Though the thief with a heart of gold is an old, tired literary trope, it endures in fiction for two reasons: our desire to believe that every soul is redeemable, no matter how roguish or self-interested, and our desire to invent the unattainable man who possesses skill, charm and the darkness to do the hard thing. Both emanate from the eccentricities of human nature, rooted as it is in our Judeo-Christian ethics. But as much as we might fancifully wish such dichotomies into existence, they must remain vanishingly rare. Selfishness and generosity are like oil and water; only calamity comes from mixing them together. They are mutually exclusive traits that are only combined for the sake of romance. Though there are other problems with Mr. Sullivan's novel, hobbling his protagonists with such illogical personalities is the doom of the piece.
For all but the privileged few, life in the kingdom of Melengar is often painful and always hard. Justice is a virtue that only the rich can access and even then its execution is an uncertain thing. For the whims and the schemes of powerful interests almost always trump the rights and the desires of the less fortunate. Such an environment provides fertile soil for men like Hadrian Blackwater and Royce Melborne, two talented thieves who are masters at a specialized form of justice, the kind their clients can pay for. No job is too tall, no scheme too intricate for this witty pair who are as skillful at the art of disguise as they are experts at the play of swords. So long as you can pay, they can deliver.
When the thieves are hired to steal a superstitious count's favorite sword from the royal chapel, caution is warranted. What if all is not as it seems? What if it is a trick? But the reward, which could set the two thieves up for life, is too high for Hadrian to resist. The thieves take the job, but when they steal into the palace and locate the royal chapel, there is no sword waiting for them. No, sprawled upon the marble is the corpse of Melengar's slain king, a knife in his back. Hadrian and Royce are the prime suspects and are jailed pending execution. But then a reprieve from an unlikely, royal source permits the two rogues the freedom they need to try to clear their sullied names. Thus begins an adventure that will take them across the breadth of Melengar in search of the most elusive property of all, the truth.
Though The Crown Conspiracy can lay claim to witty dialogue, a solid cast and a plot worthy of a half-decent action film, this is, in every respect, a superficial novel. Mr. Sullivan certainly has a talent for ensnaring his characters in entertaining traps from which he must creatively extract them, but the enjoyment the reader draws out of the pickles the author invents for his characters is in no way matched by the complete two-dimensionality of his protagonists. Hadrian and Royce are meant to be reluctant heros of the common man, fantasy robin hoods come to right wrongs while getting paid handsomely along the way. Instead, they are cardboard cutouts, inanimate objects programmed to spew witticisms and perform stunts. At no point do they coalesce into actual people. No, Mr. Sullivan never intended to write a fantasy classic; this is every bit fantasy pulp. But the great works from David Eddings and Raymond Feist, upon which he's clearly based his work, possessed characters as fully formed as its humor. Mr. Sullivan has captured the latter without even coming close to the former.
The Crown Conspiracy is perfect for pure escapism, for when something mindless is called for. But the absence of good characters here prevents the piece from possessing any kind of jeopardy. Impossible to invest in... (2/5 Stars)
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