illegible_scribble
3/12/2021
This author's specialty is faux histories related by his trademark self-interested, dishonest unreliable narrators who are nevertheless extremely clever and possessed of a sly, dry wit.
This is a sequel to Sixteen Ways to Defend a Walled City. The protagonist of that novel is dead, but has left behind a hero to lead the city. The problem is that the "hero" is not only a poor leader, but an imbecile -- now a dead imbecile -- and in echoes of Heinlein's Double Star, a dissolute actor who is talented at mimicry is impressed into filling the dead hero's role.
Faced with an endless siege of his city by an enemy army and no way to win, the pretender gradually grows into the leader he is playing, and he comes up with clever strategies to try to save the people of his city anyway.
Fans of Parker's other works, and people who like stories of clever battle strategies, will enjoy this. People who prefer Hollywood endings, probably not so much.