Summary
Thraxas is a private investigator in Turai, a city state of middling influence and power, and he is not much to look at. He once worked at the Palace until he was sacked for drunkenness and insubordination, and before that he failed as a sorcerer and made a career as a mercenary. Now he is overweight, bad tempered, always broke, fond of beer and of betting on the chariot races, and he scratches a living in the poor part of the city. His old fighting companion Gurd, a northern barbarian, keeps the Avenging Axe tavern, and Thraxas's friend Makri works there as a waitress. Makri was raised as a slave in the Orcish gladiator pits, has Human, Elvish and Orcish blood, is the best fighter Turai has seen and is studying at the Guild College.
In this first book, Princess Du-Akai, third in line to the throne, hires Thraxas to recover a missing letter. The job sets him against Sarin the Merciless, a ruthless killer who is in league with Horm the Dead, a mad half-Orc sorcerer from the Kingdom of Yal. Meanwhile senators are fighting over the post of Deputy Consul, criminal gangs are at war for control of the trade in the drug dwa, and Makri needs no encouragement to pick up her sword and join in. Thraxas's investigation takes him from the sewers of Turai to the Imperial Palace, where he comes face to face with the King's new dragon.
The book is a private eye story moved into a sword and sorcery city, and much of the fun is in the gap between the two: the tired, hardboiled detective with a little magic and a lot of appetite, and the Orcs, Elves and sorcerers around him. It is short and fast, with brisk chapters and plenty of jokes, though the plot, with several parties after the same prize, gets tangled. It suits readers of Terry Pratchett, or of Raymond Chandler, who would enjoy either one with swords.
Historical Context & Significance
Thraxas won the World Fantasy Award for Best Novel in 2000, and it won as a paperback original: Orbit had published it in Britain in April 1999, the first of three Thraxas books it issued that year. The judges chose it over Steven Erikson's Gardens of the Moon, James P. Blaylock's The Rainy Season, Nina Kiriki Hoffman's A Red Heart of Memories, Peter S. Beagle's Tamsin and Terence M. Green's A Witness to Life. The Encyclopedia of Science Fiction calls the win a remarkable accomplishment, since the award had not previously been given to comic fantasy.
Martin Scott is a pen name of Martin Millar, born in Glasgow in 1956, who under his own name writes urban novels such as Milk, Sulphate and Alby Starvation (1987), The Good Fairies of New York (1992) and Lonely Werewolf Girl (2007). Orbit published eight Thraxas novels between 1999 and 2005, and Baen Books brought out the first two together in America in 2003. Millar has since published four more himself, the twelfth, Thraxas Meets His Enemies, in 2022.
Where to get it
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