Unhinged, messy and chaotic, this fabulous series is unlike anything you would have ever read – come for the fusterclucked family and stay for the war of succession.

I am thankful to the author for an ARC for the series. I also owe a word of thanks to Esmay Rosalyne of Grimdark Magazine whose review absolutely convinced me to drop everything and read this – reviews make a difference, let no one tell you it doesn’t. 

Four siblings and a chaotic battle for succession – haven’t we seen this already? ‘Succession’ is the more recent pop-culture-relevant instance of this but the one that sticks to my memory is the brutal Mughal War of Succession amongst four sons of Shah Jahan (he of the Taj Mahal fame). This brutal war is notable for the two main warring brothers, Dara (the favored heir) and Aurangzeb – the rebel (according to Shah Jahan) while the other two brothers played minor roles. Four Of Mercies leans on these tropes but complicates the situation by having the four siblings be quadruplets while basing the story in a world that has gone through twin annihilations/ apocalyptic events. The resultant world looks medieval and feudal but with remnants of mish-mash technologies existing in the form of cyborg horses, thyroid-powered swords, slow reloading guns, and corpse magic/ science among others.

“Maybe surprise isn’t the right word – the letter inspired something closer to fear and alarm and sheer fucking panic”

All these elements in the book are engaging by themselves, but it is the narrator voice that hits you immediately as the book starts. Neurotic, nervous, and fidgety, Petre Mercy is unlike any character that I have ever read. Think of a typical Mark Lawrence character like Jorg or Jalan and dial that up to eleven in a frenetic, anxious manner and you have Petre. The Fall is All There Is finds Petre having run away from his family five years ago suddenly finds himself at the attention of his siblings even as news arrives that his father, the king is dead. A letter from a sibling and the presence of another sibling right at this doorstep puts Petre in an increasingly worked-up state – a state that never abates through the book.

“If there was one thing that my family was good at, it was blowing everything out of proportion”

There is more than a hint of Godfather in this book (another book with four siblings, including a female sibling) in the way Petre has moved himself out of the family business and yet, events conspire to drag him in. The Fall is All There Is (TFIALI) is all about Petre finding himself between competing siblings – each having their own agenda even as he tries to figure out his place in this world and what each sibling wants. And that is no easy thing given this is one heck of a dysfunctional family – a fustercluck of a family if there was one and then there is their mother. And the mother is one piece of work indeed, a scientist who has the bedside manners of Leonard Hofstadter’s mother. TFIALI moves Petre away from his hiding place for five years and back into court – the book is more concerned about the journey, the strange beings, and more importantly, the conversations, the insights, and the family dynamics at play. Book 1 is genuinely a lot about characters and their shared history – it also keeps you on the edge for most of it by focusing on smaller events and the wick for the succession war to explode

“Had I always been such a disastrous little gremlin at the age? Fuck. It was beginning to make sense why Mom had tried to sew my mouth shut”

The Diplomacy of the Knife (TDOTK) takes advantage of the world laid out and focuses on the larger war of succession and is very substantially focused on the action and plot. However, none of this comes at the cost of further sibling dysfunction and mommy-daddy issues. Both books find a treasure trove to mine among the quadruplets on their shared trauma – with each other and their parents. Things come to a significant head in this book even as Petre gets a position of responsibility that he feels he is unsuited to and tries to do his best. There is a sequence in TDOTK which is a fantastic chaotic combat sequence almost reminiscent of a Mexican Standoff but with swords and a lot of conflicting parties with loyalties and motivations changing after every strike of the sword. This combat sets the stage for a breathless sequence of action and chase that runs for most of the book. The last 25-30% of the book is quieter in the sense that there isn’t much action but the tension is even higher with Petre in particular being a bundle of bad choices. At its best, TDOTK evokes some of the best plotting of ASOIAF with some of the best character work and suffering of Fitz – and that makes this book extremely special.

“I feel like you’ve spent so long being a fucking piece of shit mess that everyone just kind of expects that of you. Nobody ever expects you to have your shit together. Dad let you run away because he was sick of dealing with you”

This is a book driven by relationships and CM Caplan distinguishes each of the sibling relationships that Petre has. It sounds cliched but Vin Diesel’s Family quote pretty much rings true in this case. Most of the the sibling relationships in this book are rooted in knowing which buttons to push and which knife to drive in but at the same time unwilling to let go and drag that sibling around for their own benefit. Matters are further complicated by the presence of their mother – a lady who evokes terror and disdain in equal measure and one who sees the kids more as a science experiment and an afterthought than anything.

“You ever feel so petty that you can see the shape of a brewing argument and decide to commit to it anyway? You know exactly how ugly it’s going to get, but plow forward, because dammit, what else are you gonna do with all this pent-up fury?”

It cannot be stressed enough on the narrator voice of Petre. Unique in its nervous nature, Petre thinks of himself as the victim and he is right to an extent. But he is also enough of a shit to everyone around that some of it is justified. He is autistic, relies on injections to bring him up to a level of capability to match up to his siblings, is inappropriate and horny, talks before his brain catches up and always has the wrong thing to say at the right moment. But when you see things from his perspective, you realize the level of dysfunction in the family and why he doesn’t trust anyone fully – the nature of sibling competition, even more so when they are barely born a few minutes apart and are members of the royal family. This is a book that will live and die basis how much the reader enjoys the flawed narrator voice

“Sometimes when you’re coming out the other end of an entire pileup of tragedies, even fitting your grief into language feelings like an injustice. It’s hard to squeeze despair into a metaphor without tilting quickly into melodrama – the harder you try to package your sorrow in words, the more it feels like a performance”

Four of Mercies is a glorious mess of the book and in the right manner. It is in parts unhinged, inventive, chaotic, and imaginative. It sounds kind of derivative given the works and the authors that I have invoked through this write-up but C. M. Caplan takes all of these and adds his voice and perspective to this series to craft a unique, compelling, and an incredibly well-written story that absolutely takes no prisoners and is brutal on Petre’s emotions (and by extension, the reader’s emotions) all the way through

The Fall is All There Is – 4 Messed up Siblings on 5

The Diplomacy of the Knife – 4.5 Cyborg Horses on 5

PS: BTW what gorgeous covers for the book – I was totally sold