Holy hell, how does Ross Douthat's YA fantasy novel have so many proper nouns shoved into it?

Reader, we regret to inform you that there are so many fucking names in this thing. Gods and generals and distant cousins and archangels and minor lords and more, all crammed into the span of a single chapter of leaden-paced exposition; some 40 or so, by our admittedly scattershot count, and that’s without counting the mountains, rivers, and cities.

We report this grim tally after spending about an hour trying to get through “High House,” the first chapter of the book, which is available (along with the next 11, unless Douthat was successfully calling our bluff on that score) for free on his Substack. That opening chapter—accompanied by a hand-drawn map that would be charming in a lot of other contexts, but which only contributes to our Proper Noun Terror here—sketches out the early life of Asbel of House Montair, who is absolutely not any other tomboyish high-born daughter of stern but loving medieval-fantasy fathers you might have encountered in other books. (We might be hammering the Martin parallels too hard, honestly, but Douthat provokes us when he writes sentences like “Seven months out of the year’s nine were spent in the Castle overlooking Rendale.”) Asbel lives—get this—a completely idyllic princess-style life for several years, until a combination of political turmoil and her father’s aging grasp on the Imperial throne sends the whole thing tumbling down. 

We’re sure that there are YA audiences out there, somewhere, who are into tar-dense medieval political novels stuffed with nomenclature like “Bryghaida ar’ap Paegara Montair” and “Lord General Aengiss mac Cullolen;” Ross Douthats have to come from somewhere, after all. (Even if the columnist and correspondent has noted in the past that his own youthful reading was rooted in the easy-flowing, accessible prose of Tolkien and C.S. Lewis, who probably would have lost their minds trying to get through a medieval council scene late in this first chapter.) Really, though, we honestly wish Douthat the best in this latest endeavor: We’d rather see him dominating fantasy shelves, after all, than holding a pulpit in the Andy Rooney spot on TV’s longest-running news magazine.