Staffer's Book Review

Duck and Covers: The Masterworks’ Masterpieces

Justin — Tue, 21 May 2013 13:58:12 +0000

I’m going to present these covers largely un-editorialized. Well, less that usual. The truth is these gorgeous covers are as simple as they are intricate. They seem to capture some of the power of their underlying content, without reaching too far into the esoteric. Gollancz has really done an amazing job with these Fantasy Masterworks rereleases.

Also, I’m really glad there’s a publisher out there actively keeping these works alive.

What say you?

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Love Minus Eighty by Will McIntosh

Justin — Mon, 20 May 2013 15:04:38 +0000

Will McIntosh wrote a book about love and I’m wondering whether I’ll ever read another that does it better. Love Minus Eighty isn’t a romance. In fact, it’s often antithetical to that idea. Instead it’s a charming, frightening, and all together confusing (as only love can be) treatise on the nature of relationships, their unpredictability and capability for crippling despair.

Based on McIntosh’s Hugo Award winning short story, Bridesicles, Love Minus Eighty is set years in the future where cryogenics and life extension technology have reached the point that the only thing standing in the way of death is money. For the particularly beautiful and female, dying young means ending up in cryogenic dating farms where the creepiest rich men briefly resurrect them to determine how depraved they’ll be in exchange for another chance at life. It’s a horrific idea driven home by the character of Mira, who throughout the novel is killed and awakened untold times by curious ‘Johns’ (for lack of a better words). McIntosh calls these trapped souls bridesicles.

“. . . you’re at minus eighty degrees, thanks to your insurance, but full revival, especially when it involves extensive injury, is terribly costly. That’s where the dating services comes in–”

“I have a sister,” she interrupted. “Lynn.” Her jawed move so stiffly.

“Yes, a twin sister. Now, that would be interesting.” The man grinned, his eyebrows raised.

Into this horrifying milieu McIntosh gives us Rob, a materialistic boy-toy to a cyber-celebrity. After getting dumped during a broadcast, he accidentally kills a jogger who ends up a bridesicle (although only barely. . . Winter is a mere 8.6). Ridden with guilt he sells everything to visit her, seeking her forgiveness. There’s also Veronika, a dating coach who never seems to find time to date, and the aforementioned Mira, a gay woman accidentally placed in the heterosexual dating center near its inception. Rob, Veronika, Mira, and a host of other characters soon become caught up in finding a way to end the bridesicle program, while trying desperately to carve out some happiness for themselves.

Before looking at why Love Minus Eighty works so beautifully as a narrative, I want to talk a little bit about it as science fiction. More than that, I want to talk about why it’s significant science fiction. McIntosh extrapolates the online culture of today, projecting it forward to a future where skintight ‘systems’ worn on the body allow for unfettered access to cyberspace. So wired, anyone can allow others to observe them at all times, or some of the time, or none of the time, and anyone can ‘appear’ electronically anywhere that’s publicly accessible. Veronika (and her best friend Nathan) are online love coaches, customizing profiles to aid clients in attracting partners, as well as functional Cyrano de Bergeracs during dates. It’s a fascinating, and often disturbing, look at where things like Match.com, Facebook, eHarmony, and Tinder might take us. McIntosh seems to argue no where good.

Beyond the human interactions, Love Minus Eighty focuses on one of the oldest science fictional MacGuffins — cryonics. From Demolition Man (1993), to Captain America, to H.P. Lovecraft’s Cool Air, to Robert Heinlein’s The Door Into Summer, to Lois McMaster-Bujold’s Cryoburn, freezing humans at the moment of death to hedge against some future technology has been around since the beginning of speculative fiction. McIntosh doesn’t delve deeply into the technology, but presents one of the most likely scenarios for cryonics I’ve ever read. Namely, that freezing humans and then reviving them is likely to never be an economical solution. Storing bodies will always be a challenge, and society would struggle to handle a doubled life span for all of humanity. Instead, the cryonics of Love Minus Eighty are a luxury of the super-rich, or corporate entities who cannot allow their brightest minds to die. The end result is a future that seems entirely plausible when compared to today.

As a narrative, McIntosh weaves three distinct stories together. Cannibalized from his short story Bridesicles is Mira. She’s the symbol of the injustice in a system that exploits the death of beautiful women. While Mira is rarely the focus of the narrative, she’s the point around which all the other points of view coalesce. Rob, in his guilt over Winter’s death, must find ways to continue to visit her, working his fingers to the bone to pay the fee for a ‘date’ with a bridesicle. His arc is one of redemption, clawing back in to some semblance of grace after killing a woman in a drunken fugue. And Veronika who quests to find companionship and meaning in a world that’s anathema to physical contact. At first blush these three people have nothing in common. It leaves the reader to absorb something akin to three separate novellas. If that sounds off-putting, it shouldn’t as McIntosh never allows any of his points of view to be anything less that utterly compelling. He made me feel Rob’s guilt, Veronika’s effacing, and Mira’s despair.

How these disparate stories connect is where Love Minus Eighty succeeds, subtly bringing together the points of view into one coherent commentary on a possible future. The result isn’t just an interesting science fictional discussion, but a larger discussion on the nature of love, how it can make us better than we are, and how corrupted we can become in search of it. Will McIntosh, in three short years, has become one of the best writers in the field. His novels are what science fiction is all about, using the future to extrapolate about now. This is a novel everyone should read.

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The Flames of Shadam Khoreh and the Lays of Auskaya by Bradley P. Beaulieu

Justin — Thu, 09 May 2013 21:37:00 +0000

The Winds of Khalakovo, the first installment in Bradley P. Beaulieu’s Lay of Anuskaya series, was raved about on this blog in 2011. I acquired the follow-up, The Straits of Galahesh, several months before it was released in 2012. Unfortunately, the first fifty pages felt impenetrable even after reading them a dozen different times. When Beaulieu announced the upcoming release of the final volume, The Flames of Shadam Khoreh, I committed myself to finishing the second novel in order to read the conclusion. Despite a long, arduous struggle through Straits of Galahesh that never really abated, I’m so pleased to call Flames of Shadam Khoreh a rousing success that exceeds all of the expectations placed on it by Beaulieu’s exceptional debut.

Beaulieu’s third book begins nearly two years after the events of Straits of Galahesh. War has moved from the islands to the mainland, and the Grand Duchy knows its time may be limited. The rifts between worlds grow ever wider, and Nikandr believes Nasim is the only one who can close them. I offer only the most basic of framework because to reveal more would result in endless paragraphs as to call Beaulieu’s narrative sprawling is a gross understatement. Before I go too far into what makes Flames of Shadam Khoreh a success, I think it’s important to couch it in terms of what came before.

Beginning in Winds of Khalakovo it was immediately apparent that Beaulieu and his editor, Ross Lockheart, were not terribly concerned with pace. Or perhaps it would be more fair to say both believed they had a Russian inspired Gone with the Wind in a second world fantasy. In many ways they did. Split into two ‘parts’, Winds of Khalakovo takes its time, developing first a romantic triangle between Nikandr, the series’ primary protagonist, his lover, and his future wife, before moving on to the larger conflict centered around a weakening of the barriers between the human and spirit worlds. This structure, one he employs in all three volumes, creates a misleading and difficult rise and fall to the narrative. False climaxes boost the reader to a natural conclusion, before it comes crashing down to another long build up.

Straits of Galahesh departs some from Nikandr, focusing more on Nasim. In the first book, Nasim is extant, but something of a non-entity as he suffers from an affliction that traps him between worlds. The result is behaviors that manifest in ways not dissimilar from severe autism. He emerges from this affliction in Straits of Galahesh and dedicates himself to healing the rifts between worlds. This quest is the focus of the novel, unfortunately leading to long sections of exposition and, perhaps more distracting, jumps through time and space. Woven in to that is a continuation of Nikandr’s story, as well the expansion of the overarching narrative to include several new ‘villains’.

Where my main complaint in Winds of Khalakovo revolved around its sense of pace, I never once questioned its actual storytelling which was consistently excellent. From individual scenes, to the larger construct, Beaulieu always knew where he was going and what he was trying to accomplish, layering in themes that echo those of the Russian Golden Age classics. Straits of Galahesh doesn’t. Instead, it often feels like Beaulieu bit off more than he could chew with a story too large in scope to contain in a single novel. Nasim, Nikandr, and the as yet unmentioned (by me) Atiana and Sariya, checker the globe, visiting places, times, dreams, and memories with a constant churn of new characters and locales to catalog. Not to mention language that too often felt overworked,

More people filed into the room, mostly relatives, both close and distant, of Atiana’s, but there were others as well: diplomats, officers of the staaya, men and women of business and industry. Father had gone to great lengths hoping to impress upon the Empire that Anuskaya was no plum ripe for the plucking.

In Flames of Shadam Khoreh, Beaulieu brings his characters together for the first time in the entire series. The result is a focused narrative that allows all his characters, and his excellent writing, to shine without the constantly jarring travel and transitions that plagued previous volumes. There’s also what appears to be an effort to be more clear and concise with his prose,

His feet shifted. He heard the skitter of stones as they fell over the edge and slipped down along the face of the cliff, but he didn’t care. Stones might fall, but he would not.

Most significant of all, Beaulieu introduces, for the first time, an everyman character –Styophan.

Throughout the series Beaulieu draws his point of view characters from the gentry or minority groups steeped in mysticism. In the case of Nikandr and Atiana, their background as nobles left them cold and removed. They deny their love, place their duty before themselves, and, other than some minor internal whimpering, never express their loss articulately. It codes authentic for the typical Russian suffering-as-a-means-to-redemption, but doesn’t make them particularly compelling. Styophan on the other hand is just a foot soldier in the war, a loyal servant to Nikandr and the Khalakovo household. He loves his wife, and wants nothing more than to have children with her. Instead, he’s shipped off to war, to die in a mission he doesn’t understand. Styophan provides a touch stone to the reader that grounds the entire series in reality, moving away from rifts between worlds and elemental magic. Combined with Beaulieu’s growth as a writer, and the Lays of Anuskaya’s plot lines finally coalescing, Styophan’s brilliant chapters put Flames of Shadam Khoreh in rarefied air.

In 2011 I called Winds of Khalakovo ‘deep and deliberate’ with poignant dialogue ‘that fits the thematic tones perfectly.’ I believed very strongly it was one of the most promising debuts of the year, kicking off what was a huge year of exceptional debuts for Night Shade Books. Two years later that promise is delivered in the form of Bradley P. Beaulieu’s self-published third book Flames of Shadam Khoreh. Given the pacing problems throughout the series, I would argue that the Lays of Anuskaya was too ambitious for a debut novelist. If that’s true, then those difficulties are on full display in Straits of Galahesh which I cannot recommend on its own.

However, despite my difficulties with the middle volume, this final installment makes it all worth it. The Flames of Shadam Khoreh isn’t just one of the better books I’ve read this year, but one of the best epic fantasy endings I’ve had the pleasure of reading. To potential readers let me stress that this is not an easily digestible collection of novels. Quite the opposite. Instead, I would call it a collection of novels worth investing in. I promise it will pay dividends.

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Duck and Covers: Is the Baen art director taking side jobs?

Justin — Wed, 08 May 2013 19:56:57 +0000

When you’re Baen, you know you have a bit of a reputation for ridiculous covers. Not just over sexed ones either, but classics like:

The covers below are not from Baen, a fact I find difficult to rationalize given the styles employed. Do you think Baen’s art director might be freelancing?

First up, young adult novel whose title I cannot decrypt. Is it Warriors? Thunder Rising? Dawn of Clans? I just don’t know! Let’s go with Bonus Scene Inside! Apparently this novel features cats that have powers to fracture the earth and appear in circles that hover above said fractures. Do you think these cats are weaving gateways? Watch out Egwene Al’vere!

Then we have Mike Resnick, and Pyr. I’m rather surprised with Pyr who are usually perfectly directed by the estimable Lou Anders. But, this dinosaur, raygun, mustache combo screams Will Smith’s Wild Wild West, which isn’t a comparison any sane consumer of fiction would want.

And now the coup de grâce. . .Garreth Powell’s Ack-Ack Macaque book two, Hive Monkey. It looks like S.H.I.E.L.D. played entirely by monkeys! And is that Mr. Belvedere next to the E?

I think it’s pretty clear Baen is spreading. I for one welcome my new animal loving overlord of ridiculous covers.

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A Shambling Guide to Tao: How Plot Structure and Character Arc are Overrated

Justin — Fri, 03 May 2013 16:11:33 +0000

Since the moment I finished Wesley Chu’s debut novel, The Lives of Tao, I called reading it ‘the most fun I’ve had this year.’ I wouldn’t call it the best novel, and maybe not even the best debut, but it’s one of those reads that puts a smile on my face that won’t go away. In reading Mur Lafferty’s ‘debut’ (I put that in quotes since it’s only a debut in that it’s her first novel published by a SFWA approved house) A Shambling Guide to New York City, I found myself less joyful despite nearly identical character arcs and plot structures. My responses to myself ranged from ‘well everyone’s mileage varies’ to ‘oh my God these two books are incredibly similar why do I love one and not the other?’ Considering that question is what this review is about.

Lives of Tao tells the story of out-of-shape IT technician Roen who hears a voice in his head that turns out to be an ancient alien life-form named Tao who’s hitching a ride. Turns out the aliens have been on Earth for a long time, with two opposing factions searching for a way off-planet. The Genjix would sacrifice humanity to accomplish it, and the Prophus wouldn’t. Roen, being lucky enough to get a Prophus, is now a secret agent in a war totally beyond him.

Compare it to Shambling Guide, starring out-of-work non-fiction editor, Zoe. Looking for work in New York City, Zoe takes a job to write an undead (or as they prefer to be called, coterie) guide to the city. Not to be put off by anything — especially not her blood drinking boss or death goddess coworker — Zoe ends up deep into the coterie lifestyle. Things take a turn for the worse and she’s soon caught in the middle of a battle between nether forces.

In terms of character, both feature young fish out of water, in way over their head, with not only the need to overcome the challenge in front of them, but a few personal challenges that have set them back socially. Not an unusual arc by any means, it fits neatly into the urban fantasy (or urban science fiction?) niche where both Lives of Tao and Shambling Guide reside. Likewise, both novels follow their protagonists through periods of denial (I don’t have an alien in my head!), acceptance (damn, look at all these undead!), adjustment (I better learn how to be a secret agent!), and finally active participants in their respective discovered worlds (That’s how you defeat supernatural beasties!).

Establishing that the component pieces of Chu and Lafferty’s novels bear some congruence, why then do I find myself in love with the former and merely warm on the latter?

To begin, I find Wesley Chu funny and Mur Lafferty something closer to charming. There is no form of entertainment more subjective than humor, but I submit that Chu makes a greater effort to be overtly silly:

‘That’s the craziest thing I’ve ever heard. So you guys were in dinosaurs; then, did you all get together in your dinosaur bodies and build dinosaur cities?’

Roen is bumbling with an out of shape body and mind. His ride-along alien, Tao, uses the biting humor of the school yard that has been getting laughs for eons. Where Chu pushes for laughs, Lafferty seems to be ubiquitous in her lightheartedness, insofar as the story rarely descends into the morose even when nearly all the characters have shuffled this mortal coil, but never treads into legitimate laughter. Instead Shambling Guide relies more on connecting with its readers’ touchstones,

She’d heard her friends in college talk about elder gods Cthulhu and Ithaqua, and the stories had sounded awesome, but she’d never actually sat down to read Lovecraft’s words. The anecdotes had been better than the stories.

Much of this differentiation comes through in the general voice of the author, where Chu is droll, Lafferty feels more cynical.

There’s also a difference in activity. I was going to initially say agency, but that isn’t right because Roen is mostly an unwilling participant and Zoe is much more of a decider. However, Roen is constantly being urged to action by Tao, and several other characters who surround them (namely other secret agent types). He ends up right in the thick of things, fighting alongside his ‘team’ to accomplish their mission. Zoe often charts her own course, but someone else mans the rudder. She possesses agency, but never feels like an agent. In terms of big picture, the result is Lives of Tao feeling like a thriller dressed up in urban fantasy clothes, and Shambling Guide more of urban-fantasy-cum-chick-lit.

If it’s not clear yet, I hope I’m demonstrating that my gushy feelings for Lives of Tao come down to the most subjective of factors. Tone and voice are so important to readers enjoyment of a novel.

Urban fantasy, a subgenre I do not typically enjoy, is often written in the kind of tone and voice employed by Lafferty throughout Shambling Guide. It’s a style that doesn’t always resonate for me. When I began considering my reasons behind all of this, I feared that it had something to do with gender — some unconscious bias on my part. Recognizing this is a bit of land mine, I was concerned that Shambling Guide wasn’t standing out for me because it featured a female protagonist making female jokes. Zoe is distressed personally because she just had an affair with a married man, and she’s fled to New York to start over. She’s got a crush on her hot neighbor, and she is constantly being seduced by her incubus coworker. There’s even some romance of a more graphic nature. These are the kinds of elements society might suggest has cooties all over them.

I know now my relative enjoyment had little to do with that influence. In fact, the most enjoyable moments in Shambling Guide begin with ‘chick lit’ elements, including Zoe’s eventual confrontation with her romantic tormentor and her interactions with same gender friends. What separates it and Lives of Tao has nothing to do with story, or plot, or gender. It just comes down to style. I fell in love with Wesley Chu’s, and I can appreciate Mur Lafferty’s. For the adventurous reader I’d strongly suggest reading both to get a real sample of how similar stories and structures can make for very different reading experiences.

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A Tor Heavy Group of Short Review

Justin — Mon, 29 Apr 2013 21:19:58 +0000

Shattered Pillars by Elizabeth Bear

Remember when I made a bit of a stink that Range of Ghosts wasn’t nominated for a Hugo? I am even more vindicated by the exceptional quality of the sequel, Shattered Pillars. The new novel picks up right where Range of Ghosts left off with a disgraced horse lord and his wizard lover fighting against a fundamental religious megalomaniac.

There are times when Bear is a little unclear with her intent, or the inherent fuzziness of the magic raises an eyebrow, but couched in Bear’s gorgeous prose and confident voice everything comes off pitch perfect. I really can’t emphasize the point enough. Even when Shattered Pillars stumbles a bit with its pace or flow, there’s nothing that can derail my enjoyment because it’s just so well written. I’m a huge fan of Elizabeth Bear’s, and I’ll be reading the next book in the series the second I get it. Highest Recommendation.

Firebrand by Gillian Philip

I described Firebrand on Twitter as some strange combination of Mark Lawrence’s Prince of Thorns and Stina Leicht’s Of Blood and Honey. Upon reflection I still really dig the comparison. Philip’s protagonist, Seth MacGregor, is the bastard son of a fae (or something like it) nobleman. Seth loves only one thing in the world, his brother Conal, and resents everything, and everyone, else. After their father is assassinated the pair end up on the wrong side of their Queen and get exiled across the veil and in to sixteenth century Europe.

The tone of the novel is a dark one, told in the first person from Seth’s perspective, much like Lawrence’s Broken Empire series. Seth has something to prove and damned anyone who gets in his way (for anyone who has read Leicht or Lawrence this will sound an awful lot like both Liam and Jorg). In terms of the way the world functions, it’s very much the standard fae motif — behind the veil of reality is another world inhabited by a magical people with powers that must be persecuted wherever they’re found. All of these facets work well together, but I often found the overall product a little under developed. I would expect future volumes to improve. Recommended.

Halo: Glasslands by Karen Traviss

At first blush, Glasslands is something of an exercise in patience. I played the first two Halo games in college and enjoyed them. I would even go so far as to say that their story telling was top notch (at least in terms of first-person shooter expectations). I can’t say I ever imagined there would be eleven novels and short story collection set in the world. Jumping in to Glasslands, I realized quickly that I had no idea what was happening and that I was unlikely to ever get my head around it. However, as I continued to read I found that the narrative was taking place in two separate spheres — one which was the overarching Halo narrative, and the other belonged to Traviss alone.

It’s that second part that I’ll focus on here, in which Traviss creates a Cold War style conflict reminiscent of the U.S. involvement in the Soviet war in Afghanistan. She tracks a team of operatives behind enemy lines as they engage with separatist elements. It all reads very well, telling such a good story that I wished I didn’t have to continually go back to the sections focused on the Halo-party-line (so to speak). Regardless it’s easy to see why Traviss has found so much success as Glasslands is an extremely well told tale. Recommended, but not without reading the entire series.

Tales from the Cobra Wars: A GI Joe Anthology, edited by Max Brooks

You know what I loved as a kid? GI Joe. Oh God did I love it. I had the movie, the mobile command center, and Defiant. There were over fifty action figures in my collection, including just about every possible version of Snake Eyes imaginable. I read the comics too, although that was more in the early nineties somewhat after the GI Joe craze of the late eighties. Guess what I loved as an adult? The GI Joe: The Rise of Cobra film from 2009. I’m probably also going to love GI Joe: Retaliation (Ok, I didn’t.) Don’t judge me!

That’s a very brief lead in to the new prose collection from IDW Publishing, Tales from the Cobra Wars: A G.I. Joe Anthology. Edited by Max Brooks, of World War Z fame, the collection focuses in on one character with each story, highlighting such luminaries as Flint, Skidmark, Brainstorm, Duke, and Snake Eyes. There are cameos from Roadblock, Shipwreck, Scarlett, and dozens of others. It’s a tremendous amount of fun, albeit a superficial one that rarely treads into substantive character development. I’m very disappointed that IDW didn’t find a female author to take a crack at these. Many of the stories come across with the same kind of tone, until Brooks’ final story which focused much more on the costs of war, even to the seemingly superhuman Joes. It makes for a touching finish to an otherwise one note collection. Recommended for fans.

I Travel By Night by Robert McCammon

I’ve been nothing, but impressed by everything I’ve read from Robert McCammon. His new novella, I Travel By Night, is no exception. It tells the story of ‘adventurer’ Trevor Lawson. He’s in the problem solving business, assuming the problem is on the side of the angels. For comparisons sake he’s a nocturnal solo version of the 1980′s A-Team. Roaming late nineteenth-century America, Lawson does what good he can traveling by night in an effort to regain his mortality. But to do that, he must find LaRouge, the monster that made him.

A wild west setting with more Victorian horror sensibilities, I Travel By Night is an exceptional, and somewhat expected, vampire story. Told in a tight third person, Lawson’s character is conflicted as he tries to hold on to his humanity and find a way back to the sunlight. The success of the novel is attributed entirely with McCammon’s story telling which manages to overcome dozens of standard tropes to feel fresh, even when it really isn’t. Recommended.

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Speculative Fiction 2012: Out now!

Justin — Thu, 25 Apr 2013 13:41:30 +0000

We have news(!) – Speculative Fiction 2012 is now available on Amazon.

This collection contains over fifty of the year’s best online essays and reviews, from Tansy Rayner Roberts on Supergirl to Lavie Tidhar on China Miéville to Aishwarya Subramanian on My Little Pony to Joe Abercrombie on, er, himself. It is a diverse collection of some of last year’s best and most interesting writing. We fully expect – and hope – it will cause discussion, debate and a bit of a ruckus.

The book also contains a foreword from Orbit author Mur Lafferty, an introduction from this year’s editors (Jared Shurin and myself) and an afterword from the 2013 editors, Ana Grilo and Thea James of The Booksmugglers. Not to mention the beautiful cover from the talented Sarah Anne Langton.

All proceeds from sales of this book are donated to Room to Read, supporting literacy and gender equality in education around the world.

Paperbacks are available now:

Amazon.com
Amazon.co.uk
Createspace

And Kindle versions will be coming shortly.

(Please note that the physical versions do come with exclusive, print-only content: the back cover.)

This has been a learning experience, a labor of love, and, most importantly, a lot of fun. Everyone involved was an absolute pleasure to work with (except Jared).

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Duck and Covers: Can you believe I’m not going to rip one of these?

Justin — Wed, 24 Apr 2013 14:06:00 +0000

For once I’m only going to say nice things. . . mostly. I didn’t really love Adam Christopher’s Empire State. It was a novel that didn’t seem entirely sure about what it wanted to be. However, I can do nothing but bow down to this Forbidden Planet limited edition exclusive cover:

Holy crap. Am I right? I mean it’s beautiful on its own, but having read the book it’s also perfectly appropriate.

While I didn’t like Empire State so much, there’s one book series this blog has had nothing but good things to say about — Howard Andrew Jones’ The Chronicles of Swords and Sand. I consider both novels something of a revelation. So was the cover for the Desert of Souls hardback by Charles Keegan. The covers that followed in trade paperback and the sequel Bones of the Old Ones, were less spectacular.

Thankfully, Jones’ UK publisher has redeemed the series visually by commissioning Keegan to revisit his style for Bones of the Old Ones across the pond. Revel in it:

Awesome.

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Promise of Blood by Brian McClellan

Justin — Tue, 23 Apr 2013 21:25:48 +0000

Sharing an editor at Orbit Books, Brian McClellan got a nice boost when bestselling author Brent Weeks called Promise of Blood, “a hugely promising debut. . .[and] the finest flintlock fantasy I’ve read. . .” For the first part, I really couldn’t agree more. McClellan’s debut novel reads much like something I’ve come to expect from Weeks or Brandon Sanderson, lacking perhaps only the confidence that comes with seeing your name in the New York Times. To the second, well, I’ll find it difficult to oust Bradley P. Beaulieu’s The Winds of Khalakovo from that perch, but I won’t object to having Promise of Blood in the conversation.

McClellan opens in the aftermath of a military coup, told from the perspective of Adamat, a private investigator and struggling small businessman. Ordered by the coup-master himself, Field Marshall Tamas, Adamat must discover why with their dying breath the Royal Cabal whispered: “You can’t break Kresimir’s Promise.” Throughout Promise of Blood the phrase becomes something of a “Who is John Galt?”, urging the narrative forward with a need to know the answers. It’s a storytelling technique as old as fiction, but one that in modern fantasy most reminds me of Brandon Sanderson. Given that McClellan was a student of Sanderson at Brigham Young University, perhaps this affinity is only natural.

Adamat’s investigation is only a third of the narrative, with points of view from both Tamas and his son Taniel filling out the rest. Where Adamat’s sections read like urban fantasy, Tamas’s focus on the political and military aspects, combining to create something of a high stakes war thriller (why isn’t that its own subgenre?). It’s Taniel then who reads most like an epic fantasy, journeying across the land to accomplish a goal that seems uncomfortably beyond the reach of a mere human — even one with the power to manipulate gun powder.

On that note, it seems an appropriate time to talk about what, quite frankly, gets too far too much attention: the magic system(s). That isn’t to say the magic systems aren’t awesome and fangasm inducing, but I find them to be a mechanism for a larger discussion that’s far more relevant (I’ll get to this in a minute).

The primary system of magic, or rather the one that McClellan spends the most time delving into, is the augmenting of power via gun powder and things propelled by same. It is not terribly dissimilar from the ‘Coinshot’ powers developed by Sanderson in his Mistborn franchise. Tamas and Taniel are both powder mages capable of igniting gunpowder with their minds, or ingesting it for enhanced reflexes. Likewise, they can ‘float’ bullets around corners and with great precision over long distances. Juxtaposed with the more traditional Privileged (massively powerful wizards who directly manipulate reality with their fingers), it’s clear that McClellan is playing out the larger industrial revolution conflict even within his magic system.

If there’s a weakness in the novel’s narrative, it’s that the magical conflict of new and old feels shoehorned in to the larger, and in my opinion, much more interesting conflict native to industrial revolutions. That conflict is the crux of how Promise of Blood comes at epic fantasy tropes from a new direction. Rather than merely set his world in a more advanced technological period, something I’ve seen before in the aforementioned Sanderson’s Alloy of Law or Paul Kearney’s Hawkwood and the Kings or Anthony Huso’s The Last Page, McClellan places the narrative inside that change with the new and the old in competition for supremacy. This conflict plays out beyond the magic systems in Tamas’ political realities of dealing with labor unions, academia, and the imbalance all of these factors create within society.

From a storytelling perspective I found Promise of Blood wildly entertaining. McClellan’s style is a compelling one, with the kind of pacing and flow that debut novelists often stumble around. The only point of view, of the four, I found underwhelming was Taniel’s who pits himself against godlike forces that coded far too run-of-the-mill fantasy for my tastes, particularly when set against such interesting plots like Tamas’ political survival, Adamat’s investigatory everyman, and Nila’s isolation. I suspect my opinion will be in the minority though, and most of McClellan’s readership will find Taniel’s thread most engaging. Therein lies some of the genius associated with the novel — there’s something for every kind of reader. Well, almost. . .

As I consider the next book in the series, The Crimson Campaign, I very much hope to see more of Nila, the only substantive female character in the book, and Vlora, an extremely intriguing love interest for Taniel who feels more like furniture than a character. I also hope that Brian McClellan continues to press the boundaries of what epic fantasy can do. Too often first novels set an interesting stage before gods and supreme-powers get involved, requiring a horde of Gandalfs to solve the problem. Regardless of where he takes it from here, Promise of Blood is an excellent debut that promises to captivate readers from all walks of (genre) life.

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The Riftwar Saga: Fifteen Years Later

Justin — Mon, 08 Apr 2013 13:55:34 +0000

I’ve read approximately thirteen novels by one Mr. Raymond E. Feist, making him, along with Piers Anthony, the most read author of my life. This is somewhat of a disturbing realization on my part. I would note here that while I’ve read thirteen novels set in Midkemia and Xanth respectively, I’ve read even more set in Krynn. . . well over thirty. For the uninformed, Krynn is Dragonlance, the role playing game novelizations that I (and Jared Shurin) would argue as the face that launched a thousand ships in the hearts and minds of budding fantasists. I’m not really selling myself as a connoisseur of literature am I?

While my memories of the Xanth and Dragonlance novels feel accurate, namely that they are by and large unreadable to an older audience, I have continued to feel adequately warm and fuzzy about Raymond Feist’s work. So much so that I’ve actively waited for the day that his older novels would cross the electronic divide so that I might re-avail myself of them. Don’t everyone go running off to their favorite eBook retailer to pick up their copy though because I got tired of waiting and just ordered them in mass market paperback, which, by the by, feels like a horribly archaic way to go about reading backlist titles.

I think this is what we in the industry call ‘writing my way into things.’

It all goes to say that I read Raymond Feist as a teenager and I loved it. I really fucking loved it. I loved it so much I had to find everything just like it and read that too. Which leads me to today, where I consume genre literature with abandon and feel the need to tell everyone what I think about the things I read. So, I suppose I should send Feist a thank you note (or you should send him an angry one). Instead, I’m going to spend quite a few paragraphs telling readers how many things he does wrong while still managing to present pieces of fiction that have stood the test of time.

It begins with Magician: Apprentice, which begins itself in a castle keep with an orphaned kitchen boy destined for greatness. If that sounds familiar, I could be talking about David Edding’s Pawn of Prophecy or Lloyd Alexander’s The Book of Three, proving once again that when attempting to connect with a young audience it’s best to provide them with a path to efficacy that involves almost no hard work. What young person can resist such a sirens song? Not I, even at the tender and vulnerable age of thirty-one. Apprentice grabbed me quickly, investing in Pugs rise from kitchen boy, to magician’s apprentice, to princess minder, to squire of the court, to slave, to the most powerful wizard alive.

Like any good fledgling wizard, Pug has a companion — Tomas. Tomas is everything Pug is not, easy to get along with, confident, strong, and not orphaned. Unlike Pug who has to work for his gains in stature and power (although almost all that hard work happens off camera, greatly lessening its impact, but then who wants to read that boring stuff?), Tomas stumbles across a dragon’s horde and is subsequently bequeathed the nearly limitless power of an ancient race of dragon riders. There’s no journey for Tomas, one day he’s a teenage dream with a sword and the next he’s Ashen-Shugar, the last Valheru (who were the beings that created all the other beings and made them slaves until they got bored and tried to kill the gods and then killed each other). As the novel progresses, moving into Magician:Master, then Silverthorn, then A Darkness at Sethanon, Tomas is forced to deal with what that power does to his humanity. It’s the only time he presents anything of interest to the reader beyond how kick ass he is with a sword. But, by that time, it’s become clear that Tomas is necessary to defeat the novels’ villains, thus robbing any tension such a conflict might engender.

Oddly, despite the novels beginning in Crydee with Tomas and Pug as the focus, both share the stage with two others as the series’ primary characters — Arutha, son of the Duke to whom Pug and Tomas owe fealty, and Jimmy the Hand, erstwhile thief of Krondor who doesn’t even show up in the first installment. Both are clear archetypes, easily as identifiable as Pug and Tomas, the cold and calculating commander and the ruffian scoundrel each with a heart of gold only eclipsed by their sense of honor. Feist structures the novels so that anytime Pug or Tomas might start doing something boring like being a slave, learning magic, dealing with his godlike powers, or developing emotional attachments to things, he quickly jumps to Arutha, who never seems to stop fighting off assassination attempts or fleeing from wicked dark elves through forest of such and such filled with bad things.

While I’m on the subject of what Feist does poorly, I should mention the deus ex machina upon which the whole series hinges. Macros the Black. Macros is Feist’s stand-in for Allanon, Gandalf, Belgarion, and Fizban. In fact, in the early eighties it seems almost impossible that a fantasy novel of any great success exists without an all powerful wizard who can show up, wave his hand about, and solve all the heroes problems. Like the nature of the effortless rise to power (see Pug and Tomas), I can’t help but ponder this plot device as another tantalizer for the young adult — even when shit gets really bad as it’s wont to do in those teenage years have no fear because someone much older and wiser is sure to have the answers you require! This relationship is so clear that by series end, Macros has fundamentally robbed most of Feist’s character of any agency.

Macros does manage not to rob any of the female characters of agency. Of course, that’s entirely due to the fact that there isn’t a female character with agency to begin with. Feist almost completely ignores women other than to provide his male leads with love interests or motivations to become more heroic. That’s not to say all his women are doting house wives. At least in one case he writes a ‘strong’ women, but she never steps out of the shadow of the men around her, becoming someone’s wife and fading quickly out of focus. I should note here that in Feist’s future work, female character play a larger role, particularly in the Empire Trilogy co-written with Janny Wurts.

While I’m being critical, there’s something inherently silly about massive conflicts that are resolved by a small group of individuals who can infiltrate the bad guys lair, kill of a couple of them, and things are okay. This is the fallacy of, ‘a few people can get places an army cannot.’ I buy the basic tenet. . . two people can fit through a door that three people can’t. But, in the middle of a massive conflict the notion that removing two or three key influencers is enough to end a conflict is, to quote Nick Swardson, “a Grand Canyon made out of dreams and whispers.” Oh, especially when there’s some prophecy that supports it all.

Now, all of those criticisms I’ve just made, and I think they are all perfectly legitimate and appropriate, almost have to be examined through the lens of when they were written. And, in that respect, Feist doesn’t do anything objectionably unique. Nearly all of his contemporaries fall into the same pitfalls. With that in mind, and everything I’ve already said, Raymond Feist’s Riftwar Saga is one of the most enduring stories of its time, and one that continues to be readable and worthwhile for modern readers. I’m sure the question on everyone’s lips is why?

BECAUSE I LOVE IT AND I SAID SO!

Or, because unlike Dragonlance and its ilk, Feist’s novels aren’t written in crayon. The Riftwar Saga is readable, and well paced, and perfectly structured. There’s little unnecessary exposition and the narrative flows from one action scene to the next. The recent decision by Feist’s UK and Australia publishers to release the series in young adult versions seems incredibly wise to me. Not only does it capitalize on a new readership (and one that has likely not been exposed to Feist yet), but it sets expectations for the series where they belong. The themes and styles contained in Magician: Apprentice, Magician: Master, Silverthorn, and A Darkness at Sethanon, are those best served to be absorbed by teenagers who won’t notice all the hand waving and conveniences on which the stories rely.

In other words, approach with caution yon adult reader, but do approach nevertheless. To understand some of the places today’s fantasies have arrived, there’s value in reading what’s come before. Raymond Feist stands as one of the real forerunners of fantasy’s expansion and acceptance in the 1980′s, albeit one that is too often forgotten next to Terry Brooks and Robert Jordan.

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