Walter Jon Williams’ Lord Quillifer is the third book of his Quillifer series. As you’d guess from the title — Williams apparently borrowed the titling sceheme from Horatio Hornblower books — our young Quillifer has been moving up in the world, and is now firmly ensconced at court and engaged in high-level political intrigue.

In my write-up of the first book, my biggest complaint was that it was “just a series of episodes. There’s no real larger arc to the story other than ‘here’s a bunch of stuff that happened to a guy.’” After this third book, I think I can safely say that’s not actually true; the arc exists, it’s just at series length. Although I should be clear that this is not (hopefully, vagaries of publishing permitting) the end of the series, it is a kind of caesura — the end of Quillifer’s first act.

The good news for fans of the series is that this retains the virtues of the first two, remaining a fantasy of hyper-competence, with playful wit even as the story goes to some dark places. Recommended.