Sean Russell is, if nothing else, an effective world builder. The low fantasy of The One Kingdom is placed in a fantastic setting, and yet his description of a world which is still recovering from the aftershocks of a long and bitter war is convincing. This is particularly noteworthy as he borrows little from the worlds he has created for his other duologies. The novel revolves around a world which faces two dangers, both human and supernatural, as the two families which have struggled for primacy in the land again look to revive their deadly rivalry, even as the ancient spirits of a long-dead era of battles wake and begin to seek human hosts through whom they can dominate the world.

This is a dualistic novel, in the sense that I believe half of it could easily be jettisoned without loss. I found myself bored with the questing aspect of the story, and the waking of ancient evil has been done many times before, and better. However, the other half is a very good book indeed, as the intrafamily politics on both sides are compelling and one finds oneself quickly taken in by the dilemma faced by the female co-protagonist, who finds herself not only a prisoner of her family, but potentially the weapon with which everything she cherishes will be destroyed. I found myself wishing more than once that the entire novel would focus on her... that being said, the slow-moving pace of the book does pick up significantly in the last one hundred pages, and indeed, the novel climaxes in a chaotic ballroom scene that is chaotic, cinematic and exciting. The somewhat negative tone of this review might wrongly mislead one into thinking that I did not like this novel - I did like it, but I wanted to love it and was disappointed to find that I could not.

Style: Russell is perhaps best described as a highly competent writer. There are few fanciful flights of high prose, and there is no unwieldy clumsiness either. He is at his best when painting landscapes; his portrait work, though dedicated, tends to leave less of an impression. I quite enjoy his descriptive abilities, but I am a little less fond of his dialogue which, as happens all too often in medievalesque fantasy, relies on modern irony to spice it up rather than upon the broader more bawdy humor seen in the surviving writings of the era. He is also somewhat prone to tell the reader that a character is a certain way instead of demonstrating the idiosyncracy in action.

Story: As I mentioned before, the plight of the beleaguered noblewoman borders on riveting, however the quest of the three Valeman and the gypsyesque story finder are, well, more than a little boring. The river metaphor is not only beaten into the reader's head, it is practically branded with hot irons. I found the notion of the navigable transdimensional geography to be interesting enough, but Dan Simmons has done the river-runs-through-everything concept with considerably more panache and to greater effect in his Hyperion Cantos. The author is a professional, though, and even when the story lacks magic, so to speak, it is self-consistent.

Characters: As with the rest of the book, the characterization is competent without leaving any strong impressions. Each individual appears to be assigned one primary characteristic; with few exceptions they do not have a tendency to come to life for the reader. The four young men who dominate the first part of the novel are particularly forgettable, as even by the end of the novel I could not find myself caring much what happened to them. In contrast are the noble girl and her blind father, the two strongest characters in the book. Their loving bond is genuine, even touching, and one is readily drawn into their helpless anger at those who are using them to further their own ends.

Unfortunately, Russell never seems to bother wasting much ink on examining the motives, much less motivations, of his bad guys, who come off as robotic plot devices. He even seems to realize this on some level, as the nameless soldiers who continually plague the four travellers with their utterly incompetent attacks turn out to be as mindlessly soulless as the reader imagines them to be after their second or third appearance.

Creativity: The One Kingdom has smatterings of creativity, but the reader well-read in history and mythological literature will recognize more than a few of the novel's foundational elements. The Templar stand-ins are at least moderately disguised, however, and the author does a clever job of simplifying the basis for their wealth and power from the historical account. There are a number of "historical" stories which are meant to add depth; I could be wrong but I suspect that a little judicious borrowing here might have served the book better than what appear to be the original inventions of the author.

Text Sample: Elise stood on the top of a high hill at the lake head, gazing south. She could see the island and its castle clearly, and all the other islands fading away to pale blue-greens as they meandered off into the distance. It was a long lake, more than a league, and she loved the way the hills and islands folded into one another, their colors growing softer and more muted as they dwindled toward the horizon, layer upon layer.

Her cousins lamented their isolation here, constantly pining for the inner principalities and duchies of the old kingdom, but Elise never complained. Seh thought the life her cousins dreamed of was frivolous and vapid, though perhaps she merely feared what would happen if the Wills ever made their way back into the center of the old realm.

Intrigue, she thought, perhaps even war.

There was enough intrigue here. Her cousin Menwyn saw to that.