In a world of secrets, power comes at a price, and survival demands more than courage.

Kenric stumbles out of the forest broken, alone, and bleeding. Saved by the village herbalist, he must rebuild his life from nothing. Haunted by loss and forced to prove his worth in a place that does not trust him.

In the nearby town of Two Rivers, Gwene, a gifted bard with a dangerous past, arrives under orders from the King to uncover the truth behind the rising power of the Thieves’ Guild. But as her music reveals more than sound, and powerful enemies close in, she finds herself caught in a web of corruption that reaches far beyond the streets.

Meanwhile, Judd, a ruthless outlaw leader, is given a simple command by the head of the Thieves’ Guild: burn a village to the ground. Gathering a crew together, he seeks to fulfil his orders and, perhaps, find a way to climb higher in the hierarchy of power.

What follows is a chain of violence that will drag them all together through bloodshed, betrayal, and a battle that will decide the fate of more than just one town.

As forbidden alchemy, hidden magic, and dark ambitions collide, no one will emerge unchanged.

Because in the end, survival is only the beginning.

Having crafted the world of diverse countries and cultures that we saw in Seven Deaths of an Empire, Matthews has a fondness to return to a setting that is rich in narrative opportunities as people in different corners of the Six Kingdoms scratch out a living against the odds of an often hostile society. In A Good Day to Die the anti-hero Rawlins gave us his Leonardo di Caprio Revenant impression as he came for those who had left him for dead on the marshy edge of civilisation. In Of Song and Shadow we get a trio of protagonists spaced out along the hero-anti-hero spectrum along with an array of supporting characters.

There is Gwene, the wandering minstrel with a secret second career, that leads her to the town of Two Rivers and its shady dangerous quarter of The Warrens. I liked the detail of Gwene’s seeing music and sounds as colour which gave her a heightened perception of her surroundings. The real condition of chromesthesia is one form of synesthesia – where “stimulation of one sensory or cognitive pathway leads to involuntary experiences in other sensory or cognitive pathways”. It certainly added colour (forgive the pun) and texture to Matthews’ descriptive passages.

“Low notes throbbed in time with the music as blurs of deep red and orange. The higher notes were sparks and stars of crystal blue, gold and silver. Playing music was always this way for her.”

Gwene talents are martial as well as musical and her extended investigation of the organised crime network brings her both peril and new friends.

At the middle of the good-bad spectrum sits Kenric, abandoned by his outlaw companions to bleed out on the mountain he somehow contrives to survive long enough for rescue and recuperation, albeit as a one-armed man. Like Gwene he settles into a new community – the mining village that trades with Two Rivers – but his struggle is one of coming to terms with his disability, finding a role in the village and navigating the sometimes querulous and often challenging duo of the Reeve and his independent minded daughter Eadin.

Securely in the villain of the piece position we have Judd, leader of the bandits carrying out raids on caravans to disrupt the supplies to the mountain mining villages. Matthews gives a convincing depiction of a cold brutal man who – although he may despise the man’s vile predilections – does nothing to restrain the worst excesses of his second in command, Sutton.

Sutton chuckled, a dirty noise in the peace of the night forest, as he returned to the fire.

This does make for something of a Grimdark read and – while the worst unpleasantness happens ‘off page’ it is still an important element in the story.

The setting of Two Rivers makes an intriguing focal point in the world, with Matthews Geographer background coming to the fore in capturing a settlement nestling in the crook between the Ogmore and the Cefni – though make no mistake, this is no Lyon with the Rhone and the Saone flowing around it. As with his other excursions into the Six Kingdoms, Matthews presents a world that is decidedly unequal with a national church that is as compromised as the society it is supposed to serve, and an underclass fully wedded to the aspirations of wealth – if not to the legalities of how it is to be acquired.

As Matthews puts it when Gwene first espies the town

Smoke rose from the western quarter, closest to the church, and little rose to the east. Rich and poor, the hot and cold of society.

Later Gwene is making an excursion along the Thief’s Road – a motif of roof top travel familiar from A Good Die to Die and perhaps inspired by a misspent youth playing Assassin’s Creed. This vantage point gives her another characterful perspective on the town.

Up here, above the streets, the city took on a different tone, a different aspect. The ground was for those who could not experience the freedom of the rooftops. There was a quiet solitude here on the highways and byways which few used, and those that did had little but malice in their hearts.

The Reeve of the mining village hovers at the edge of Kenric’s story a little like one of the warriors from the 1970s TV show The Water Margin, nicely captured in this line

“So you’re up.” An old voice, full of gravel and former strength, interrupted his thoughts.

Like Kenric himself, the Reeve and his almost as formidable daughter Eadin, have a secret filled past that they are in no hurry to disclose and the questions about who these people are wind around the bones of the plot like ivy through a trellis.

We are treated to an enjoyable training montage as the Reeve reluctantly takes Kenric under his wing and teaches him to fight better with one arm than he used to with two (though to be fair he wasn’t much cop back when he had two arms). The stories of the three protagonists converge on an action paced denouement like the vertices of a pyramid. Gwene in particular manages to hover barely noticed in the background of Kenric and Eadin’s excursions into town, while they make as slight an impression on her – which does make it more satisfying when Gwene takes to the thief’s road and discovers allies she didn’t know she needed, and still may never meet.

There is always, in fantasy, the opportunity to hold up a mirror to our own society – particularly over matters of toxic inequality. With Elon Musk’s depredation arguably having lead to a terrible upswing in deaths from starvation in Africa this line rang home particularly strongly, as Judd contemplates the pale-faced merchants and accountants sharing the Inn’s bar area with him.

None of them had struggled. They had killed, as assuredly as he did, but the deaths they caused were far removed: a starving baby in The Warrens, a father drawn to crime and hanged for it, a ship sinking off the coast. Blood stained their hands as much as it did his, but they kept their illusion of cleanliness where he acknowledged it.

Or as Gwene observes

Money, she thought, bought you nicer clothes but didn’t change the person you were raised to be.

Or as Eadin notes of the misogyny that has haunted humanity for centuries (and which now sees its expression in the shrill outrage of Trump and Farage whenever challenged by articulate female reporters).

“And witchcraft isn’t real, just the excuse that scared men use to kill women who are wiser than them.”

At WorldFantasyCon in Brighton there was a panel delivered by a doctor with trauma experience that offered a bedrock of realism on which to build fantasy wounds. Having been brought up on Enid Blyton’s child heroes forever being knocked out and waking up totally compos mentis many minutes even hours later, I was pleased to see this bit of verisimilitude after Gwene has knocked out an opponent.

Even if he did come round, he would be weak confused, and disorientated for days to come. No one shrugged off a blow to the head easily. Either way it would not matter.

Overall, this is a gritty but engaging story with characters facing some intriguing internal and external challenges. While there is scope for the characters to appear as leads – or cameos – in other stories from The Six Kingdoms, it makes a fine stand alone read.

I particularly enjoyed this rather damning verdict on Judd.

“I don’t need anyone’s help,” Judd gasped out. “I made myself”

He felt the man crouch down next to him, a waft of air and a breath, kicking the axe away. “You didn’t make much.”

 Of Song and Shadow is available now – you can get your copy on Amazon