Retired army hero Sir Cobran Deritha must save the Concordance from true evil and save the First Prince's family being held hostage by a terrorist sect. Amidst all of the action there are arranged marriages, backroom alliances, business dealings, and a military hierarchy to tend to.

If the world is technologically advanced enough to be able to fly between planets, why do they still use swords for fighting? ( )

Well. This ended up as a bit of a surprise. I enjoyed it a lot more than I thought I would. The first chapter/prologue left me a little confused (and skeptical). First it felt like a fantasy setting, but then the "magnetic pistol" didn't fit in. Steampunk didn't fit either and weren't there some magic or supernatural elements there? I few more chapters in I managed to place it as a science fiction with magical elements. Then I get introduced to this Cobran character. A lesser noble an former military Major with a newly attached robotic leg that twitches as the inbuilt computer still to adjust the signals to react properly. The story is a roller-coaster through noble politics with plenty of action and suspense. The reason I removed one star from the top score is that I never got comfortable with the Magic aspect of the story. Fortunately that stayed more in the background and hidden from view (no flying fireballs). I also felt the ending were a bit weak. It builds up tremendously, but then the fire suddenly gets put out and only a little smoke remains.

Despite this, I felt it was a good read. Never a dull moment, interesting world and great characters. I would really love to meet Cobran again at a later time (sometime during the next three "in world" years maybe?). He was the perfect blend of "a good guy but far from perfect" and the robotic leg that occasionally struggled to keep up just put him into my favorite characters list.

I got this book through the "Librarything Members Givaway". ( )

Wonderful story, with well thought out characters. It's funny, sad, just downright strange at times. I would love to read more stories involving Cobran. ( )

I won this book from librarything.com.

The Black Throne Conspiracy by K.M. Johnson-Weider is the first volume of a series. It is set in a technologically advanced society that preserves some conventions of a more knightly time.

The book opens with horrific prologue in which a company of nobles venerates a black stone and the supernatural being residing within. The being agrees to advance their personal and political fortunes in exchange for female family members who are killed and reanimated by the being. This evil ceremony takes place several months before the main story opens and three women are promised for sacrifice the following solstice.

We are then introduced to Cobran, a demobbed soldier with a bad knee. Cobran is a younger son of House Derithal who has returned home for his convalescence. Cobran isn't sure he wants to go back to soldiering, although he is quite good at it. In the interim he takes the post of chief security officer for his cousin Baron Edwin Tulleros who has been the target of assassination threats.

In the mean time, Lord Reyn Derithal, Cobran's older brother and head of the family, has arranged Cobran's betrothal. Cobran's great love is dead so he has no particular objections to an arranged marriage, but Lady Esme's peculiar attributes make her an unappealing choice. Reyn, who seems strangely willing to consider the betrothal a temporary arrangement, pushes Cobran to give Esme a run for the good of the family.

Cobran's sister, Lady Cerise, who makes her living as an "alchemist, numerologist, and astromancer", is very unhappy that the astromancy chart she has drawn for the young Lady Minastra Suen is not coming out right. Lady Minastra appears to vanish body and soul at the next solstice. Either Cerise has made some inexplicable mistake or something very wrong is going to happen to Lady Minastra. Since Cobran is going to the capital anyway to work for Baron Edwin and court Lady Esme, he agrees to look up Lady Minestra and try to figure out what is going on. To help him, she thinks, Cerise casually, and without permission, casts a supposedly weak binding spell on Cobran and Minestra.

Cobran goes off to the capital and begins a whirl of social and political activities that sets the stage for the series. We are introduced to a large cast of characters and the action moves forward at a brisk pace. Cobran falls for an extraordinary woman while continuing to court the impossible Lady Esme. The black stone and the cabal of corrupt lords are revealed to be the latest iteration of the Black Throne Conspiracy. Cobran wins the first round against them and advances in the political hierarchy, setting the stage for Book 2.

The Black Throne Conspiracy is well written. It took me a while to get all of the characters sorted out, for some reason their names don't seem to stick. The pace is fast enough and, while some of the episodes and personalities are thin, overall the book is well plotted and character driven. We like the people we are supposed to like and don't like the bad guys. The biggest shortcoming is that the mixture of modern and feudal is unconvincing. Hereditary knights riding to battle on robot horses seem a bit silly in a society where people zip off to this planet or that and gift each other moons as wedding presents. I never did get the political structure straight. Is there someone above the First Prince? If not, wouldn't it be simpler to call him King? First Prince sounds like the Pope. And how does the First Prince govern when there is a huge representative assembly? I hope that Johnson-Weider expands all this a bit in the next book, which I look forward to reading. ( )