The personally elusive K.J. Parker’s latest standalone novel is a marvellous example of how fantasy does not need to be all about orcs, elves and evil wizards. The magic elements that featured in Parker’s early works are now absent, as they have been for the last standalone novel, The Company, and the Engineer Trilogy, while his/her fascination with understanding how things work has broadened from weapons and machines to societies and civilisations, not to mention people. It’s brilliant.

Sharing a world but no characters, countries and probably not even a timeframe with the Engineer Trilogy, a fact revealed only by one passing reference to a desert tribe, Parker has for The Folding Knife created a mercantile republic, reminiscent of early modern Venice, with a democratic political system that has plenty of nods to ancient Rome. The combined effect of these elements gives a distinctly Mediterranean flavour, and it feels familiar without entering the realms of pastiche, while still being alien enough to qualify as fantasy.

The Folding Knife is the tale of Basso, the First Citizen of the Republic. As the book opens, we see him fleeing the city that was his life’s work, and the opening of the book, not to mention the jacket, make it clear that Basso only made one mistake – so while reading, one is constantly wondering, is this going to be the mistake that does for him? There are plenty of decisions that could turn out to be errors, but Basso is phenomenally lucky – an instinctive politician, and a shrewd and calculating businessman and economist, he takes numerous outrageous risks during the course of his tenure as First Citizen, and they almost all pay off. Whatever he does seems to come good – even the fact that he killed his wife and brother-in-law for adultery makes him more popular with the voters. With only a few people around him he really trusts, he reshapes the electoral system of the Republic, overhauls its shipyards, embarks on military adventures, and moves towards a modern financial system based on paper money, the whole time being both the political boss and the shareholder of the Republic’s largest bank.

Basso’s downfall, when it comes, reveals the fine line he was treading the whole time between success and disaster. A complex character, he’s very difficult to dislike and fascinating to follow as he plots a course through the chain of events that he’s set in motion – even though, objectively, he’s a warmonger who visits suffering on countless people. The Folding Knife features all of K.J. Parker’s trademark wit and insight, and deserves to be though of as fantasy literature’s equivalent of Machiavelli’s The Prince, as such making it worthy of a readership outside the fantasy ghetto. Highly recommended.

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