Now complete, the Saevus Corax trilogy shows the wit, cynicism, nuance and a comprehensive experience of K. J. Parker in the long form. And my favorite of his works.
Tom Holt contains multitudes as an author. In his given name, he is a prolific writer of comedic and humorous fantasy. He’s also written historical novels under his given name, and poetry as well. And then there is his pen name of K. J. Parker. Parker has two modes: the short story, often with supernatural elements, a crisp and focused affair; and then there are his novels, most especially his trilogies. Most of these are set in the same world as the short stories (as far as one can tell) but are relentlessly mundane fantasy, with no magic or supernatural elements whatsoever, and constructing larger, longer narratives.
And so we come to his latest trilogy: Saevus Corax (Saevus Corax Deals with the Dead, Saevus Corax Captures the Castle, Saevus Corax Gets Away with Murder). All three novels were released in a burst at the end of 2023, which reinforces the point that in all of his guises and facets, Parker is quite the prolific author.
As mentioned above, most of his novels and short stories are set in various times and places in the same fantasy world. Parkerland (for lack of any real defined name) is roughly, with a very few exceptions, based on an alternate Eurasia. There are some deliberately obfuscating and contradictory elements to Parker’s worldbuilding. There is no defined timeline anywhere in his novels and stories. We get plenty of references to events and characters (Salonicus, a playwright and con man who features in a few stories as a main character, has his work referenced in many other books, including here in the Corax trilogy). And maps? There are no official maps of Parkerland anywhere, and the very geography of the world feels fast and loose at times. It feels more than deliberate on Parker’s part.
I want to come to Corax directly on this last one, and discuss it, because it is at its heart a travelogue of a character who has been running away from his past his entire life. And so, while some if not many of Parker’s novels and stories take place in a relatively confined space (the City Trilogy, for example, mostly takes place in the titular Robur City), Corax is really different in that our main character ranges all across Parkerland. And where Corax doesn’t actually visit, he namedrops and has opinions on, or wonders what is happening as the overarching plot of the trilogy unfolds. So the Corax Trilogy is about a guy who roams a world where there are plenty of comparative references and places to go and things described, but is light on how everything is supposed to fit together.
Corax has a bigger problem than that. Even as he runs away from his past, a long simmering fight between much of the “West” (read: Western Europe) and the Sashan Empire (read: “Imperial Persia”) has been brewing. In point of fact, for more than two novels, Corax does his best to try and defuse and stop the conflict from happening with all of his wit, panache and machinations.. There is a deep irony in all this, but Corax makes it make sense.
For, you see, Corax’s main occupation for most of these three novels is as a battlefield salvager. Two sides have a battle, then leave, and firms such as the one Corax runs come in (having paid for the privilege), strip the armors, weapons, and other goodies, and take care of the dead bodies. Corax’s company is a second-tier outfit in this business, and his margins are crap, but he does the job anyway. It’s not his first career after he ran away from home, but he’s got a lot invested in it, so he keeps coming back to it, even with such weird diversions as becoming king of a rich island for a while. So you’d think that a big war between the Sashans and everyone else would be good for his bottom line, but you'd be wrong, and Corax is not shy in telling us why in detail. And yes, it is mainly the fact that hundreds of thousands or more people dead would be a tragedy. But even personally, it is also because no outfit, not even the Asphogel Brothers, the top-tier outfit, could handle a grand world war, much less Corax and his five hundred men.
So, for a trilogy about a guy who has run away from his past and finally landed on battlefield salvager after conflicts and wars, the trilogy is throughout rather against the whole idea of war in general. Corax is way too practical to think that war doesn’t solve anything; it's just that it's often a very bad solution to problems, and the collateral damage is frightful. He knows all this, and knows the reasons why the historical forces of commerce and need are driving toward war, but he tries to stop it any way he can.
So, in trying to stop the war (and spoiler, he is ultimately unsuccessful, and that itself is a tragedy on several levels, the more I think about it given events in the trilogy), Corax’s journeys across Parkerland make this my favorite of Parker’s works. Sure, I would like a definitive map, or even a timeline to make sense of when this trilogy takes place in relation to other works. We get some hints and signposts, but for all of the places we do visit and the things Corax sees and deals with, the lack of precision makes the trilogy, and Parker’s work in general feels somewhat more like M. J. Harrison than, say, Marshall Ryan Maresca in terms of the worldbuilding. A question I would like to ask Holt, should I ever get the chance: Is it at all straight and ordered and plotted out privately, for himself? Or does he delight in the contradictions and lack of certainty for readers?
But why would I want to read a book or a series of books where worldbuilding is frustratingly vague sometimes, especially someone like me, who likes consistency in such matters, and crunchy details? What else does Corax and Parker’s work hold for me? Glad you asked! First of all, there is the often mordant sense of humor, in the “another fine mess” school of humor, with dollops of Corax’s observations on his companions, life, the universe and everything else. There is a voice to a lot of Parker’s longform work that makes it feel like I am sitting in a tavern somewhere having a friend tell me about the improbable absurdities that have happened to him. And this comes up all the time in Parker’s novels, be it a Colonel of Engineers asked to defend a city with no resources, or a playwright winding up having to do a Prisoner of Zenda bit. Or Corax becoming king of a rich island on the eve of it being invaded. Or the time Corax met the real king of Sashan living in exile... with Corax’s ex-wife. And much more.
And there are real human moments in all of this, too. For all that Corax feels like a con man, rogue and reprobate, there is a real core question at the heart of the books: How and why did he really kill his brother? This is something that comes up again in the books, and there are several opinions on it, and even Corax doesn’t know the truth himself of the day his brother, the golden child of his noble family, died. Certainly his family (especially his father) has opinions... and a big price on his head (alive, not dead; Corax’s father wants him to *suffer*), and Corax does end up escaping from one capture plot after another. But for all of the “not again” aspects of these events, the central question of what set Corax on the run in the first place remains Rashomonian and there is a bit of a tragedy in that.
In addition, there is, in the trilogy, unexpectedly, a romance. It’s doomed and tragic, one that dare not even be thought, much less acted upon, for the greater part of two books. It’s part of the ultimate story, maybe tragedy, of Corax that he finds himself in a romance, or realizes he has been in one for years and never quite realized it (although it is clear his partner in the relationship has been far less clueless). The revelation of this romance, as well as other events in the third book, does do something Parker is good at in his trilogies, and that is tie the books together and get you to think about and reconsider the second, and especially the first book in the series and reinterpret events. And, for those who have the luxury and the will to do so, this also means that Parker’s longform work bears rereading.
And if you do read a swath of Parker, not only are there the teasing references here and there, but also the rhymes and repeats of themes played out in different ways. For example, there is the Salonicus novella “The Big Score,” which is his attempt to find the one job, the one con, the one weird trick that will let him retire to wealth and leisure. Corax and many of his companions are also looking for a Big Score, and while they look for ones very different from Salonicus’s too-clever-by-half plan, there is a resonance for those who read both works. Or consider how Corax’s efforts to stop a war at any cost are a dark reflection of the Engineer Trilogy, which is all about a man engineering a war for his own selfish ends, costs to others be damned (and an Engineer defending a city against all odds also ties into the Siege Trilogy).
I put K. J. Parker, in a narrower way, in the same class as Adrian Tchaikovsky, Elizabeth Bear and Walter Jon Williams. He not only bears rereading, but he is an author of a depth and a breath and a large oeuvre that means that a wide variety of readers of genre fiction can find at least one work in their writing that they could come to love. This also means, though, that there are works of his that you might bounce hard off of. But for me, while the City Trilogy is a lot of fun, and Salonicus is a fascinating character (playwright and con man all in wrong), I think for now my favorite Parker books are these three, detailing poor Corax’s misadventures across Parkerland. I look forward to where Parker goes next from here.
Highlights:
- A Travelogue in a world without a map or even entirely consistent geography
- Mordantly funny protagonist
- Real human moments as the protagonist struggles hard against implacable forces.
POSTED BY: Paul Weimer. Ubiquitous in Shadow, but I’m just this guy, you know? @princejvstin.
