Marius don Hellespont is a liar, thief, pickpocket, corpse
robber. He’s not a nice man. He’s given the task of finding a king by the
angry dead. This is his story as he
tries to escape this quest and the curse that the dead have laid upon him.
The Corpse-Rat King
is exciting, horrific, and at times hilarious.
Battersby does an excellent job embracing both the horror elements
inherent in the story as well as the turning this quest into a series of comic
misadventures.
There’s a sense of fairytale logic to Marius’ story. We aren’t sure exactly what the dead do to
Marius, or how it works. He can eat, but
doesn’t seem to need to breathe. He
doesn’t seem to decay, yet is recognized as one of the living dead by those to
see him. He can communicate with the
dead, but there’s no explanation of how or why this works.
Your reaction to Marius’ story may depend on what you look for
in a protagonist. For me, it’s difficult
when I don’t see any redeemable features to a character. Grey hats are fine, and often preferable, but
they need to have a spark of “good” for me to be really interested. Marius just wasn’t compelling for me. I kept waiting for him to show some signs of
personal growth through his troubles, but that moment never came. I realized that I didn’t care if he was
tortured by the angry dead.
No comments:
Post a Comment