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Feb 12

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REVIEW: A Natural History of Dragons by Marie Brennan


A Natural History of Dragons: A Memoir by Lady Trent by Marie Brennan Title: A Natural History of Dragons: A Memoir by Lady Trent
Author: Marie Brennan
Pub Date: February 5th, 2012
Chris’ Rating (5 possible): 1 point 1 point 1 point 1 point
An Attempt at Categorization If You Like… / You Might Like…
A scientific fantasy which strongly develops its narrator and world.

One of the most interesting themes I’ve found in science fiction is the genre’s complex relationship to science itself: most science fiction stories are simultaneously promoters of science and cautionary tales, warning us of discovery’s ethical dangerous. This makes for an interesting and powerful theme to explore, what with humanity’s unbridled capacity for discovery. But for all of its power, it is a theme which fantasy addresses all too rarely, which is why it was such a delight to recently read Marie Brennan’s A Natural History of Dragons: A Memoir by Lady Trent.

I grew up on scientist adventurers: Verne’s Professor Arronax (20,000 Leagues Under the Sea), Doyle’s Professor Challenger (The Lost World), and Wells’ The Time Traveler (The Time Machine) all thrilled with the promise and possibilities reason could bring. These characters practiced and preached a set of positivist values, an Enlightenment tradition untrammeled by the softer complexities of Romanticism. And when a few years later I discovered the history of science, in particular through works like C.W. Ceram’s Gods, Graves and Scholars, Jane Goodall’s In the Shadow of Man, and Farley Mowat’s Woman in the Mists I could see how real scientists worked and struggled to fit such values into a more complex world than the fictional.

For all of the positivist values promoted through the works of early science fiction, most of those books derive their conflict from the tension between their characters’ full-throated devotion to positivist principles and the subtler risks – ethical, philosophical, and existential – which science exposes us to. Verne’s Nemo – and his mad political philosophy – is an ethical exploration of the militaristic consequences of science, of technology’s capacity for both good and evil. The dismissal of Challenger and Summerlee’s findings in The Lost World explores how society treats discoveries which fly in the face of accepted wisdom, a social statement on public attitudes to science if ever there was one. And Wells’ The Time Machine is nothing if not a commentary on man’s self-destructive tendencies, offset by the Time Traveler’s genius invention of the time machine itself and his yearning to explore.

Such an exploration of reason, such an application of rational thought, is often inimical to much fantasy. So much of the genre relies on the irrational that it is easy to get uncomfortable when put beneath the magnifying glass. Fantasy generally explores different themes, leaving an exploration of science to science fiction. Some fantasists – notably Patricia C. Wrede in her Frontier Magic trilogy, Michael A. Stackpole in his Crown Colonies trilogy, and much in the steampunk vein – have incorporated such scientific themes, but their approaches tend to use science as a device for getting characters into trouble. Science is not the heart of the story: war or some other life-or-death struggle divorced from science provides the conflict. While such stories may be exciting, I usually find myself disappointed that the science gets short shrift.

But Marie Brennan’s A Natural History of Dragons keeps the science front-and-center, and builds tension and conflict naturally from that core. The way in which she achieves this effect is particularly interesting because it is simultaneously more obvious and more subtle than I would have expected. The obviousness stems from the book’s historical models: while it is a secondary fantasy, it is structured along the lines of the memoirs and stories of late Victorian (British) natural philosophers.

I am amazed that I don’t see this approach more frequently in fantasy. For 18th and 19th century readers in the Western world, journeys into Africa or South America would have been the equivalent of a secondary-world fantasy. Their settings and the cultures encountered would have been so alien as to be unrecognizable. They would have to establish and contextualize the strange environment, to explain its characteristics in both sensual and intellectual modes. In other words, the historical models for A Natural History of Dragons would have relied on the same type of world-building as any fantasy.

The basic structure of the story traces a recognizable path: the narrator’s development of scientific fascination, her initial discoveries, youthful exuberance, and systematic maturation as those discoveries mount is a natural progression recognizable, I think, to any adult. Because the novel is set during a time when people are ignorant of dragons, the ignorance of broader society (and initially of the narrator) is shared with the reader. We learn about Brennan’s secondary-world along with our heroine as she and her colleagues make what might seem to be basic discoveries. This evokes the same sense of obviousness we get when we look back at the scientific discoveries of yesterday.

The more subtle key to the novel’s success is maturation. A Natural History of Dragons is presented as a memoir written by the now-elderly Lady Trent, a rather feisty and by implication controversial natural historian. In the hands of a weaker author, her anachronistic attitudes (for her time, which is plainly modeled on the 19th century as conveyed by both voice and details in the text) would have always been present. From childhood, she would have been confident of her abilities despite prejudices against her gender, she would have always been respectful of other cultures, would have naturally become the intellectual and moral center of any expedition she took part in despite the many cultural factors stacked against her, etc. She would have been a modern heroine inserted into a historical world, and would naturally have triumphed over historical backwardness. The world would revolve around her because she is Our Heroine, and so a special snowflake.

Brennan neatly avoids this trap, and by doing so makes the book a delight to read. Yes, our heroine is special. But this is a tale of her youth, before she became Lady Trent with the notoriety such a title suggests. The narrator shows herself to be merely one step out of alignment with the mores of her time both during her youth and presumably at the time when the memoir is written. By alluding to her earlier works, and repudiating the prejudices she espoused therein, the narrator simultaneously acknowledges the problematic tendencies of the source time period, and provides justification for the narrator’s anachronism. The narrator does not share the attitudes of the time period of which she is writing because she – and presumably much of her society – has matured in the intervening years. We can plainly see the distinction between the narrator and her younger self, and this serves to further ground us in the character and the world. Yet the whole structure is made even more plausible by showing us the seeds of the opinionated older narrator in the actions and words of her younger self. It is a very neat trick.

Brennan’s character is clearly of scientific mind, and the focus in much of the book is on the science itself. Initially, one can be forgiven for thinking it a tale of simple positivist boosterism: after all, so much of its historical roots were exactly that. But as the adventure ramps up, Brennan introduces suggestions of a flip side to scientific development and discovery. This squarely puts the novel in the conflicted tradition of Verne, Doyle, or Wells. Yet unlike these far earlier writers, Brennan neatly balances the science with an inner emotional journey that at times can be quite touching.

If I have one complaint about the book, it is that it is too short. Partly, this perception is a selfish one: I would have gladly spent more time in this world, with these characters, and with the voice in which the novel is written simply because of how much fun I had with it. But structurally, while the book works as a standalone novel, it did leave me wanting more.

I don’t know (read: my Google Fu was unable to determine) if A Natural History of Dragons is the start of a series or a stand-alone one-off. This is plainly a memoir of Lady Trent’s youth, and she explicitly references other (it seems wilder) adventures which follow. At the same time, the implicit risks of scientific discovery are brought to the fore near the story’s conclusion. They are not resolved or developed in any meaningful sense, but rather are addressed at best temporarily, which while satisfying in this one volume does beg for further development. Both of these facts suggest that more books may follow, and I for one would be very happy if they do.

(UPDATE: Today’s Shelf Awareness for Readers has a nice write-up of the book, where they mention that it is the first installment in a planned series.)

I would also be remiss if I did not mention that the novel is a work of art in hardcover. I would recommend it on the strength of its design alone (with great deckled edges and a sepia-toned font which further evokes that Victorian sensibility), but for me, Todd Lockwood’s excellent illustrations seal the deal.

I strongly recommend A Natural History of Dragons: A Memoir by Lady Trent to anyone who has a taste for Victorian-inspired fiction, who loves the long age of discovery that spans from the Enlightenment through to the first World War, or who enjoys classic science fiction like Jules Verne, Arthur Conan Doyle, or H.G. Wells.

Mar 29

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REVIEW: The Neon Court by Kate Griffin


The Neon Court: Or the Betrayal of Matthew Swift by Kate Griffin Title: The Neon Court: Or, the Betrayal of Matthew Swift
Author: Kate Griffin
Pub Date: March 24th, 2011
Chris’ Rating (5 possible): 1 point 1 point 1 point 1 point
An Attempt at Categorization If You Like… / You Might Like…
Excellent, evocative, and innovative world-building with ambitious characterization techniques.

Like many of my favorite fantasy finds, I first came across Kate Griffin’s Matthew Swift novels while on a business trip to London. This is kind of appropriate, considering how central London is to Griffin’s impressive urban fantasies. In her third Matthew Swift novel, The Neon Court: Or, the Betrayal of Matthew Swift, Griffin continues to impress with her unique take on contemporary magic and successfully strengthens her already-impressive characterization.

I first noticed Griffin’s writing with A Madness of Angels. In that book, she created a fascinating new spin on magic by inverting traditional eldritch trappings and fundamentally modernizing them. Her underlying conceit is that sorcery is a by-product of life, and because we lead ever more urban lives today, magic, too, must grow more urban. As a result, the magic of Griffin’s London is not that of moonlit rituals and twining ivy, but instead of subway cars and swirling fast food wrappers. What makes this conceit work in A Madness of Angels, and what continues to make it work through The Neon Court, is how solidly Griffin grounds her system in the real London, and how consistently she applies her new spin on magic.

Griffin’s images of contemporary London seep through into her characters and the urban magic of her world. The incidental characters we meet along the way are appropriate to their locales. Whether we’re talking about the professional Westminster-ish Aldermen (a bunch of bureaucrats…and more), the Tribe in the deepest parts of the East End, or an Irish seer living in Mile End, the characters are all believable because every one of their aspects is rooted in place: speech patterns, clothing, behavior, values, they all ring true to their environment.

This sense of place is also inextricably woven into the magic of her world. Every metropolitan idiosyncrasy becomes grist for Griffin’s magical mill. One gets the sense that there is sorcery lurking just beneath every insignificant fragment of Griffin’s London. Consider the Oyster travel card, or London’s many tourist traps. In the hands of a lesser author, the former would just be an incidental prop used to get on or off public transit, and the latter would just be settings. But Griffin makes them all potent magical talismans. This was impressive when first developed in A Madness of Angels, but even more impressive is how Griffin continues to expand and develop her magic system as the series progresses. In each of the Matthew Swift books, she introduces us to significant new facets of London’s magical underbelly, and nearly half of the fun in reading these books is seeing what new urban wizardry Griffin’s imagination will come up with. In The Neon Court, she asks how would the traditionally rural Faerie Court evolve in the modern urban world? Other authors – notably Emma Bull in her seminal War for the Oaks – have asked this question as well, and Griffin’s spin on it (the titular “Neon Court”) is innovative, unique, and fundamentally believable.

Her characterization – and especially that of her hero/narrator, Matthew Swift – is the next most impressive aspect of this series. Swift is a fractured hero, his mind merged with that of the blue electric angels (god-like personifications of the ghosts-in-the-wire who inhabit telephone and electric wires). Depending on which aspect of his personality is in ascendance, his narration veers from the perpendicular pronoun to first person plural, and at times shifts into a disjointed stream-of-consciousness. In the earlier books, this was a daring gamble on Griffin’s part. It made Swift’s struggle to re-assemble his mind and personality vivid, but risked disorienting an inattentive reader. Griffin walked a fine line in the earlier books, but she managed to pull it off. Swift’s fractured nature is so intrinsic to the first book’s plot, that the disjointed narrative added to the storytelling overall.

By the time we get to the third book, Griffin, Swift, and the electric blue angels are all more comfortable in Swift’s head. As a result, the narrative flow of The Neon Court is smoother, with fewer sudden shifts, and where those sudden shifts do occur, they are handled more subtly than in the earlier books. In general, I find the characters in The Neon Courtto be more carefully constructed than in the earlier books. As Swift’s focus shifts from internal (putting his mind back together) to external (saving London and his friends), Griffin’s characterization of secondary players strengthens as well. I felt that the third book does a much better job characterizing supporting characters like Penny (Swift’s apprentice), Dees (Swift’s Alderman lieutenant), and even Theydon (a thrall in the Neon Court) than the earlier books did.

If there is a weakness in the Matthew Swift novels, it is that it would be hard to start with the second or third installment. In The Neon Court, Matthew Swift struggles to save London and his friends from a terrifying magical threat amidst a burgeoning factional war amongst London’s magicians. The stakes, the characters, the plot, and the world are all adequately communicated. But a reader coming fresh to this world is likely to be confused by everything that came before. Swift’s history with R.J. Bakker (established in book 1), and his role as the Midnight Mayor (which was established in The Midnight Mayor: Or, the Inauguration of Matthew Swift), for example, are all central to The Neon Court’s plot. While there are passing explanations offered in the text, the book assumes the reader is already familiar with these events. However, their ramifications would be unclear to someone coming into the series with the third book.

Despite this fact, I recommend Griffin’s Matthew Swift novels, and especially The Neon Court: Or, the Betrayal of Matthew Swift. Readers who enjoy contemporary fantasy with innovative, vivid world-building will find a lot to enjoy in these novels. They are excellent examples of urban fantasy, particularly of the non-paranormal romance variety. If you enjoy the fantasies of Neil Gaiman, Emma Bull, Jim Butcher, or Harry Connolly, I suspect you will also enjoy Kate Griffin’s books. The entire series is good, and I found that it strengthens significantly in all of the right ways as it continues.

Mar 2

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REVIEW: The Crippled God (Malazan Book of the Fallen, Book 10) by Steven Erikson


My apologies for posting this on Wednesday, rather than Tuesday. I know I’m late, but I got caught up with day-job work and so…sorry. Hope the timely review makes up for the delay.

The Crippled God by Steven Erikson Title: The Crippled God: Book Ten of The Malazan Book of the Fallen
Author: Steven Erikson
Pub Date: March 1st, 2011
Chris’ Rating (5 possible): 1 point 1 point 1 point 1 point 1 point
An Attempt at Categorization If You Like… / You Might Like…
The impressive culmination of an epic eleven years in the making.

The word “epic” gets thrown around more often when talking about fantasy than a well-aimed dagger. I’ve seen it applied (and done so myself) to Tolkien, Brooks, and Donaldson, to Jordan, Martin, and Eddings, to Jemisin, Rothfuss, and Sanderson, and the list goes on. In most of these cases, the word “epic” is an apt descriptor. But I would argue that Steven Erikson and his ten volume Malazan Book of the Fallen out-epic all of these other epics in its epic-ness. The world created by Steven Erikson and Ian C. Esselmont, each individual book in Erikson’s series, and the complexity of the story Erikson planned out from the beginning: each of these alone can be justly described as epic in scope, epic in scale. But in this genre that tosses around the E-word like it was going out of style, I believe that Erikson’s ambition is the most epic of all. And having now read Erikson’s The Crippled God, the tenth and final installment in his Malazan Book of the Fallen, I believe that Erikson delivered on the “epic” promised back in 1999.

DISCLAIMER: I am not saying that the Malazan Book of the Fallen is “better” than the Wheel of Time, or A Song of Ice and Fire, or the Belgariad, or Shannara, or insert-your-favorite-fantasy-series-here. However, I do believe that it is different. This difference especially applies to its world building and plot structure, and in many respects to its themes and characterization. In its plot structure and world building especially, I find it far more complex than those other series I just mentioned. But “more complex” does not mean better. It just means more complicated.

A little over eleven years ago I was waiting to board a transatlantic flight in Warsaw, Poland, idly browsing the tiny English-language section of a little airport bookstore, when I stumbled across a thick book. Tantalizingly titled Gardens of the Moon, by an author I’d never heard of before, and with a cover not-quite-sf/not-quite-fantasy by Chris Moore that instantly set it apart from the contemporary Chihuahua killer epic fantasies of Jordan, Martin, and Goodkind, I had to buy it. I spent the next nine or ten hours sucked into Steven Erikson’s visceral, violent, gripping world. Since that fateful afternoon, I have eagerly anticipated each new volume in Erikson’s opus, and so it was with childish delight (and squeeing) that I stumbled upon a copy of The Crippled God two days before its official pub date in my local Borders.

Gardens of the Moon (via Wikipedia)

Gardens of the Moon by Chris Moore (via Wikipedia)

To read Erikson’s work, one must be prepared to immediately suspend disbelief, and to dive headfirst into a world rich with layers of history, culture, politics, and mythology that would make Tolkien’s head spin. Readers not already well-versed in the conventions of the fantasy genre might find it all a bit confusing at first. But for those readers able to suspend their disbelief, and who are prepared to intuit or await elucidation, the Malazan Book of the Fallen is an immensely enjoyable series. The Malazan world was created by Steven Erikson and Ian C. Esselmont in their role-playing campaigns. But the two brought to their creation their extensive expertise in anthropology and archaeology, resulting in a world with intricate, distinct cultures, complex historical societal relationships, economic balances, and military history.

Over the course of the ten book series, we follow many (I lost count at around forty five) distinct groups of characters. Some groups are small, numbering maybe one or two members, while others are large factions with many characters going nameless. However, each of these groups is presented completely, meaning that they are drawn as round (using E.M. Forster’s definition), fully-fleshed characters. Erikson shows us everyone’s fears, doubts, concerns to such a degree that by the time we’re halfway through the first book, the very concept of “hero” and “villain” has lost all meaning. It is this moral ambiguity, this rationalization and justification of character choices and ethical mistakes, that drive the series’ themes.

The first five or six books in the series are self-contained wholes. The events of each book occur non-linearly, following several distinct “tracks” of events separated by both time and space. The main tracks comprise different books in the series, at least in the beginning. This makes it possible for a reader to start either with Gardens of the Moon (Book 1), or say Deadhouse Gates (Book 2), or Memories of Ice (Book 3).

Reading them in order of their publication, I was initially surprised and confused by their non-linearity. Where were the characters I had met and fallen in love with in the earlier books? What had happened to them? What were they doing? But like a master weaver, Erikson successfully introduces new strands while maintaining interest in those that came before. This separation across books in the series begins to collapse around Midnight Tides (Book 5), where a new reader coming into the story would be so completely lost in the whirling politics of gods, cities, armies, factions, squads, races, creeds, etc. as to make it an exercise in futility.

It is at this point in the series (books 6 – 8), that Erikson stumbles for the first time. This stumble is interesting to note, precisely because it touches upon his introduction of higher-level, more abstract philosophical themes into the story. The first six (arguably seven) books are largely plot driven. We follow the striving of different groups of characters – especially the Malazan military – as they attempt to achieve their goals. The books are thematically interesting, but there is a palpable sense that reader doesn’t yet know everything. In the sixth, seventh, and eighth books, Erikson thickens the plot by explaining more complex historical relationships, and introducing new gods, and new players. The introduction of this history, and metaphysical motivation for certain characters introduced in the eighth book, slows the pacing significantly. These latter books remain readable, but I had to read them at least twice in order to really understand what was happening. They are not bad, but they are much more dense than the other books in the series, and those books are already more dense than most epic fantasy fare. Thankfully, Erikson again hits his stride in Dust of Dreams (book nine) as he now has all of the actors on stage and moving towards the climax in The Crippled God.

And what a climax! The series tracks several hundred (again, I lost count) distinct plot lines. But they are all brought together in the tenth and final book. Perhaps more importantly, it is also in the The Crippled God that we see the thematic lines from the earlier books brought together. The thematic convergence in The Crippled God is one of the most impressive aspects of the series. Each of the earlier books has its own themes, which are in and of themselves complicated and well-executed. But after reading The Crippled God, the themes of earlier books are either clarified, corrected, or shown as illusory. Unifying these disparate (and oftentimes contradictory) themes without invalidating them is a neat trick, and makes the intellectual and emotional exercise of the whole series quite worth it.

From a stylistic standpoint, Erikson takes more from the gritty, boots-in-the-mud fantasy of Glen Cook than he does from the elf-and-dwarf high fantasy of J.R.R. Tolkien. Erikson’s primary characters are soldiers, and he draws them as imperfect, swearing, and swaggering. While dragons, and Erikson’s version of elves feature quite prominently, his characters are very far removed from Smaug or Legolas. It is the darkness and grit of his world that makes it compelling, that subverts the traditional tropes of the genre. Dragons as mad almost-gods? Heroes who (along with the reader) are ignorant of their quest, and just have to do as they’re ordered? These are fun subversions.

I found Erikson’s take on women in his books particularly interesting. Historically, I have often found fantasy to be full of stereotypical square-jawed male hero-types, with damsel-in-distress ladies swooning in the wings (if they are present at all). Erikson’s female characters are more likely to break a hero’s jaw than pine or swoon. They are soldiers, and conspirators, and commanders equal in all respects to the men, while still evidencing deft characterization that makes them fully believable. Both the men and women are flawed, emotional, sometimes angry, sometimes not. Erikson makes them complex, while retaining their intrinsic humanity. Which is refreshing in a genre often dominated by particular molds.

I have spent the past twelve years with these characters. Their stories have in many respects become a part of me, like old friends. The tenth book brings Erikson’s enormous cast of characters together, and wraps up their stories. With one or two (notable) exceptions, we learn what happens to everybody, how they end up. The tenth book is in many respects about closure, and Erikson unflinchingly brings the story of different groups and characters to a close. But – and this is one of his points – even though the book gets closed for some characters, life goes on. The unity of character, plot, theme, and execution in this tenth book is singularly impressive.

However, for everything good about his work, the complexity – of his characters, plots, themes – can be quite off-putting. One reader (whose opinions I respect greatly) very much dislikes Erikson’s work. She claims that it is too hard to follow, impossible to keep the myriad characters and plot lines straight even within a single book, let alone across a ten book series. For many readers, this will be a valid criticism. Erikson has produced a truly dense, complicated work of fiction. Myriad plot lines, more characters, complicated races that often go by different names, complex battle scenes shown from the perspective of multiple soldiers in the thick of it, this is writing that demands real work from the reader to keep things straight, to follow along with events. I found myself often having to read or re-read sections (and in some cases, entire books) just to really figure out what the heck actually happened. For many, this will be a weakness: why should I have to work so hard for my fiction? But I personally found that I enjoyed doing that work, that I enjoyed getting to spend time in an ugly, dark fantasy world that was realistically built while still employing the tropes of fantasy.

Back in 1999, Erikson told fans that the Malazan Book of the Fallen would be a nine book series. Like any gargantuan epic, this was an ambitious goal. However, Erikson executed on this ambition both in the creative sense, as well in the practical sense: publishers and fans like to see epic series come out with new installments on an annual basis. Publishers like it because it helps them push paperback editions of the earlier books, and fans like it because we can still remember what’s going on in the story. But in a sub-genre famous for delays (George R.R. Martin’s A Dance of Dragons has been delayed five years already and still counting), it is incredibly refreshing to come across an author whose ambition is so vast, whose story is so complicated, but who still manages to produce quality work reasonably on schedule. It’s refreshing, and my hat is off to Erikson for delivering on his vision.

Although I have read that Erikson is planning a new eleven book arc in the Malazan world, The Crippled God represents in many ways the end of an era. It is a masterfully-executed conclusion to a complicated, ambitious, dense opus. On the one hand, I am glad that the series is over, that Borders screwed up and I managed to get my hands on a copy several days before its official release, and that Erikson satisfied my (high) expectations from it. But on the other hand, I will miss the anticipation of the next book, will miss getting to laugh and cry with the characters I’ve enjoyed over the last twelve years.

Erikson’s Malazan Book of the Fallen is a complex, involving, and emotionally powerful epic fantasy series. There is no series more deserving of the word “epic”. Pick up a copy of Gardens of the Moon, and see if you like it. Be prepared to work at it, because it is difficult. But difficult does not mean bad, and rest assured that by the time you get to The Crippled God, you will find your investment has been fully justified and amply rewarded.

Malazan Book of the Fallen by Steven Erikson

Feb 15

5 Comments

REVIEW: The Keep by F. Paul Wilson


The Keep by F. Paul Wilson Title: The Keep
Author: F. Paul Wilson
Pub Date: December 7th, 2010 (reprint)
August 1981 (original)
Chris’ Rating (5 possible): 1 point 1 point 1 point
An Attempt at Categorization If You Like… / You Might Like…
A gothic horror novel with an interesting monster, solid early tension but a disappointing climax.

In The Keep (first in his Adversary Cycle), F. Paul Wilson does an excellent job subverting staid vampire tropes and reveling in the devices of Gothic horror. Wilson’s deft command of craft as shown in his management of setting, and the gradual reveal of his monster make this book a worthwhile purchase.

Set in 1941 in a remote mountain keep high in the Romanian Alps, the book pits two inhuman monsters against each other. On the one hand, we have the Nazi army. The Nazis are realists, hard-hearted murderers marching across Europe, slaughtering innocents by the millions. On the other hand, we have a supernatural monster (possibly a vampire, possibly not) who brutally murders Nazis one-by-one in the night. With a setup like this, Wilson has an opportunity to do one of four things: he can turn the vampire into a hero (a fun role reversal for a traditional monster), he can turn one of the Nazis into a hero (a challenging prospect, considering their historical baggage), he can show both as somewhat-justified, or he can show both as monstrous. Wilson primarily chooses to take the easiest of these four paths, keeping both the Nazis and the creature who murders them monstrous.

Klaus Woermann, a disillusioned Nazi officer, is given a somewhat-punitive assignment to guard a remote Romanian castle. Throughout the book, Woermann is the only Nazi depicted in any kind of positive light. He is painted as conflicted, not enamoured of the fuhrer, and disgusted by what the Nazis are doing to the Jews. The scenes written from Woermann’s perspective are interesting in that they show a tentativeness in Wilson’s characterization that is absent when he writes from other (less morally ambiguous) characters, like Magda Cuza or the SS commander Kaempffer. It is unclear to me whether this tentativeness stems from the author’s uncertainty as to how sympathetic to make the Nazi, or whether it stems from Woermann’s own uncertainties as to his loyalty. Irrespective of the source of this tentativeness, I found it an interesting aspect of the character that lent some degree of depth to him.

When Woermann’s troops are stationed in the mysterious keep, they inadvertently set loose a monster that had been trapped there, presumably for centuries. The monster proceeds to murder Woermann’s men, one Nazi per night. As more of his troops are murdered, Woermann eventually gets assistance from the SS through Erich Kaempffer, an absolutely monstrous officer who gleefully intends to set up concentration camps in Romania. The SS officer, and all of the troops under his command, are painted as absolutely inhuman creatures. There is no moral ambiguity, no tentativeness in their characterization. They are vile, cruel, and vicious. Thankfully, they don’t quite veer into the realm of caricature, but their commander at times comes perilously close.

The scenes of terror told from the Nazis point of view are absolutely delightful: Wilson never shows us the monster directly, instead revealing the effects the monster has on the environment and the Nazis themselves. Because the Nazis are never made entirely sympathetic, our fear is kept slightly distanced. Some might view this as a weakening of the book’s horror, but I felt that it actually helped make me more aware of the monster and his actions. The result was to leave the reader uncertain what kind of monster we are dealing with, while slowly building the tension through solid pacing. The monster shares certain traits with a Dracula-esque vampire, but there are enough new and different traits to leave the Nazis (and the reader) unsure of what we are dealing with. Wilson’s restraint is used to excellent effect in these scenes, and they leave the reader hungry to learn more about the monster’s nature.

Unable to stem the loss of life, the terrified Nazis turn to Josef Cuza, an ailing Jewish expert on local folklore, and his daughter Magda. These two characters are the only purely noble characters in the book. The scenes told from their standpoint make it clear that they are sympathetic, righteous, honorable folk…nothing like either the Nazis or the monster. This portrayal of the Cuzas is perhaps one of the better pieces of characterization executed in this book. By setting the Cuzas up as purely good, fundamentally righteous, innocent, and noble, Wilson sets them up for a beautiful fall. To avoid spoilers, I won’t go into the details but it is exactly the Cuzas characterization and how it subtly changes over the course of the book that lends the novel its thematic tension.

The readers learn more about the monster as the Cuzas work to unravel the mystery of what is killing the Germans. The gradual reveal of the monster continues Wilson’s tweaking of the vampire mythos. Throughout, Wilson keeps the monster almost, but not quite, a classical vampire. At one point, Josef Cuza remarks that the monster might not be a real vampire as the myths give us, but that it might be a real creature that at one point inspired those myths. That the reader can believe this theory is a testament to the fine line between classic tropes and innovation that Wilson used to depict the supernatural monster at the heart of this book.

The tension in the book is very well managed, right up to the moment of the final reveal. Throughout the first eighty percent of the novel, Wilson raises the stakes and the reader’s expectations. By the time the truth (and the monster) are fully revealed, the reader expects something powerful, dark, and gritty. Instead, the explanation introduces a cosmology that the reader had little preparation for earlier in the book. The surprising cosmology is clearly a setup for subsequent books in the Adversary Cycle, but here in that series’ first book it struck me as deus ex machina. While the surprising cosmology weakened the climax, the climax remains reasonably solid: the action is dramatic, the stakes and tension significant. But the climax falls just shy of the very high expectations created by the excellent majority of the novel.

In all, I would say that The Keep is a solid work of horror, with good characterization, excellent tone and setting management, and fine control of tension right up to the climax. Wilson’s depiction and gradual explanation of the monster is exceptionally well done, and the way he undermines certain character’s righteousness is poignant and sensitive. However, the excellent ingredients that make up the bulk of the book leave the expectations very high for the climax, which is weakened by the introduction of an unestablished cosmology. Fans of Gothic horror will find much to enjoy in this book, and I am curious how the remaining books in the Adversary Cycle develop the cosmology further. Having introduced it in the series’ first book, I suspect (and hope) that the subsequent installments will make more effective use of it.

Jan 25

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REVIEW: At the Queen’s Command by Michael A. Stackpole


At the Queen's Command by Michael A. Stackpole Title: At the Queen’s Command
Author: Michael A. Stackpole
Pub Date: November 16th, 2010
Chris’ Rating (5 possible): 1 point 1 point 1 point 1 point
An Attempt at Categorization If You Like… / You Might Like…
A fantastical alternate history with major differences from accepted history.

In At the Queen’s Command (the first installment in a new alternate history series designed to span a re-imagined American Revolution) Michael A. Stackpole strikes a careful balance between historical source material and fervent imagination. Stackpole’s book combines engaging characters, a palpable sense of place, and a strong sense of Georgian voice and mores to create a compelling alternate history that draws you in and leaves you eager for more.

One of the great challenges in writing an alternate history is to strike a balance between recognizable history, and the central conceit that sets the story apart from accepted truth. Sometimes, as in Harry Turtledove’s How Few Remain, the conceit is a tiny difference which leads to significant divergence: a message that in reality was intercepted, gets to its intended destination and as a consequence the Confederacy wins the American Civil War. In other alternate histories, like Patricia C. Wrede’s Frontier Magic series, the known world is entirely re-imagined by introducing a pervasive fictional element (like magic). The more foundational the alternate history’s conceit, the harder it becomes to maintain consistency with both the facts and values of acknowledged history. Which is why At the Queen’s Command, which adds dragons, magic, and necromancy to a re-imagined Colonial America is so impressive.

At the Queen’s Command follows Captain Owen Strake, a soldier in the Queen’s Own Wurm Guard. He has fought against the Tharyngians (read: the French) on the Auropan (read: European) continent, and now has been sent on a reconnaissance mission to the colonies in Mystria. He must win over the colonists, survey the frontier, and return to Norisle (read: England). Of course, the mission does not go as planned and the colonies are drawn into war with the Tharyngians on their frontier.

The publisher makes it very plain on the book’s cover that the series is meant to re-imagine the American revolution, but Stackpole made a brilliant choice to set the first book during his world’s analog to the French and Indian War. First, most readers are not going to be as familiar with that war as they would be with the American Revolution. If Stackpole had jumped right into historical events that most American readers are already acquainted with, he would have had a much harder time getting readers to accept his central conceit. By setting the book several years prior to the American Revolution, Stackpole has the opportunity to take more liberties with acknowledged history, draw the reader into his re-imagined world, and get reader investment in his characters.

The characters are one of the strongest aspects of this book. This time period in real history is fraught with the consequences of history, a burgeoning streak of independence among the colonists, a sense of financial peril amongst the colonizers “back home”. Stackpole manages to capture the complex social, economical, political, military, and philosophical interactions of this time period through his well-realized characters. Whether it is through Owen Strake wrestling with his loyalty to Norisle, Prince Vladimir insisting upon the scientific method, Caleb Frost pushing for self-determination, the frontier trappers bridling at rumored taxes, Stackpole places a filter on Colonial America but still captures its colors. It is through these characters and their values that Stackpole addresses his themes, which are – in effect – the themes of John Locke, Thomas Paine and the other Enlightenment philosophers.

The central conceit of this alternative world is the existence of magic. In Stackpole’s world, this is not a recent discovery but instead dates back to before the Romans. It has affected – to some extent – all technological and societal evolution that precedes the events of this book. For Owen Strake and the the other characters, magic is as much of a fact of life as breathing. While on the one hand this helps to ground the reader in the world, it also leads to one of the few moments that rings off true. Specifically, the magic of the colonies is wilder, less controlled, more free than the magic Owen Strake is familiar with. The narration supporting Strake’s initial explorations, especially the first introduction of the wendigo concept, are clumsy by comparison to the rest of the book’s smooth execution. In the hands of a lesser author, I would still consider them quite well done. However, once past the initial introduction, Stackpole’s seamless narration kicks in again and the book strengthens as it gathers pace.

The book itself is a handsome product released as a trade paperback from Night Shade Books. The book’s cover, with design by Claudia Noble and art by Ryan Pancoast, is beautiful. I was particularly struck by how Pancoast seamlessly introduced a dragon and Native Americans into John Trumbull’s The Death of General Mercer at the Battle of Princeton. Looking at Pancoast’s cover image, it is difficult to imagine that they don’t belong there in reality, which adds to the book’s sense of an alternate history:

The Death of General Mercer at the Battle of Princeton, by John Trumbull (circa 1795) via Wikipedia

The Death of General Mercer at the Battle of Princeton, by John Trumbull (circa 1795) via Wikipedia
At the Queen's Command, by Ryan Pancoast (2010)

At the Queen's Command, by Ryan Pancoast (2010) via ryanpancoast.com

At the Queen’s Command is an excellent new entry in the field of alternate history. Like any good book, it offers no easy solutions at its conclusion. Partially, this is to set up tension for subsequent books in the series, but in a very real sense it is because we still wrestle with the same questions as Stackpole’s fictional Mystria: where does the state’s responsibility end, and where does the citizen’s begin? I am eagerly looking forward to seeing how Mystria and how Stackpole’s characters wrestle with these questions in the books to come.

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