James Nicoll Reviews

In L. Shelby’s 2014 Fealty’s Shore, the third and (probably) final volume in the Across a Jade Sea series, Batiya Dachahlra finally gets to meet her father-in-law. She has accompanied her husband, Chunru Dachahl Pralahnru, to his distant homeland, the vast and wealthy Changali empire — a powerful nation whose customs, laws and language are all quite unfamiliar to Batiya.

A powerful nation whose crown prince is none other than Chunru Dachahl Pralahnru, and whose emperor does not look kindly on the whirlwind romance between his son and heir and an odd-looking barbarian engineer with an unpronounceable name. 

Of course, there’s an obvious way for the emperor to deal with his son’s inconvenient foreign wife. He can simply have her assassinated.

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2014’s Treachery’s Harbor continues the Across a Jade Sea series, picking up where Serendipity’s Tide left off: the completely unexpected revelation by Chunru Dachahl Pralahnru to his new bride Batiya that he is not a burgie [1], that is, someone whose family is somewhat more well-to-do than her working-class clan. Rather, he is the sole unequivocally legitimate heir to the Emperor of Changali. ​“I am the heir to a vast and powerful empire” seems like the sort of personal detail that should have come up at some point during Chunru and Batiya’s courtship, but in his defense, it was a lightning romance and also people were trying to kill the two of them at the time.

Domestic crises aside, Chunru still has to find his way across a foreign, balkanized continent to Changali’s embassy in Xercalis, in the hope that he can repair the inexplicable rift between Changali and Xercalis. Batiya has too much potential hostage value to be left behind, so she will have to come as well.

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2014’s Serendipity’s Tide is the first volume in Shelby’s Across a Jade Sea trilogy. I am not quite sure how to categorize it. Secondary world historical adventure, perhaps, related to historicals as Royal Space Force: The Wings of Honnêamise is related to futuristic science fiction. I can say I enjoyed reading Serendipity’s Tide.

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