Book Review:
Anselm Audley, Inquisition

by Jerry Wright

Inquisition, the sequel to Heresy, picks up right where the first novel stopped. In fact, they could really have been just one big book. We rejoin Cathan and his friends Palatine and Ravenna just after they have foiled the Domain, (the vicious and power-hungry religious order of Aquasilva featuring the One True God, the God of Fire).

Because of fears that iron and weapons from Lepido will eventually fall into the hands of Domain if trading continues as in the past, the three friends set out for the distant Archipelago to try and arrange to sell weapons to dissident factions there as well as search for a weapon to use against the Inquistion of the Domain: the mighty, and lost, Thetian submarine known as The Aeon. What should be easy turns into a nightmare of confusion.

Back before the Domain rose to power, and before the Thetian Empire ruled the waves, the Archipelago had beena mighty empire. The old religions of the Five Gods are still entrenched there, which irritates the Domain. Twenty-three years prior, the Domain inflicted a failed but bloody Crusade in an attempt to destroy all "heresy". Instead, that violent crusade pushed the people even further away from the Domain. After the Domain recuperated from their previous attempt, they now wish to continue their Crusade, and in their search for Heretics, Cathan and friends become prime targets.

Heresy promised much action, political intrigue and double dealing, and Inquistion certainly delivers. Cathan and Ravenna, the star-crossed lovers and (respectively) water-mage and air-mage, are driven apart by Cathan's indecisiveness. All the characters have grown from the first book, and Audley has also grown as a writer. He still has room to grow, but his imagination is quite strong, and I'm very curious as to the origin of his planet Aquasilva, and how gods, magic, and technology came to be, with strong hints that the inhabitants of Aquasilva are perhaps lost colonists from "somewhere else".

Copyright © 2006 Jerry Wright and Bewildering Stories

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