Red Country by Joe Abercrombie

A lot of people feel that Joe Abercrombie is the heir apparent, if not the king, of the fantasy genre. I suppose that depends on your world view, reading habits, personal tastes, and the phase of the moon. While I’ve enjoyed Abercrombie’s work, finding the genre subversion, over the top violence, and gallows humor to be an engaging change of pace from the staples of the genre, I don’t know that I could place his work at the top of the genre pyramid. In fact, I put off Red Country for a long time, not in the mood for the bleakness and the grit that I knew it would contain. I feel foolish for that decision now. Red Country showcases all of the things I love about Abercrombie’s work, his deft hand with character and dialogue and a blending of unexpected genre tropes that kept my knuckles tight on the pages for the considerable duration of his exploration of the Western viewed through the grime encrusted lens of his oeuvre.

It’s important to note that I cut my reading teeth on westerns. Though I abandoned the Wild West for Middle Earth and similar environs, I never lost my appreciation for stories of hard men and women prying a life out of a hostile world. Abercrombie shows an masterful understanding of the genre whose trappings he borrows and as expected promptly uses the best of those to turn in a rousing tale, that while not blazing new ground never disappoints.

The Iron Wyrm Affair by Lilith Saintcrow

Long before I made my first foray into fantasy novels aimed at adults, I was fascinated with Arthur Conan Doyle's Sherlock Holmes stories. For many years, my collection of all of the Holmes stories was the largest and most well worn book on my shelf. So when I saw the cover of The Iron Wyrm Affair and was immediately reminded of not only the Guy Ritchie movie featuring Tony Stark, but of some of my fondest reading memories from my adolescence. The back cover copy only further peaked my curiosity, teasing me with a seminal quote from Doyle as a final line. Take a look for yourself.

Emma Bannon, forensic sorceress in the service of the Empire, has a mission: to protect Archibald Clare, a failed, unregistered mentath. His skills of deduction are legendary, and her own sorcery is not inconsiderable. It doesn't help much that they barely tolerate each other, or that Bannon's Shield, Mikal, might just be a traitor himself. Or that the conspiracy killing registered mentaths and sorcerers alike will just as likely kill them as seduce them into treachery toward their Queen.

In an alternate London where illogical magic has turned the Industrial Revolution on its head, Bannon and Clare now face hostility, treason, cannon fire, black sorcery, and the problem of reliably finding hansom cabs.

The game is afoot..

Based on that information alone, you might think I'd love this book. It has magic, mystery, and what sounds like a mechanical dragon based on the title, and it is influenced by one of the most beloved authors of my adolescence. I approached The Iron Wyrm Affair from that place, ready to be thrilled and entertained. Sadly, while the concept is certainly compelling, the execution left quite a bit to be desired. The Iron Wyrm Affair is a mess on so many levels that even Saintcrow's best efforts are buried under the weight of her awkward prose and poor execution of some of the most basic concepts of good storytelling. I desperately wanted to like this novel, but try as I might I just couldn't look past its flaws.

My largest gripe with this first installment of the Bannon and Clare series, is the prose. While I certainly understand what Saintcrow is attempting, using the prose to convey an homage to the language of the stories that inspired the novel, to ground it and give it a familiar feel for the reader, the execution is simply too poor to be anything but a distraction from the tale itself. Full of awkward phrasing and repetitive descriptions the prose bears little real resemblance to the writings of Doyle or his contemporaries. Peppering the prose with indulgent word choices with very little in the way of context, really hampered my enjoyment of the novel. A simpler, less stylized prose would have served the novel much better in my opinion. As it stood, the barrier of the language used was almost too much to overcome.

The thing that kept me reading past my issues with the narrative voice, was the concepts Saintcrow used when constructing her alternate London (Londinium in the books). I was intrigued by many of the concepts, sorcerors working hand in hand with mentaths (though I was often reminded of Herbert's Dune, every time I saw the title), ancient dragons sharing the page with clockwork constructs that resemble powered armor or mecha, and a spirit that rules through choosing hosts from British royalty. While none of this is new, the particular mix that Saintcrow devises is full of its own particular flavor and begs for exploration. It's how these elements are explored that left me cold.

While I'm a big fan of writers who exemplify the "show don't tell" philosophy of storytelling, there are times when telling is the only option, and Saintcrow does precious little of it. The particulars of sorcery or Clare's abilities as a mentath are only loosely explained and rarely in the moment when the reader needs answers to better frame the current action. Magic is ever present in Londinium, but Saintcrow seems content to just throw term after term at the reader with zero exposition to frame it. I usually can overlook these things, being patient enough to wait for things to be made clear, but Saintcrow delivers these explanations and clarifications far too late, and I felt that some light exposition should definitely be present far earlier in the narrative.

There are other issues, such as the heroine of the story being seemingly irresistible to every male character she encounters despite the fact her personality is simultaneously cold and thorny for most of her interactions with her male cast mates. Clare's deductive capabilities are poorly used, with Saintcrow never showing the sequence of logic that leads to the mentath's leaps of understanding. Clare's big moments are often just a mess of dialogue that equates to magic hand waving, and is ultimately unsatisfying and make it harder to maintain my suspension of disbelief.

Despite all of the clever ideas and intriguing premises, I doubt I will give the Bannon and Clare series another go. The antiquated and poorly executed prose and unsatisfying level of exposition on critical concepts left me too cold, for even the most engaging of other aspects to keep me reading.

Coming Attractions: The Crimson Campaign by Brian McClellan

While I'm perhaps a bit late for the party, those who enjoyed Brian McClellan's Promise of Blood, will be pleased to see that cover art and the synopsis have been released by Orbit. Based on the strength of McClellan's debut, I'm already anxious to return to Tamas, Adamat, and Taniel's adventure and really hope that McClellan has some new POV characters to add to the mix.

The publisher's synopsis follows:

'The hounds at our heels will soon know we are lions'
Tamas's invasion of Kez ends in disaster when a Kez counter-offensive leaves him cut off behind enemy lines with only a fraction of his army, no supplies, and no hope of reinforcements. Drastically outnumbered and pursued by the enemy's best, he must lead his men on a reckless march through northern Kez to safety, and back over the mountains so that he can defend his country from an angry god. Tamas's invasion of Kez ends in disaster when a Kez counter-offensive leaves him cut off behind enemy lines with only a fraction of his army, no supplies, and no hope of reinforcements. Drastically outnumbered and pursued by the enemy's best, he must lead his men on a reckless march through northern Kez to safety, and back over the mountains so that he can defend his country from an angry god.

In Adro, Inspector Adamat only wants to rescue his wife. To do so he must track down and confront the evil Lord Vetas. He has questions for Vetas concerning his enigmatic master, but the answers might come too quickly.
With Tamas and his powder cabal presumed dead, Taniel Two-shot finds himself alongside the god-chef Mihali as the last line of defence against Kresimir's advancing army. Tamas's generals bicker among themselves, the brigades lose ground every day beneath the Kez onslaught, and Kresimir wants the head of the man who shot him in the eye.

I vastly enjoyed Promise of Blood, and strongly feel that McClellan is poised to join the ranks of authors like Weeks, Brett, and Cole who get better with each new release. The Crimson Campaign looks to be a step in that direction if the marketing materials are any indication.

Promise of Blood by Brian McClellan

My relationship with Promise of Blood is complicated in the way teen aged love affairs are complicated. Let me explain. I've been eyeing McClellan's debut from the first time I heard about Brent Weeks calling it "flintlock" fantasy and thus got my first look at the cover and blurb. Sounds promising right? Well like those aloof unattainable ladies of my teen aged years, Promise of Blood just wouldn't look back. I entered contest after contest, emailed the publisher, searched Net Galley to no avail. Then insult came to visit and added to my injury. A close friend had won a signed ARC! The nerve, the betrayal. But I was steadfast, finally managing to get a copy from NetGalley on release day. The object of my affections was mine. So what's the end of the story you say? Well, to put it like I might have 25 years ago. She's just as pretty as I thought. We had a good time, but I just don't know. Will I take her out the next chance I get? You bet your sweet ass.

And the blurb that started this mess:

The Age of Kings is dead . . . and I have killed it.

It's a bloody business overthrowing a king...Field Marshal Tamas' coup against his king sent corrupt aristocrats to the guillotine and brought bread to the starving. But it also provoked war with the Nine Nations, internal attacks by royalist fanatics, and the greedy to scramble for money and power by Tamas's supposed allies: the Church, workers unions, and mercenary forces.

It's up to a few...Stretched to his limit, Tamas is relying heavily on his few remaining powder mages, including the embittered Taniel, a brilliant marksman who also happens to be his estranged son, and Adamat, a retired police inspector whose loyalty is being tested by blackmail.

But when gods are involved...Now, as attacks batter them from within and without, the credulous are whispering about omens of death and destruction. Just old peasant legends about the gods waking to walk the earth. No modern educated man believes that sort of thing. But they should...

Pretty shapely little package, isn't it. Well have no fear, McClellan delivers on the promise of the concept and the fantastic cover. Promise of Blood is exactly what you'd expect, an action packed thriller full of bullets, bad-assess, and blood. But rated PG-13, like all teen aged girl-friends should be.

All kidding aside, McClellan tells an engaging story, with a surprisingly diverse cast (in most cases), multiple intriguing magic systems, and a pleasant mix of action, mystery, and old school fantasy. All of this set in an historical time period (albeit, a fantasy equivalent) that gets scarcely any love from the genre. It's a compelling setting too, with the tension of not only the political revolution but also a magical and industrial one. Those forces power the majority of the conflict in the novel, no battle ground left unsurveyed. There is plenty of military action, political espionage, gods, monsters and enough magical fireworks that you just might think it is Bastille Day.

That's where McClellan really shines. It's no coincidence at all that McClellan, as a former student of Brandon Sanderson, delivers a variety of intricate and well designed magical abilities for his characters to play with. It would be easy to write off McClellan as Sanderson 2.0, but that would be a mistake. While McClellan's powder mages do seem to be a slightly different take on the Allomantic coinshots from Sanderson's Mistborn novels, the pitting of this type of magic against the aristocratic elemental magic of the Privileged takes the mechanical and turns into something more thematic. The fact that gunpowder is also addictive, and one of the main viewpoint characters is definitely in the need of a step or twelve is another nice touch. There's even more magic at play as well. Lesser magical abilities such as the ability go without sleep indefinitely are possessed by another group called the Knacked, and there is the mysterious magic of the savage Ka-Poel and a mad god or two thrown in for good measure.  As settings go, this is one of the more interesting ones I've encountered in the category of epic-fantasy in quite a while.

His character choices are an interesting mix as well. With Field Marshall Tamas and the investigator Adamat both well beyond the age of the typical farm boy protagonist, McClellan manages to make compelling action heroes of both older men without resorting to stereotypical over the hill Hollywood style. Tamas is no Clint Eastwood in Unforgiven, though I can detect an older, wiser Russell Crowe in Gladiator. Adamat is wisely more Watson than Holmes, but his dogged investigations prove to be a wonderful vehicle that McClellan uses to avoid heavy handed info-dumping. It's interesting that the most stereotypical character of the cast, Tamas' son, the legendary Taniel Two Shot, leaves me the coldest. McClellan packs his story line with interesting threads, the betrayal that ended his engagement, his strained relationship with his father, his growing attraction to the mute savage Ka-Poel, and his struggles with powder addiction and more. But try as I might, I always longed for more of the Tamas and Adamat viewpoints. Perhaps there was just too much going on in Taniel's chapters for any one element to really take hold. I'm not sure, but I hope that Taniel's chapters sharpen their focus in the sequel.

The only real miss I can find in McClellan's choices thus far has been in the almost complete lack of female voices in the novel. There is one small female focused point of view in the novel, that of Nila, a laundress who  has lost everything as a result of Tamas' coup in the early chapters. I felt that Nila's chapters were under used and developed in comparison to the male centered counterparts. I suspect that could be a result of fear of getting it wrong, a criticism often leveled at epic fantasy writers in the post GRRM era.  But I think McClellan would do well to face that fear head on. After all, he's placed several compelling female characters with definite agency in the background. Here's hoping we see some of them at the forefront with the boys in McClellan's sequel, The Crimson Campaign.

The action is well handled, with McClellan turning in the same kind of bullet time worthy fight scenes that you would expect from a Brett, Weeks, or Sanderson. I think a little more grit would do the writing some good, anchoring it more in the smoke and bloody faces of revolution, if you will. But that's nothing more than a matter of preference. The pacing falters later in the novel, losing the tension between the increasing action of some threads against the more sedentary pace of others. Something I have no doubt will improve as McClellan gains his own balance as an up and coming writer to watch.

McClellan's reputation as a fantasist to watch is well deserved. Promise of Blood has a lot going for it. Easy on the eyes, great personality, and can cut a rug with the best of them. I'm not convinced she's quite ready to take home to meet the parents, but I'll definitely be asking for a second and probably a third date. You never know she might just be a keeper.

The Troupe by Robert Jackson Bennett

It's a pretty unusual for me to feel apprehension to review a book that I absolutely loved. But I've been putting off reviewing Robert Jackson Bennett's The Troupe for weeks. I'd read rave review after rave review, seen the novel on many "Best Of" lists, and finally decided to see what all of the fuss was about. And let me tell you, the critical buzz around Robert Jackson Bennett is well deserved. I haven't been this excited to find a new author since discovering Rothfuss' The Name of the Wind. The only thing stopping me from running out and buying American Elsewhere is because I have other books in the "to read" pile, and reviews to do. Just in case you missed it, The Troupe is fantastic. Bennett delivers a world that is, on one hand, depressingly mundane, but on the other hand, profoundly magical, filled with characters that run the gamut between achingly realistic and utterly alien. If you are a fan of a beautiful prose and stories that linger in your thoughts for days after the last page is turned, The Troupe is a must read.

The blurb from the book jacket doesn't begin to do the story justice, but here it is for sake of brevity:

Vaudeville: mad, mercenary, dreamy, and absurd, a world of clashing cultures and ferocious showmanship and wickedly delightful deceptions.

But sixteen-year-old pianist George Carole has joined vaudeville for one reason only: to find the man he suspects to be his father, the great Heironomo Silenus. Yet as he chases down his father's troupe, he begins to understand that their performances are strange even for vaudeville: for wherever they happen to tour, the very nature of the world seems to change.

Because there is a secret within Silenus's show so ancient and dangerous that it has won him many powerful enemies. And it's not until after he joins them that George realizes the troupe is not simply touring: they are running for their lives.

And soon...he is as well.

The Troupe is a difficult novel to categorize; it's equal parts fantasy, mystery, historical and family drama. Bennett does an excellent job of weaving the divergent elements into a cohesive tapestry. If I were forced to make a comparison, Neil Gaiman would be the only author that has a even vaguely similar style. I was reminded of Neverwhere almost immediately in all of the best possible ways.

There is a subtlety to Bennett's prose that I found captivating. There is always a sense of something stirring just beneath the surface. Even scenes that are completely devoid of traditional action vibrate with potential consequences of the revelations and decisions made within them. I was both anxious for the trials that I knew were coming and hesitant to arrive at the final destination. I knew this was no lighthearted fairy tale. The world Bennett crafts is undeniably realistic, full of hope and disappointment in equal measure.

But the heart of Bennett's, dare I say, genius, is his characters. Each and every member of the troupe is complex, and completely drawn. Even characters that are, at best, secondary to the plot, have a complete and complex story arc that adds to the resonance of the novel as a whole. From the art wise, and world foolish, George, to the irascible and gruff, Silenus, each character has an essential piece of humanity that the reader can relate to. Even the many otherworldly characters, while often almost completely alien in the viewpoints and behavior, are mere reflections of the hidden parts of both the protagonists and ourselves. These powerful connections between the art and the audience are the real magic of The Troupe.

The plot appears to meander at times, falling down rabbit holes that seem to have nothing at all to do with the overall thrust of the troupe's or George's purpose. But I quickly learned to trust Bennett's muse, as these disparate departures began to braid together with one another, producing a more powerful and realized whole. In fact, some of my favorite and most revealing scenes in the novel come from these divergences. Bennett knows that the end result is no where near as important as how you get there and the wisdom and experience you gain along the way. His characters may not realize this fact as they try to pursue their own agendas, but they all grow and change in ways both expected and completely surprising.

In conclusion, Bennett has produced a novel that defies easy description, blending elements from genre and story into a rare hybrid that can appeal to all lovers of well crafted tales. When I recommend this book in the future, as I know I will, I will take an approach I save for only the most prized books on my shelves. I'll simply ask; do you like to read?

If the answer is yes, then you should read The Troupe. 

Coming Attractions: Promise of Blood by Brian McClellan

Orbit has just released a first look at one of my most anticipated debuts of 2013. Promise of Blood by Brian McClellan is just the sort of tale that I am always on the prowl for. McClellan's novel has interesting premise, a mash-up of  firearms and sorcery, with a hearty dash of political intrigue and mystery. Add in the fantastic cover art, with an interesting twist on a genre trope and I'm practically salivating. With a blurb from Brent Weeks, whose The Blinding Knife has been my favorite release this year, I really have no choice but to give Promise of Blood a pass to the top of my most anticipated debut list. Check out the cover and blurb below. I've included Week's endorsement as well.

Field Marshal Tamas has staged a coup against the king of Adro. His powder mages have slaughtered the king’s Privileged cabal of sorcerers and the nobility has been rounded up to face the guillotine with their king. Tamas has brought revolution to his country in one bloody night to save his people and right the wrongs caused by the old regime. Yet his actions have far-reaching consequences of which no reasonable man could have conceived, and the king will prove the easiest obstacle to overcome in his quest to free Adro.

Captain Taniel Two-shot is a powder mage of considerable skill. Gunpowder makes him stronger and faster than other men. He can manipulate its properties to shoot out a man’s eye at twice the length of a battlefield. It makes him perfect for killing the old Privileged sorcerers with their destructive magic. One of those Privileged has escaped Tamas’ cull. The problem is, she’s stronger than any sorcerer Taniel has ever seen, and the mercenaries sent to help him track her are of dubious reliability.

When Adamat is summoned to the palace in the middle of the night, the last thing the veteran investigator expects is to arrive during a regime change. His new employer is none other than the man responsible for overthrowing the current government and he has some unfinished business with the king’s sorcerers. The dying Privileged cabal has left the Field Marshal with a riddle. It could be nothing, but Tamas does not like loose ends. Adamat knows from long experience that one doesn’t ask questions unless one is willing to learn–and believe–the answers. To add to his problems, the Field Marshal isn’t the only one interested in the answer to the dying sorcerers’ riddle. As enemies emerge from the shadows and the investigation takes a disturbing turn, Adamat must decide where his loyalties lie.

“Promise of Blood is a hugely promising debut. Guns, swords, and magic together? What more could you want? How about tense action, memorable characters, rising stakes, and cool, cool magic? Not only the finest flintlock fantasy I’ve read, but also the most fun. Brian McClellan is the real thing.”

–Brent Weeks, author of the Night Angel Trilogy

So who do I have to kill to get a review copy of this one?