Adam Roberts
Golancz
978-0-575-08232-8
This is an odd one. Adam Roberts’ Swiftly announces itself as a 280-year-delayed sequel to Gulliver’s Travels, that immortal satire which aims its scattershot wit at every aspect of human society from academic hubris to the absurdities of economic inequality. It seems reasonable therefore to expect a similar brand of overt satire from Roberts, but while Swiftly has a lot to say, it unfortunately forgets to keep its reader entertained.
Set a hundred and twenty years after Gulliver’s last journey, Swiftly posits a world where the great European powers have done precisely what they did so well, when presented with an alien culture: moved in and exploited its resources for everything they’re worth. Tiny Lilliputian and Blefuscan slaves produce fine embroidery and clockwork, while regiments of berserker Yahoos and ‘sapient cavalry’ serve in the armies of France and England.
The hero of the novel, Abraham Bates, makes his first appearance as an advocate of rights for these ‘Pacificans’, as the varied inhabitants of Gulliver’s travelogue are collectively known. Yet Roberts immediately goes out of his way to deny Bates the moral high ground; it isn’t with slavery as a whole that Bates disagrees, but that the tiny workers are white. ‘God has allotted slavery to one portion of his creation, and marked that portion by blackening their skins…’ (p.11) he tells an owner of Blefuscan slaves, before being ejected from the premises. Bates’ is a pompous, moralising twit, whose attack-dog religiousness disguises a deep-seated self loathing. So disgusted is he by his own sinful thoughts and deeds that he wields his religion against others in a kind of masochism by proxy.
This first chapter, pitting Bates against the factory owner Jonathan Burton and detailing Swiftly’s England, is superbly written. The characterisation, as described above, is excellent, and Roberts does a decent job of extrapolating a functional world from the fantastical elements of Gulliver’s Travels while deftly satirising the moral elasticity of Bates’ Christianity. Even as the man betrays his country and French-allied Brobdignagian giants march on London, he’s convincing himself with every thought that his actions are righteous.
Then the focus moves away from Bates, skipping back in time and introducing another main character: Eleanor Davis, soon to marry the industrialist Burton, whose Blefuscan slaves Bates objected to. As with Bates, Eleanor is a fascinating and flawed character who draws and keeps the interest, reminding us in her naivety of nineteenth-century heroines from Eliot through to Austen, but bucking the trend with a streak of cold, clinical curiosity quite at odds with the usual Victorian stereotypes of the emotional, unreasoning woman. As with Bates, the reader’s sympathy is tested by her calculating coldness, as she resolves to ‘pin one down and bring an enlarging glass over them and have a proper look’ (p.72).
Roberts continues in the same vein, building on the undercurrent of sly satire winding through these two lengthy character studies, but the strong realist grounding of the first half gives way to a stream of metamorphoses in the second; now a war story, now a twisted love story, now farce.
All this tonal fluctuation weakens the sense of narrative and lessens the sense of consequence felt from the characters actions. Bates in particular seems a different man every time we meet him, as Roberts refuses both hero and reader the time between dramatic, life-changing events they require in order to reflect upon and internalise the lessons learned. As such Bates’ character arc seems jagged and broken, developing arbitrarily from tightly-wound moraliser to coprophiliac adulterer to war hero (of a sort) with little more than token gestures towards introspection.
Instead, as Roberts’ careful character-building falls by the wayside, we hurry through something of a grand tour of nineteenth century fiction. Brobdignagian giants striding up the Thames evoke the alien tripods of H. G. Wells’ War of the Worlds (or the artwork of Jeff Wayne’s musical version, at least to me); Eleanor’s conflicting attitudes towards her husband remind the reader of Middlemarch’s naïve Dorothea, while her mother’s venal attitudes towards the same evoke Pride and Prejudice’s Mrs Bennet; even Jules Verne’s moon-shooting cannon makes an appearance.
Yet this isn’t just a series of throwaway references, but thoughtful intertextuality which brings an additional dimension to the work. Mrs Davis, for example, might seem superficially similar to Mrs Bennet, an object of gentle (or not so gentle) mockery, but just as in Pride and Prejudice that surface layer is deceptive; both women understand the harsh realities of the world far better than their families. As a widow raising her daughter alone on the fringes of nineteenth-century London society, the lengths Mrs Davis is forced to in order to provide for both her daughter and herself are a logical extension of Mrs Bennet’s compulsive desire to ensure her daughters’ financial stability; a powerful condemnation of the way rigid societal structures force individuals to debase themselves. Yet while Swift condemns with satire, and Austen with irony, Roberts plays it more or less straight.
The result, unfortunately, is that Swiftly isn’t really very funny. Gulliver’s Travels wore its learning lightly, and however biting its satire it never ceased to raise a smile. Swiftly, by comparison, is heavy going and frequently drenched in gloom. Bates self-loathing permeates those chapters he dominates, while Eleanor’s detachment casts a chill over hers. Roberts’ Lilliputians and Blefuscans are inscrutable, cruel and alien; his giant Brobdingnagians are similarly alien, viewing the workings of mankind with a ponderous, philosophical melancholy. Only the cocaine-addled Dean of York, who accompanies Bates and Eleanor thorough an England increasingly resembling something from the book of Revelations, provides a streak of broad humour (at the expense of the church).
Despite the meandering second act, things pick up again towards the end of the novel, particularly in a stunning sequence where Eleanor watches a battle between French and British troops as if from the viewpoint of God. There’s also much to admire in Roberts’ world-building, as he extrapolates a fully-functional reality from the tools of satire. He extends the implications of Swift’s creations with precise, sometimes terrifying logic, and the philosophical arguments regarding man’s place in the grander scheme of things are thought-provoking. The novel simply seems to lack any real pleasure in the reading.
Perhaps I’m looking at this the wrong way, analysing Roberts’ work in terms of its illustrious predecessor, but a book calling itself Swiftly creates certain expectations of social comment and knife-edged wit. The former is present, but the latter? Perhaps it’s just too tiny to detect.
All page references are taken from an uncorrected manuscript proof.
This review was originally written for SFcrowsnest.com
Saturday, 2 January 2010
Friday, 2 October 2009
Armageddon’s Children
Terry Brooks
Orbit
ISBN: 978-1-84149-480-7
Armageddon’s Children sports the subtitle ‘every legend has a beginning’, but a crueller man than me might consider mentioning more suitable ones. ‘How to kill your sense of wonder’, perhaps, or ‘Leave no cash cow unmilked’. No, wait, I just mentioned them. Get your own.
This, then, is the first in the long unwaited-for trilogy bridging Terry Brooks’ The Word and the Void and Shannara series’. The knightly protagonist of the former, John Ross, was plagued with visions of the nightmarish future which awaited humanity if he should fail to defend it from demons of the Void, while the Shannara books have always hinted at the idea that they were wallowing in the ruins of a post-apocalyptic Earth. In the later series’ particularly, said hints had all the subtlety of a thermonuclear exchange, and true to the trend Armageddon’s Children substantiates all those prophecies and hints with gleeful disregard for any sense of tact or, well, sensitivity.
Yet bizarrely, leaving aside for the moment the question as to whether this book needed to be written at all, Brooks for some reason cheats even those die-hard fans who really did want all their dots connected. Armageddon’s Children kicks off fifty years in the future, long after the last missile fell to Earth, and his characters are too young to remember the Apocalypse. Certainly there are good reasons to pass over the end of the world: doing so allows Brooks to avoid all the hoary clichés of apocalypse-in-motion, while giving Armageddon the attention it deserves would probably require another trilogy’s worth of fiction before this one even got started. There might be another reason, though; the authorial freedom granted by a few years’ disconnect between the impossibly complex reality of modern life and Brooks’ post-nuclear landscape. The world of Armageddon’s Children isn’t a natural evolution of the one we know, or even a decent attempt at it; it’s a cardboard cutout, flat and stale. There’s no sense of organic history, of how these terrible developments might have come about. Just same tired clichés trotted out. Walled compounds filled with semi-benevolent fascists: check. Packs of feral street kids roaming the ruined cities: check. Giant mutant beasties, made giant and mutant through the miracle of radiation! Check.
And of course the armies of marauding raiders, devoid of humanity or reason; what self-respecting post-apocalyptia would be complete without them? And in case you didn’t know about them, Brooks lays them bare before his reader in the first chapter:
The real enemies were the once-men, humans subverted not by radiation and chemicals but by false promises which went something like this: “Do you want to know what it will take to survive? A willingness to do what is needed. The world has always belongs to the strongest…”
Once they embraced the propaganda of the demons, they fell quickly into the thicket of resulting madness. (p.11)
The tragedy of what men must do in order to survive? No, it’s demon propaganda making them Bad Men. In half a page of amateur psychoanalysis, Brooks builds a ghetto fence down the centre of his book: good on this side, evil on the other. Good guys, you have your orders: kill the evil ones with impunity, and without remorse. They’re evil, after all.
It might be a genre trope of high fantasy, but in a gritty post-apocalyptic setting like this such black and white distinctions tend to erode the suspension of disbelief somewhat. And Brooks’ reductive tendencies also deftly render the once-men fairly useless as any kind of credible threat; they’re predictable, one-dimensional and boring, entirely free of suspense. And sure enough for the rest of the book they’re little more than pop-up targets for the heroes to eliminate, like some apocalyptic game of whack-a-mole.
It’s possible that my mistake is in identifying Armageddon’s Children as gritty, however; when nine-tenths of the world’s population has been wiped out and demons roam the earth, you might think you’d be justified in assuming a little grit. But Brooks’ ruined Earth is like the painted backdrop of a theatrical production; it looks the part, but has nothing to do with what’s actually happening on-stage. Instead we get a peculiarly PG-rated version of apocalyptia, where cutesy ‘Street Kids’ play baseball in the mutant-haunted ruins and even the mean and moody ghetto stereotypes refuse to swear:
“You’re out!” shouted Sparrow.
“Out!” Panther laughed. “No frickin’ way!”
“Out!” Sparrow repeated …
Panther picked up the broomstick, waved it her threateningly, and then threw it down again. “What are you talking about? That don’t count! ...”
“It hit you last, and you’re out!”
“You’re frickin’ crazy!”
Sparrow stalked over to him, brushing her mop of straw-coloured hair out of her blue eyes, brow furrowed in anger. “Don’t talk to me like that! Don’t use that street language on me, Panther Puss! Owl, tell him he’s out!” (pp.170-171)
…and so on, like some bizarre amalgam of On the Beach and The House at Pooh Corner.
But the most jarring moment comes about halfway through the book, when the narrative turns its focus on a young Elf caring for the magical Ellcrys, the tree which maintained the Forbidding which kept demonkind in check since the time of Faerie. And if you’re wondering what on earth that sort of high-fantasy language is doing in a post-apocalyptic setting, you’re not alone. It’s as though Brooks forgot which series he was writing for a couple of chapters, and slipped into Shannara without realising. Yes, this is supposed to be the series which bridges the gap between the modern world and Shannara’s high fantasy, but the change of tone is so sudden and jarring that the book never really recovers. If the world is slowly slipping into magic and wonder, shouldn’t the subtlety of the transformation be reflected in the written style? There are any number of ways Brooks could have allowed the fantastic to seep into his apocalypse; the sudden plunge into fantasy tropes we’re given here smacks of nothing more than laziness.
Nonetheless, it’s a change that even the more grounded characters seem to accept with little more than token protest. Witness the baffling moment when Angel Perez, paladin of the Word, is sent off in search of an Elfstone:
Angel scowled, angry now. “Elves created it? You’re saying there are Elves out there? What does that mean? Look, I don’t know what any of this is about. I don’t know anything about Elves and their stones. I’m a barrio girl, a street girl, never even been this far north before in my life, and this Elf stuff is just words that don’t mean anything. You want to tell me what you’re talking about?” (pp.232-3)
Thanks for explaining yourself so thoroughly, Angel. But one short burst of expository dialogue later, she’s quite at home with the idea:
Well, she thought, if you’d accepted that tatterdemalions were real, how big of a jump was it to believe in Elves? (p.233)
How big of a jump indeed? Again, it’s a difficult line to walk; the conversion of the sceptic is a hoary old cliché of contemporary fantasy, and it would have been hard to do it well. But even retreading old ground would have been preferable to the writer’s fiat Brooks employs again and again in Armageddon’s Children.
Better to have left the genesis of Shannara alone than do it badly; at least that way fans of Brooks’ earlier work would still have a mystery to hold onto, to wonder and to talk about. But Brooks has taken that raw potential, that untapped possibility which excites the imagination, and wrung it dry to produce a very ordinary book. Which is such a shame.
This review was originally written for SFcrowsnest.com
Orbit
ISBN: 978-1-84149-480-7
Armageddon’s Children sports the subtitle ‘every legend has a beginning’, but a crueller man than me might consider mentioning more suitable ones. ‘How to kill your sense of wonder’, perhaps, or ‘Leave no cash cow unmilked’. No, wait, I just mentioned them. Get your own.
This, then, is the first in the long unwaited-for trilogy bridging Terry Brooks’ The Word and the Void and Shannara series’. The knightly protagonist of the former, John Ross, was plagued with visions of the nightmarish future which awaited humanity if he should fail to defend it from demons of the Void, while the Shannara books have always hinted at the idea that they were wallowing in the ruins of a post-apocalyptic Earth. In the later series’ particularly, said hints had all the subtlety of a thermonuclear exchange, and true to the trend Armageddon’s Children substantiates all those prophecies and hints with gleeful disregard for any sense of tact or, well, sensitivity.
Yet bizarrely, leaving aside for the moment the question as to whether this book needed to be written at all, Brooks for some reason cheats even those die-hard fans who really did want all their dots connected. Armageddon’s Children kicks off fifty years in the future, long after the last missile fell to Earth, and his characters are too young to remember the Apocalypse. Certainly there are good reasons to pass over the end of the world: doing so allows Brooks to avoid all the hoary clichés of apocalypse-in-motion, while giving Armageddon the attention it deserves would probably require another trilogy’s worth of fiction before this one even got started. There might be another reason, though; the authorial freedom granted by a few years’ disconnect between the impossibly complex reality of modern life and Brooks’ post-nuclear landscape. The world of Armageddon’s Children isn’t a natural evolution of the one we know, or even a decent attempt at it; it’s a cardboard cutout, flat and stale. There’s no sense of organic history, of how these terrible developments might have come about. Just same tired clichés trotted out. Walled compounds filled with semi-benevolent fascists: check. Packs of feral street kids roaming the ruined cities: check. Giant mutant beasties, made giant and mutant through the miracle of radiation! Check.
And of course the armies of marauding raiders, devoid of humanity or reason; what self-respecting post-apocalyptia would be complete without them? And in case you didn’t know about them, Brooks lays them bare before his reader in the first chapter:
The real enemies were the once-men, humans subverted not by radiation and chemicals but by false promises which went something like this: “Do you want to know what it will take to survive? A willingness to do what is needed. The world has always belongs to the strongest…”
Once they embraced the propaganda of the demons, they fell quickly into the thicket of resulting madness. (p.11)
The tragedy of what men must do in order to survive? No, it’s demon propaganda making them Bad Men. In half a page of amateur psychoanalysis, Brooks builds a ghetto fence down the centre of his book: good on this side, evil on the other. Good guys, you have your orders: kill the evil ones with impunity, and without remorse. They’re evil, after all.
It might be a genre trope of high fantasy, but in a gritty post-apocalyptic setting like this such black and white distinctions tend to erode the suspension of disbelief somewhat. And Brooks’ reductive tendencies also deftly render the once-men fairly useless as any kind of credible threat; they’re predictable, one-dimensional and boring, entirely free of suspense. And sure enough for the rest of the book they’re little more than pop-up targets for the heroes to eliminate, like some apocalyptic game of whack-a-mole.
It’s possible that my mistake is in identifying Armageddon’s Children as gritty, however; when nine-tenths of the world’s population has been wiped out and demons roam the earth, you might think you’d be justified in assuming a little grit. But Brooks’ ruined Earth is like the painted backdrop of a theatrical production; it looks the part, but has nothing to do with what’s actually happening on-stage. Instead we get a peculiarly PG-rated version of apocalyptia, where cutesy ‘Street Kids’ play baseball in the mutant-haunted ruins and even the mean and moody ghetto stereotypes refuse to swear:
“You’re out!” shouted Sparrow.
“Out!” Panther laughed. “No frickin’ way!”
“Out!” Sparrow repeated …
Panther picked up the broomstick, waved it her threateningly, and then threw it down again. “What are you talking about? That don’t count! ...”
“It hit you last, and you’re out!”
“You’re frickin’ crazy!”
Sparrow stalked over to him, brushing her mop of straw-coloured hair out of her blue eyes, brow furrowed in anger. “Don’t talk to me like that! Don’t use that street language on me, Panther Puss! Owl, tell him he’s out!” (pp.170-171)
…and so on, like some bizarre amalgam of On the Beach and The House at Pooh Corner.
But the most jarring moment comes about halfway through the book, when the narrative turns its focus on a young Elf caring for the magical Ellcrys, the tree which maintained the Forbidding which kept demonkind in check since the time of Faerie. And if you’re wondering what on earth that sort of high-fantasy language is doing in a post-apocalyptic setting, you’re not alone. It’s as though Brooks forgot which series he was writing for a couple of chapters, and slipped into Shannara without realising. Yes, this is supposed to be the series which bridges the gap between the modern world and Shannara’s high fantasy, but the change of tone is so sudden and jarring that the book never really recovers. If the world is slowly slipping into magic and wonder, shouldn’t the subtlety of the transformation be reflected in the written style? There are any number of ways Brooks could have allowed the fantastic to seep into his apocalypse; the sudden plunge into fantasy tropes we’re given here smacks of nothing more than laziness.
Nonetheless, it’s a change that even the more grounded characters seem to accept with little more than token protest. Witness the baffling moment when Angel Perez, paladin of the Word, is sent off in search of an Elfstone:
Angel scowled, angry now. “Elves created it? You’re saying there are Elves out there? What does that mean? Look, I don’t know what any of this is about. I don’t know anything about Elves and their stones. I’m a barrio girl, a street girl, never even been this far north before in my life, and this Elf stuff is just words that don’t mean anything. You want to tell me what you’re talking about?” (pp.232-3)
Thanks for explaining yourself so thoroughly, Angel. But one short burst of expository dialogue later, she’s quite at home with the idea:
Well, she thought, if you’d accepted that tatterdemalions were real, how big of a jump was it to believe in Elves? (p.233)
How big of a jump indeed? Again, it’s a difficult line to walk; the conversion of the sceptic is a hoary old cliché of contemporary fantasy, and it would have been hard to do it well. But even retreading old ground would have been preferable to the writer’s fiat Brooks employs again and again in Armageddon’s Children.
Better to have left the genesis of Shannara alone than do it badly; at least that way fans of Brooks’ earlier work would still have a mystery to hold onto, to wonder and to talk about. But Brooks has taken that raw potential, that untapped possibility which excites the imagination, and wrung it dry to produce a very ordinary book. Which is such a shame.
This review was originally written for SFcrowsnest.com
Wednesday, 1 July 2009
Star Wars: Dark Lord - Rise of Darth Vader
James Luceno
Ballantine Books
0-345-47732-4
At the height of the Clone Wars, as Jedi are betrayed and the Emperor’s dark new order rises from the ashes of the Galactic Republic, Jedi Master Roan Shryne and his companions manage to escape the clone troopers seeking their deaths and go on the run. But there is one thing they could never account for – the Emperor’s sinister right-hand man, Darth Vader, assigned to hunt down those few Jedi to escape the massacre. Yet that mysterious black-armoured warrior, once the brightest star of the Jedi Order, finds himself struggling not only with the task at hand and the crippling injuries sustained in his last battle with his former master, but also with the burden of guilt at the betrayal of his friends and colleagues.
Unfortunately Anakin Skywalker was no less petulant and self-pitying at the end of Revenge of the Sith than he was at the beginning. Where was Star Wars’ malevolent, implacable crusher of throats? If ever there was a character in need of a good smack around the back of the head it was Anakin, and for all its melodrama Revenge just didn’t deliver. James Luceno’s unenviable task, then, was to polyfilla over the gaping plot holes George Lucas left and give those few Star Wars fans not yet choking to death on their own bile a decent emotional through-line. The mutilated, snivelling manchild still had to become Darth Vader, dammit!
And to give Luceno credit, he does an adequate job. The self-pity that Anakin wallows in at the novel’s opening quickly dwindles in the face of the Emperor’s emotional manipulations, and the decapitated heads of Jedi mark the excision of each scrap of humanity like morbid milestones. Vader’s hunt for the fugitive Roan Shryne is interspersed with periods of emotional self-interrogation which show quite effectively, if a little heavy-handedly, how the headstrong boy grew into a monster.
Just about the most interesting part of Dark Lord is the way Luceno balances Vader’s emotional development with that of his nominal hero, Roan Shryne. Vader’s star might be rising, but at the novel opens Shryne doesn’t even have one. He’s lost his faith in the Force, and feels inadequate to the task of training the bright-eyed Padawan he’s inheriting from a dead friend. The near-extermination of the Jedi order is just another crushing weight on his shoulders, but Luceno develops him with just the right lightness of touch. And the way the fortunes of Vader and Shryne seem to intertwine, their emotions and decisions forcing the other character off in new and unexpected directions, makes for an interesting and dramatically narrative – and a surprisingly tense climax, considering the inevitable survival of one participant.
For those looking for something a little more space-opera and a little less introspective, there’s all the usual furniture of a Star Wars novel – sleazy space-bars, heroic smugglers, unnecessarily complex sub-plots, exotically themed planets and the cross-eyed marksmanship of stormtroopers. It’s decent enough diversion, and the description of the Wookie homeworld is powerful enough to almost redeem the fact that it allows bloody Chewbacca to be shoe-horned into yet another Star Wars novel. All the standard parts are present and correct, and trotted out with the regularity of somebody running their way down a checklist. Yet I feel I’m missing something…
Ah, of course. The lightsaber battles. Well, there are lots of them.
But the problem with swordfights, particularly ones involving improbable laser-based weaponry, is that they look better on screen than on the page. Without a first-rate writer to make something fresh of the action, it’s about as interesting as reading a kendo manual. So it is in the case of Dark Lord – dry description of slashes and parries doesn’t mean very much unless you can visualise what’s happening. It’s a knack, and James Luceno doesn’t really have it. Instead he’s made the common mistake of confusing dramatic conflict with physical violence, the result of which was me skim-reading over the fight scenes in search of something more substantial.
While there is meat on these bones, particularly in the parallel development of Vader and Shryne, overall Dark Lord isn’t the richest of feasts. It’s a diverting few hours, but that’s time which could be better spent. Read Matthew Stover’s Revenge of the Sith novelisation instead, if you haven’t already; James Luceno’s offering just isn’t quite convincing enough to lift it off my ‘Star Wars by the numbers’ shelf.
This review was originally written for SFcrowsnest.com
Ballantine Books
0-345-47732-4
At the height of the Clone Wars, as Jedi are betrayed and the Emperor’s dark new order rises from the ashes of the Galactic Republic, Jedi Master Roan Shryne and his companions manage to escape the clone troopers seeking their deaths and go on the run. But there is one thing they could never account for – the Emperor’s sinister right-hand man, Darth Vader, assigned to hunt down those few Jedi to escape the massacre. Yet that mysterious black-armoured warrior, once the brightest star of the Jedi Order, finds himself struggling not only with the task at hand and the crippling injuries sustained in his last battle with his former master, but also with the burden of guilt at the betrayal of his friends and colleagues.
Unfortunately Anakin Skywalker was no less petulant and self-pitying at the end of Revenge of the Sith than he was at the beginning. Where was Star Wars’ malevolent, implacable crusher of throats? If ever there was a character in need of a good smack around the back of the head it was Anakin, and for all its melodrama Revenge just didn’t deliver. James Luceno’s unenviable task, then, was to polyfilla over the gaping plot holes George Lucas left and give those few Star Wars fans not yet choking to death on their own bile a decent emotional through-line. The mutilated, snivelling manchild still had to become Darth Vader, dammit!
And to give Luceno credit, he does an adequate job. The self-pity that Anakin wallows in at the novel’s opening quickly dwindles in the face of the Emperor’s emotional manipulations, and the decapitated heads of Jedi mark the excision of each scrap of humanity like morbid milestones. Vader’s hunt for the fugitive Roan Shryne is interspersed with periods of emotional self-interrogation which show quite effectively, if a little heavy-handedly, how the headstrong boy grew into a monster.
Just about the most interesting part of Dark Lord is the way Luceno balances Vader’s emotional development with that of his nominal hero, Roan Shryne. Vader’s star might be rising, but at the novel opens Shryne doesn’t even have one. He’s lost his faith in the Force, and feels inadequate to the task of training the bright-eyed Padawan he’s inheriting from a dead friend. The near-extermination of the Jedi order is just another crushing weight on his shoulders, but Luceno develops him with just the right lightness of touch. And the way the fortunes of Vader and Shryne seem to intertwine, their emotions and decisions forcing the other character off in new and unexpected directions, makes for an interesting and dramatically narrative – and a surprisingly tense climax, considering the inevitable survival of one participant.
For those looking for something a little more space-opera and a little less introspective, there’s all the usual furniture of a Star Wars novel – sleazy space-bars, heroic smugglers, unnecessarily complex sub-plots, exotically themed planets and the cross-eyed marksmanship of stormtroopers. It’s decent enough diversion, and the description of the Wookie homeworld is powerful enough to almost redeem the fact that it allows bloody Chewbacca to be shoe-horned into yet another Star Wars novel. All the standard parts are present and correct, and trotted out with the regularity of somebody running their way down a checklist. Yet I feel I’m missing something…
Ah, of course. The lightsaber battles. Well, there are lots of them.
But the problem with swordfights, particularly ones involving improbable laser-based weaponry, is that they look better on screen than on the page. Without a first-rate writer to make something fresh of the action, it’s about as interesting as reading a kendo manual. So it is in the case of Dark Lord – dry description of slashes and parries doesn’t mean very much unless you can visualise what’s happening. It’s a knack, and James Luceno doesn’t really have it. Instead he’s made the common mistake of confusing dramatic conflict with physical violence, the result of which was me skim-reading over the fight scenes in search of something more substantial.
While there is meat on these bones, particularly in the parallel development of Vader and Shryne, overall Dark Lord isn’t the richest of feasts. It’s a diverting few hours, but that’s time which could be better spent. Read Matthew Stover’s Revenge of the Sith novelisation instead, if you haven’t already; James Luceno’s offering just isn’t quite convincing enough to lift it off my ‘Star Wars by the numbers’ shelf.
This review was originally written for SFcrowsnest.com
Monday, 2 July 2007
The Complete Chronicles of Conan
Robert E. Howard
Gollancz
0-575-07766-2
These are the tales of Conan the Cimmerian, whose life of slaughter and thievery leads him from lost cities to decadent ones, from the deepest jungles to the dark heart of underground kingdoms, and pitted him against warriors, foul sorcerers, and supernatural horrors summoned from nightmarish realms. He is the quintessential barbarian, whose animal cunning and primitive strength of arms has carried him from humble beginnings amid the uncivilised tribes of the north to the throne of the greatest kingdom of the Hyborian Age and back to the gutter again.
Robert E. Howard’s stories of Conan, first published in pulp magazines over seventy years ago, are considered some of the most definitive works of fantasy ever written. Together with Tolkien, Zelany, Vance and a handful of other great names, Howard stands as the cornerstone upon which much of modern fantasy is based. But how well have his tales stood the test of time?
The Complete Chronicles contains twenty-seven stories, varying from a few pages to near two hundred, and Howard’s own invented history of the Hyborian Age. An afterword details Howard’s life and the development of Conan from pulp pages to comic book hero to Hollywood, while an appendix and a map detailing the various people and kingdoms of the Hyborian Age provide additional depth to Conan‘s world. But it is the stories themselves which are the core of this compilation, and Howard’s visceral, emotive storytelling makes for some powerful tales of adventure.
His hero is an old-fashioned one, straight-forward in both his desires and his approach to realising them. Quick to anger, larger than life, and a paragon of physical prowess, Conan is the very archetype of the barbarian warrior. However, in reading Howard’s stories together they all begin to blend into one. While Conan’s adventures take him to fantastic locations and pit him against terrible foes, little stands out but the Cimmerian himself. The women who stand at his side are invariably weak and timid stereotypes of the fainting heroine, unable to resist the barbarian‘s fierce passion. Only Bêlit, the eponymous co-heroine of ‘Queen of the Black Coast’, shows any real deviation from this pattern and even she can do nothing to resist Conan’s feral charms. The exotic locations Conan visits are wildly imaginative and richly painted, but serve only as a backdrop to the barbarian’s exploits and as such are given little depth in their own right. As for the villains of each piece, they range from ancient iron giants to monstrous snake-demons to greedy merchants. But the most common of Conan’s foes is the dark magician, whose sorcery calls upon creatures from beyond the pale… so many versions of the same character, with little difference between them but their names. Another, more uncomfortable trend is the common portrayal of black people as unsophisticated, brutish and bestial. While it might be understood as a result of the period in which the stories were written, this aspect of the tales is no less distasteful for it.
However, the main cause of the tales’ similarity is their sharing of the same basic narrative template. A woman is threatened by some dark beast or sorcerer, and Conan confronts the villain and defeats them through sheer force of arms. An effective story generally requires some sort of significant challenge, the possibility of the hero’s failure. But this is Conan, and there is no spell or supernatural horror that he can’t defeat through stubborn will and straightforward violence. Such a simplistic structure makes for unsatisfying conclusions, a trend not helped by the lack of any real resolution. Conan kills things and goes on his way, caring little for loose ends or the devastation he leaves in his wake. Each story ends in much the same place as it starts, but with a woman in Conan’s arms. By the time the next story begins, however, she has vanished as if she had never been. James Bond would be proud.
Howard’s stories of Conan are sexist, rife with unsettling hints of racism, and struggle to show any real depth. They do contain, however, what is without a doubt some of the most exciting and visceral fantasy ever written. This is a book to be dipped into rather than devoured whole, and in such small doses the tales’ flaws are concealed behind a fast-moving rush of action and adventure. As a result ‘The Complete Conan’ will find a place on my ‘all style no substance’ shelf, where I can get to it quick when I need an antidote for more complex tales.
This review was originally written for SFcrowsnest.com
Gollancz
0-575-07766-2
These are the tales of Conan the Cimmerian, whose life of slaughter and thievery leads him from lost cities to decadent ones, from the deepest jungles to the dark heart of underground kingdoms, and pitted him against warriors, foul sorcerers, and supernatural horrors summoned from nightmarish realms. He is the quintessential barbarian, whose animal cunning and primitive strength of arms has carried him from humble beginnings amid the uncivilised tribes of the north to the throne of the greatest kingdom of the Hyborian Age and back to the gutter again.
Robert E. Howard’s stories of Conan, first published in pulp magazines over seventy years ago, are considered some of the most definitive works of fantasy ever written. Together with Tolkien, Zelany, Vance and a handful of other great names, Howard stands as the cornerstone upon which much of modern fantasy is based. But how well have his tales stood the test of time?
The Complete Chronicles contains twenty-seven stories, varying from a few pages to near two hundred, and Howard’s own invented history of the Hyborian Age. An afterword details Howard’s life and the development of Conan from pulp pages to comic book hero to Hollywood, while an appendix and a map detailing the various people and kingdoms of the Hyborian Age provide additional depth to Conan‘s world. But it is the stories themselves which are the core of this compilation, and Howard’s visceral, emotive storytelling makes for some powerful tales of adventure.
His hero is an old-fashioned one, straight-forward in both his desires and his approach to realising them. Quick to anger, larger than life, and a paragon of physical prowess, Conan is the very archetype of the barbarian warrior. However, in reading Howard’s stories together they all begin to blend into one. While Conan’s adventures take him to fantastic locations and pit him against terrible foes, little stands out but the Cimmerian himself. The women who stand at his side are invariably weak and timid stereotypes of the fainting heroine, unable to resist the barbarian‘s fierce passion. Only Bêlit, the eponymous co-heroine of ‘Queen of the Black Coast’, shows any real deviation from this pattern and even she can do nothing to resist Conan’s feral charms. The exotic locations Conan visits are wildly imaginative and richly painted, but serve only as a backdrop to the barbarian’s exploits and as such are given little depth in their own right. As for the villains of each piece, they range from ancient iron giants to monstrous snake-demons to greedy merchants. But the most common of Conan’s foes is the dark magician, whose sorcery calls upon creatures from beyond the pale… so many versions of the same character, with little difference between them but their names. Another, more uncomfortable trend is the common portrayal of black people as unsophisticated, brutish and bestial. While it might be understood as a result of the period in which the stories were written, this aspect of the tales is no less distasteful for it.
However, the main cause of the tales’ similarity is their sharing of the same basic narrative template. A woman is threatened by some dark beast or sorcerer, and Conan confronts the villain and defeats them through sheer force of arms. An effective story generally requires some sort of significant challenge, the possibility of the hero’s failure. But this is Conan, and there is no spell or supernatural horror that he can’t defeat through stubborn will and straightforward violence. Such a simplistic structure makes for unsatisfying conclusions, a trend not helped by the lack of any real resolution. Conan kills things and goes on his way, caring little for loose ends or the devastation he leaves in his wake. Each story ends in much the same place as it starts, but with a woman in Conan’s arms. By the time the next story begins, however, she has vanished as if she had never been. James Bond would be proud.
Howard’s stories of Conan are sexist, rife with unsettling hints of racism, and struggle to show any real depth. They do contain, however, what is without a doubt some of the most exciting and visceral fantasy ever written. This is a book to be dipped into rather than devoured whole, and in such small doses the tales’ flaws are concealed behind a fast-moving rush of action and adventure. As a result ‘The Complete Conan’ will find a place on my ‘all style no substance’ shelf, where I can get to it quick when I need an antidote for more complex tales.
This review was originally written for SFcrowsnest.com
The Smoke Thief
Shana Abé
Bantam Books
0-553-80448-0
In eighteenth-century London, the nobility speak in whispers of the Smoke Thief. The police cannot catch him, baffled by the thefts. Only the best are taken, the rarest jewellery and the purest gems vanishing from their lockboxes. The thief must be a magician, for the police are baffled. He must be able to walk through walls…
Christoff, Marquess of Langford, knows the truth: the thief is no human, but a renegade drákon escaped from isolated Darkfrith in the north. As the ruler of those ancient, noble creatures, the duty of recapturing the runaway is his… before humanity discovers the secret and exposes the drákon.
Yet unbeknownst to him, the Smoke Thief is not a man but a woman. The first in centuries to be able to take dragon form, she is his equal in every way. As they hunt one another through the streets and sky of old London, growing ever closer, another danger rises to threaten the drákon and their ancient way of life…
First and foremost, ‘The Smoke Thief’ is a romance novel. The period setting and fantasy elements combine to evoke a sophisticated air of old-fashioned romanticism, and just as well. The relationship between Christoff and the runaway drákon Rue is cliché-ridden and on occasion veers dangerously close to Mills and Boon territory: she’s a strong-willed woman who despises his forceful nature even as she is attracted to his strength; he’s a charismatic, Byronic figure, admiring her will even as he tries to break it. The result is inevitable, and never seems anything but a foregone conclusion. Yet the romantic, heady atmosphere evoked through Shana Abé’s deft writing does much to hide the flaws, and somehow makes this well-trodden ground worth walking one more time.
‘The Smoke Thief’s London is the real star of the show; romantic and yet possessed of a Dickensian authenticity. A little too clean, perhaps, but still possessing that complex vitality for which it’s known. The novel’s opening chapters, set among the nobility and following Rue through a heist, succinctly paints a picture of intimacy and deception among the upper classes. With both hero and heroine inhabiting the nobility working class London should receive somewhat shorter shrift, but through a secondary character Abé efficiently conveys the misery and squalor of such an existence.
In comparison, the drákon lands of Darkfrith seem pale and empty. When the action shifts away from London, ‘The Smoke Thief’ loses much of its energy. The quiet of the countryside, ably evoked by Abé’s clever, poetic descriptions, feels a little disjointed and leaves the reader suddenly struggling to change down a gear.
Such scenes aren’t helped by the characters than inhabit them. Christoff and the council who help him rule the drákon have an unpleasantly fascist air to them, and his overbearing arrogance in particular seems the least likely thing to endear him to a woman… or the reader. Small wonder that Rue fled Darkfrith, but the conventions of romantic fiction seem to over-rule Christoff’s utter unsuitability as a protagonist. However, his unsympathetic nature is more than made up for by a superb piece of characterisation in the form of Rue herself. Sympathetic (apart from her inexplicable infatuation), conflicted and intriguing, she is as well-crafted as the city in which she thrives.
The rest of the plot is paper thin, and fades into insignificance against the romance between the leads. And while there may be nothing innovative about that particular tale, in ‘The Smoke Thief’ Shana Abé tells it with flair enough that any flaws might be forgiven.
This review was originally written for SFcrowsnest.com
Bantam Books
0-553-80448-0
In eighteenth-century London, the nobility speak in whispers of the Smoke Thief. The police cannot catch him, baffled by the thefts. Only the best are taken, the rarest jewellery and the purest gems vanishing from their lockboxes. The thief must be a magician, for the police are baffled. He must be able to walk through walls…
Christoff, Marquess of Langford, knows the truth: the thief is no human, but a renegade drákon escaped from isolated Darkfrith in the north. As the ruler of those ancient, noble creatures, the duty of recapturing the runaway is his… before humanity discovers the secret and exposes the drákon.
Yet unbeknownst to him, the Smoke Thief is not a man but a woman. The first in centuries to be able to take dragon form, she is his equal in every way. As they hunt one another through the streets and sky of old London, growing ever closer, another danger rises to threaten the drákon and their ancient way of life…
First and foremost, ‘The Smoke Thief’ is a romance novel. The period setting and fantasy elements combine to evoke a sophisticated air of old-fashioned romanticism, and just as well. The relationship between Christoff and the runaway drákon Rue is cliché-ridden and on occasion veers dangerously close to Mills and Boon territory: she’s a strong-willed woman who despises his forceful nature even as she is attracted to his strength; he’s a charismatic, Byronic figure, admiring her will even as he tries to break it. The result is inevitable, and never seems anything but a foregone conclusion. Yet the romantic, heady atmosphere evoked through Shana Abé’s deft writing does much to hide the flaws, and somehow makes this well-trodden ground worth walking one more time.
‘The Smoke Thief’s London is the real star of the show; romantic and yet possessed of a Dickensian authenticity. A little too clean, perhaps, but still possessing that complex vitality for which it’s known. The novel’s opening chapters, set among the nobility and following Rue through a heist, succinctly paints a picture of intimacy and deception among the upper classes. With both hero and heroine inhabiting the nobility working class London should receive somewhat shorter shrift, but through a secondary character Abé efficiently conveys the misery and squalor of such an existence.
In comparison, the drákon lands of Darkfrith seem pale and empty. When the action shifts away from London, ‘The Smoke Thief’ loses much of its energy. The quiet of the countryside, ably evoked by Abé’s clever, poetic descriptions, feels a little disjointed and leaves the reader suddenly struggling to change down a gear.
Such scenes aren’t helped by the characters than inhabit them. Christoff and the council who help him rule the drákon have an unpleasantly fascist air to them, and his overbearing arrogance in particular seems the least likely thing to endear him to a woman… or the reader. Small wonder that Rue fled Darkfrith, but the conventions of romantic fiction seem to over-rule Christoff’s utter unsuitability as a protagonist. However, his unsympathetic nature is more than made up for by a superb piece of characterisation in the form of Rue herself. Sympathetic (apart from her inexplicable infatuation), conflicted and intriguing, she is as well-crafted as the city in which she thrives.
The rest of the plot is paper thin, and fades into insignificance against the romance between the leads. And while there may be nothing innovative about that particular tale, in ‘The Smoke Thief’ Shana Abé tells it with flair enough that any flaws might be forgiven.
This review was originally written for SFcrowsnest.com
Wednesday, 2 August 2006
Shadow of the Giant
Orson Scott Card
Tor Books
0-812-57139-8
Almost ten years after the child-general, Ender Wiggin, and his chosen ‘Jeesh’ annihilated the alien buggers and destroyed their home planet, Earth stands at a crossroads. Down one road lies unity and cooperation; down the other, war and self-destruction. With Ender himself exiled off-planet, his chosen – with their preternatural gifts for strategy and manipulation – have become the greatest weapons in the arsenals of their respective countries. Yet some are not content with simply being used – they want to lead. The Caliph of a united Islam, the new Emperor of China and India’s self-titled ‘Goddess’ are all graduates of the Battle School where they learned the arts of war alongside Ender, and now they seem dead-set on putting those lessons to the test against one another.
All is not in their favour, however. Julian ‘Bean’ Delphiki, Ender’s most brilliant companion, and his similarly gifted wife Petra stand alongside Ender’s brother Peter in an effort to bring lasting peace to the world. Yet the young couple have problems of their own. The genetic manipulation that gave Bean his unparalleled genius is killing him – and worse, the IV fertilised embryos of their children, stolen and scattered around the world, might bear the same condition. Soon he will have to choose how to spend his last remaining days: reuniting his family, or helping Peter create a lasting peace.
Whatever you might think about the author’s politics, there’s no denying that Orson Scott Card writes an entertaining story. Just like its predecessor in this series, ‘Shadow of the Giant’ paints a fascinating picture of just what World War Three might look like, and has the courage to admit that the major players are far more likely to spring from the rising East than the fading western superpowers. India, China and the Islamic nations, with their vast manpower, make for an interesting yet potentially authentic take on an old idea.
‘…Giant’ focuses more on the political side than the military, however. The machinations of the Hegemon, Peter Wiggin, take centre stage, as he attempts to put an end to war and bring all the nations of the world together under one banner. Similarly, the alliances and assassination attempts at the head of the other powers take precedence over any military action. When troops do begin to march, despite much emphasis on the idea of war as a political necessity battle seems almost an afterthought.
The greatest flaw of ‘Shadow of the Giant’, however, lies in its wavering focus. Despite the title of the novel, this is not Bean’s story but really Peter’s. Bean seems relegated to the background, a tool in the Hegemon’s hands. Meanwhile, his search for his children seems somewhat insignificant in comparison to the global politicking. even to the character himself. Neither the urgency or the agony of Bean’s decisions comes through, and it renders much of the subplot unfortunately irrelevant.
With the epilogue comes an unexpected pleasure – the last encounter, via faster-than-light comms, between the Wiggin brothers. Theirs is the relationship which has cast such a great shadow over both the ‘Shadows’ series and ‘Ender’s Game’, and to see them interact again grants a real sense of closure, even as it once more emphasises Bean’s background role.
Other threads are not so neatly tied off. The matter of Bean’s children remains somewhat unresolved, and a series of interludes regarding the spectre of Achilles, Bean’s old enemy, that was built up from the first few pages frustratingly leads the reader nowhere. Yet despite these flaws, ‘Shadow of the Giant’ remains an absorbing read and a satisfactory conclusion to the series. Orson Scott Card’s style and strong grasp of character allow the reader to really feel involved in the story, while the passage of time has allowed his child characters to mature to the point where such adult dialogue no longer seems an oddity in their mouths. As such, ‘Shadow of the Giant’ finds a welcome place on my ‘psychological warfare’ shelf, together with its companion novels.
This review was originally written for SFcrowsnest.com
Tor Books
0-812-57139-8
Almost ten years after the child-general, Ender Wiggin, and his chosen ‘Jeesh’ annihilated the alien buggers and destroyed their home planet, Earth stands at a crossroads. Down one road lies unity and cooperation; down the other, war and self-destruction. With Ender himself exiled off-planet, his chosen – with their preternatural gifts for strategy and manipulation – have become the greatest weapons in the arsenals of their respective countries. Yet some are not content with simply being used – they want to lead. The Caliph of a united Islam, the new Emperor of China and India’s self-titled ‘Goddess’ are all graduates of the Battle School where they learned the arts of war alongside Ender, and now they seem dead-set on putting those lessons to the test against one another.
All is not in their favour, however. Julian ‘Bean’ Delphiki, Ender’s most brilliant companion, and his similarly gifted wife Petra stand alongside Ender’s brother Peter in an effort to bring lasting peace to the world. Yet the young couple have problems of their own. The genetic manipulation that gave Bean his unparalleled genius is killing him – and worse, the IV fertilised embryos of their children, stolen and scattered around the world, might bear the same condition. Soon he will have to choose how to spend his last remaining days: reuniting his family, or helping Peter create a lasting peace.
Whatever you might think about the author’s politics, there’s no denying that Orson Scott Card writes an entertaining story. Just like its predecessor in this series, ‘Shadow of the Giant’ paints a fascinating picture of just what World War Three might look like, and has the courage to admit that the major players are far more likely to spring from the rising East than the fading western superpowers. India, China and the Islamic nations, with their vast manpower, make for an interesting yet potentially authentic take on an old idea.
‘…Giant’ focuses more on the political side than the military, however. The machinations of the Hegemon, Peter Wiggin, take centre stage, as he attempts to put an end to war and bring all the nations of the world together under one banner. Similarly, the alliances and assassination attempts at the head of the other powers take precedence over any military action. When troops do begin to march, despite much emphasis on the idea of war as a political necessity battle seems almost an afterthought.
The greatest flaw of ‘Shadow of the Giant’, however, lies in its wavering focus. Despite the title of the novel, this is not Bean’s story but really Peter’s. Bean seems relegated to the background, a tool in the Hegemon’s hands. Meanwhile, his search for his children seems somewhat insignificant in comparison to the global politicking. even to the character himself. Neither the urgency or the agony of Bean’s decisions comes through, and it renders much of the subplot unfortunately irrelevant.
With the epilogue comes an unexpected pleasure – the last encounter, via faster-than-light comms, between the Wiggin brothers. Theirs is the relationship which has cast such a great shadow over both the ‘Shadows’ series and ‘Ender’s Game’, and to see them interact again grants a real sense of closure, even as it once more emphasises Bean’s background role.
Other threads are not so neatly tied off. The matter of Bean’s children remains somewhat unresolved, and a series of interludes regarding the spectre of Achilles, Bean’s old enemy, that was built up from the first few pages frustratingly leads the reader nowhere. Yet despite these flaws, ‘Shadow of the Giant’ remains an absorbing read and a satisfactory conclusion to the series. Orson Scott Card’s style and strong grasp of character allow the reader to really feel involved in the story, while the passage of time has allowed his child characters to mature to the point where such adult dialogue no longer seems an oddity in their mouths. As such, ‘Shadow of the Giant’ finds a welcome place on my ‘psychological warfare’ shelf, together with its companion novels.
This review was originally written for SFcrowsnest.com
Tuesday, 1 August 2006
The Lies of Locke Lamora
Scott Lynch
Gollancz
0-575-07802-2
In the ancient city of Camorr, where bridges and towers of indestructible Elderglass stand as a reminder of the ancient race who once made their homes here, Locke Lamora makes his living running confidence games on the rich. He and his tight-knit gang, the Gentlemen Bastards, are just one of the hundreds that pay fealty to Capa Barsavi, the criminal overlord of Camorr, but they are the only ones that dare breach the crime lord’s Secret Peace with the nobility and prey upon the upper classes. They play a dangerous game; not only is the Duke of Camorr’s disturbingly competent spymaster searching for them, but any slip might see them on the receiving end of the Capa’s famously terminal displeasure.
Just as Locke and his companions make ready to embark on their latest and most ambitious scheme, things are about to get much more complicated. Caught up in a web of intrigue, murder and deception, the Gentlemen Bastards will have to use all the tricks of their trade to stay ahead of the pack… and stay alive.
‘The Lies of Locke Lamora’ isn’t just fun to say out loud – it’s fun to read, too. The lyrical style present in the novel’s title can be found throughout, from flowing and evocative descriptions to catchy, witty dialogue. Scott Lynch has a genuine talent for turning old clichés on their heads, and the resultant writing is as fresh as new-baked bread.
Lynch’s style makes something new of his setting, too. Camorr is a bustling fantasy city in the middle of a semi-renaissance, busy with organised crime and foppish nobles, and seems to owe a little something to every city from Rome, Venice and Dickens’ London to Pratchett’s Ankh-Morpork or China Miéville’s Bas-Lag. Yet in Lynch’s description it’s possible to see something new: a place divided between the rich and the criminal where the poor are left to suffer without any protection at all. It’s a city of uncommon, casual brutality, where floating amphitheatres house bloody shark-baiting matches and the Watch are a credible threat. Yet there’s beauty, too, in the twilight glow of the Elderglass towers and the razor-edged glass flowers of the Hungry Garden, and it’s the author’s poetic descriptions that make Camorr stand out in the Fantasyland Tour Guide.
If characterisation suffers a little in comparison to such well-crafted scene-setting, that’s no great surprise. Locke and his gang suffer the two-edged curse of sharing the same wit and verve in their dialogue, which can make them difficult to tell apart in conversation. Hints of that selfsame wit can be found in other groups and characters, too, and enjoyable as it is to read such eloquent speech, realistic depiction would be better served if each character possessed a distinct voice of their own.
Still, much effort seems to have been put into fleshing out Locke and his friends. They might all talk the same, but the flashbacks to their younger days that appear throughout the narrative do much to build them up as individuals – while also serving to weave the necessary exposition into the tale without too much of a break in pace. Rather than break up the flow of the narrative, these flashbacks also somehow manage to fit well into natural pauses and heighten the anticipation for a return to the tale, while still proving entertaining in their own right.
The structure of the novel, then, does an excellent job of spicing up what is at heart a fairly simple plot. Locke Lamora’s adventures feel something like a cross between ‘The Godfather’ and the BBC TV con-artist show ‘Hustle’, with treachery and revenge as standard. Yet for all his vaunted brilliance, when things fail to go according to plan our hero seems strangely incapable of improvising. Admittedly he seems to land himself so deeply in trouble that there’s no obvious choice but to cross his fingers and hope, but you’d think that a master con-man whose expertise in planning complicated deception might be capable of taking a more active role in his fate.
Minor flaws aside, ‘The Lies of Locke Lamora’ is an excellent work and all the more astonishing for being Lynch’s debut novel. It shows its author to have a genuine talent for storytelling and particularly for descriptive prose, and one that I look forward to seeing develop over the course of the ‘Gentlemen Bastards’ series. As such, the novel will find pride of place on my ‘Magic and Misdirection’ shelf.
This review was originally written for SFcrowsnest.com
Gollancz
0-575-07802-2
In the ancient city of Camorr, where bridges and towers of indestructible Elderglass stand as a reminder of the ancient race who once made their homes here, Locke Lamora makes his living running confidence games on the rich. He and his tight-knit gang, the Gentlemen Bastards, are just one of the hundreds that pay fealty to Capa Barsavi, the criminal overlord of Camorr, but they are the only ones that dare breach the crime lord’s Secret Peace with the nobility and prey upon the upper classes. They play a dangerous game; not only is the Duke of Camorr’s disturbingly competent spymaster searching for them, but any slip might see them on the receiving end of the Capa’s famously terminal displeasure.
Just as Locke and his companions make ready to embark on their latest and most ambitious scheme, things are about to get much more complicated. Caught up in a web of intrigue, murder and deception, the Gentlemen Bastards will have to use all the tricks of their trade to stay ahead of the pack… and stay alive.
‘The Lies of Locke Lamora’ isn’t just fun to say out loud – it’s fun to read, too. The lyrical style present in the novel’s title can be found throughout, from flowing and evocative descriptions to catchy, witty dialogue. Scott Lynch has a genuine talent for turning old clichés on their heads, and the resultant writing is as fresh as new-baked bread.
Lynch’s style makes something new of his setting, too. Camorr is a bustling fantasy city in the middle of a semi-renaissance, busy with organised crime and foppish nobles, and seems to owe a little something to every city from Rome, Venice and Dickens’ London to Pratchett’s Ankh-Morpork or China Miéville’s Bas-Lag. Yet in Lynch’s description it’s possible to see something new: a place divided between the rich and the criminal where the poor are left to suffer without any protection at all. It’s a city of uncommon, casual brutality, where floating amphitheatres house bloody shark-baiting matches and the Watch are a credible threat. Yet there’s beauty, too, in the twilight glow of the Elderglass towers and the razor-edged glass flowers of the Hungry Garden, and it’s the author’s poetic descriptions that make Camorr stand out in the Fantasyland Tour Guide.
If characterisation suffers a little in comparison to such well-crafted scene-setting, that’s no great surprise. Locke and his gang suffer the two-edged curse of sharing the same wit and verve in their dialogue, which can make them difficult to tell apart in conversation. Hints of that selfsame wit can be found in other groups and characters, too, and enjoyable as it is to read such eloquent speech, realistic depiction would be better served if each character possessed a distinct voice of their own.
Still, much effort seems to have been put into fleshing out Locke and his friends. They might all talk the same, but the flashbacks to their younger days that appear throughout the narrative do much to build them up as individuals – while also serving to weave the necessary exposition into the tale without too much of a break in pace. Rather than break up the flow of the narrative, these flashbacks also somehow manage to fit well into natural pauses and heighten the anticipation for a return to the tale, while still proving entertaining in their own right.
The structure of the novel, then, does an excellent job of spicing up what is at heart a fairly simple plot. Locke Lamora’s adventures feel something like a cross between ‘The Godfather’ and the BBC TV con-artist show ‘Hustle’, with treachery and revenge as standard. Yet for all his vaunted brilliance, when things fail to go according to plan our hero seems strangely incapable of improvising. Admittedly he seems to land himself so deeply in trouble that there’s no obvious choice but to cross his fingers and hope, but you’d think that a master con-man whose expertise in planning complicated deception might be capable of taking a more active role in his fate.
Minor flaws aside, ‘The Lies of Locke Lamora’ is an excellent work and all the more astonishing for being Lynch’s debut novel. It shows its author to have a genuine talent for storytelling and particularly for descriptive prose, and one that I look forward to seeing develop over the course of the ‘Gentlemen Bastards’ series. As such, the novel will find pride of place on my ‘Magic and Misdirection’ shelf.
This review was originally written for SFcrowsnest.com
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