Already one of their number's books had been brutally closed by his untimely demise, and everyone else is of the firm mind that heroism is best left to those who went to school to become heroes. The trouble is that the recent crop of students at the hero school just aren't what anybody under most circumstances would ever consider hero material. So it comes down to Grincheux and his newly assigned hero(ine), Cassandra the Swiftblade, to take the afternoon before committing to the field of battle to nose around the school to see if they can uncover what's gone wrong. What they discover is even more base a betrayal than either could have believed possible. In the catacombs beneath the school a pit has appeared in which the forces of evil are being taught the secrets of Heroism and how to defeat the champions of good in battle.While I've always enjoyed Barclay's work prior to this, nothing in any of his earlier works had indicated he had such a flair for the ridiculous. He has done a brilliant job of standing the whole hero genre on its head using elements of farce and satire to make his point. While some of the humour is as broad as a barn door - the extravagant language has to be seen and read to be believed, at other times he hones his wit to a point that cuts deeper than any weapons wielded by fiend and hero alike. Conventions are manipulated as easily as a child's building blocks, revealing just how flimsy the whole notion of a hero really is. For what is a hero, anyway, if not a construct of the writer? And in this world the heroes are trained to spout the words that heroes always declaim so that their scribes can record it as deathless prose. It is those very conventions that the minions of evil are able to exploit to ensure the speedy dispatch of the forces of good. In their classes the evil ones are taught that heroes talk too much, and that just before they deliver a killing blow they will always, without exception, deliver a speech describing their great victory so the scribe can record it. By shaming defeat and awaiting their moment the villains are bisecting and dissecting heroes during what should be their moment of triumph - cutting their speeches short by abbreviating their stature.Unlike other writers who might have tried to stretch the joke too thin by writing a full length novel, Barclay has wisely chosen to stick with a novella, and because of that The Vault Of Deeds never becomes tiresome or just silly. (Although there are wonderful moments of rampant silliness.) For anybody who has ever struggled through the turgid writings of the 19th century Romantics, or the florid prose of lesser sword and sorcery writers, this will be a balm for any wounds they might have left upon your literary soul. In the past Barclay has proven his mastery of both sword and sorcery and epic fantasy, but now he can add comedy to his list of achievements as a writer. After reading Vault Of Deeds you'll never look upon heroic fantasy in quite the same way again.
"A sinister cabal of superior writers."
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