
exits. With the word “war” in the title, a reader can expect characters to go
out in bloody ways, and many of the first book’s large cast are winnowed by
spear and knife, yet none of the deaths feel like convenience; each has a role
to play in the narrative, and Fritsch does an excellent job balancing character
dispatch with growth and change. Every character, even the antagonists, is
shown to have some redeeming trait or belief, and even the brave and optimistic
Blue Sky displays a measure of darkness and, when pushed, a willingness to
kill. This willingness to accentuate the positive while admitting the negative
helps ground the entire cast in an emotional realism that gives the narrative a
sense of weight and consequence. With a strong second entry in the series,
Fritsch continues to make the Promised Valley a rich and complex narrative
universe.
