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Book DescriptionEpic fantasy is about to be worked-over, in classic Richard Morgan style.SynopsisWhen a man you know to be of sound mind tells you his recently deceased mother has just tried to climb in his bedroom window and eat him, you have two options. You can smell his breath, take his pulse and check his pupils to see if he's ingested anything nasty, or you can believe him. Ringil Angeleyes had already tried the first course of action with Bashka the Schoolmaster to no avail, so he put down his pint with an elaborate sigh and went to get his broadsword. And he's not the only one to be dragged from the serious business of drinking for something as mundane as the walking dead. Archeth - pragmatist, cynic and engineer - is called from her work at the whim of the most powerful man in the Empire. Ekar Dragonbane finds himself entangled in a small-town battle between common sense and religious fervour. And after a personal encounter with the vengeful gods Poltar the Shaman is about to be an awful lot more careful who he prays to. Anti-social, anti-heroic, and decidedly irritated, all four of them are about to be sent unwillingly forth into a vicious, vigorous and thoroughly unsuspecting fantasy world.

Thursday, 13 March 2008The Steel RemainsNow, I read very little fantasy these days, and my knowledge of the genre is pretty pathetic. I can remember a couple of years ago when The Blade Itself came out I had a review that described the book as having a "Vancian reminiscence." "Vancian?" I asked my editors, with one eyebrow raised. "That's right, like Jack Vance." "Jack Vance?" I asked with both eyebrows raised. They looked at me as if I'd asked who Elvis was. I've read Tolkien, course. Dragonlance, Eddings, bit of Jordan, guilty as charged. Martin, Moorcock, and LeGuin, yes. But more recently, you can pretty much forget it. Bakker, not a word. Erikson, not a peep. Mieville, not a sausage.I believe if you're going to be a serious critic, you need to know the genre you're talking about pretty damn well, so you can see where a piece stands in relation to others. Furthermore, as a writer of fantasy myself, I find a) rating other people's work is a bit close to the bone, since I know how it feels to be rated myself, and I don't always enjoy it, and b) I find it very hard to get properly submerged in fantasy writing now - I'm always picking at it, thinking how I'd do it differently, and so on - like a glassblower looking at someone else's beautiful vase and moaning that he wouldn't have done the fluting just that way. Some writers are critics too, and the best of luck to them, but I'm not one, really, except in the "like arseholes, everyone's got opinions" sense. But Simon Spanton at Gollancz asked me for mine (opinion, that is, not arsehole) on sf author Richard Morgan's foray into the world of epic fantasy, The Steel Remains.I will not presume to review it, there'll be folk enough doing that shortly, I'm sure. I'll just say how it struck me.This is a good book. It may very well be part of a really great series. It's an extreme book, a challenging book in all kinds of ways - themes, content, and style. It reaches the parts most epic fantasies don't reach and many fantasy readers may not want to have reached. Morgan seems to say to them - tough shit, and you've got to greatly admire his bollocks in doing so. No-one could accuse him of moving into fantasy in order to take the easy commercial path. NO-ONE.Larry from Wotmania was recently examining bad criticism in the genre, and pointing out that there's nothing lazier than talking about one book by glibly comparing it to another. I will now, therefore, encaspsulate The Steel Remains by glibly comparing it to a whole load of other stuff that it's only vaguely like. Observe me in action:There's not much Tolkien in the mix at all, not much epic massiveness, no good and evil whatsoever, just loads of evil, and boy is there no romanticism. But there's not much Martin either, which surprised me, because that's more what I was expecting - Morgan's isn't a low magic world really, in fact there's quite a range of the wierd and wonderful in there. Elves (but messed up), Lizardmen (kind of), Dragons (of a sort), Magic swords (ish), sorcery (maybe). If I had to say what the world made me think of (work with me, Larry, work with me) it's probably closest to something like the sweaty back-streets of Fritz Leiber's Lankhmar, with a bit of the endless steppe from the Conan the Barbarian movie, and the lost, ancient technologies of the Elder Scrolls computer games. A world full of the strange and unexplained, but also a very grim one, constantly in the shadow of old and terrible wars with lashings of religious bigotry, sexual oppression, messy executions, and slavery.I'm probably doing it a disservice and making it sound piecemeal, which it isn't really. In fact it's pretty interesting with quite a few (to me at least) original notions in there, especially as the book goes on. A surprsingly tasty cocktail, for one with so varied a set of ingredients. Certainly the book doesn't feel at all like some ham-fisted reaction against fantasy, just a very different take on it. Some would probably say it's light on the worldbuilding, and be confused as to where x is in relation to y, but that suits me fine, as you can imagine.What else can I compare it to? It has the explosive violence of, well, Richard Morgan (only about twice as explosive), the moral ambiguity of vintage Moorcock (but about three times as dark), with the explicit sexual content of Martin (only about ten times more explicit, and I'm not kidding), the harsh language of Scott Lynch (times about 1,000,000). If those things put you off, really, don't bother. The first couple of pages will probably give you a bit of mouth sick. The lyricism of Patrick Rothfuss? Not so much. The languid descriptions of Robert Jordan? No. The charming rural laughs of Eddings? No. No. No.Anyway, I was honoured to be asked for a line or two on it, so here's mine:"Bold, brutal, and making no compromises - Morgan doesn't so much twist the cliches of fantasy as take an axe to them. Then set them on fire. Then put them out by pissing on them."I suspect the last sentence won't make many press releases, but I like to think that Mr. Morgan would approve. I ended up liking The Steel Remains a lot, and I think a lot of other people will too, but I must admit it took me quite a while to get there.For one thing, I'm not used to reading other people's manuscripts, and since it looked kind of like one of mine, it took me a while to just read it without thinking stuff like, "no, no, wrong adverb." Setting and binding definitely helps to give books authority - I find reading proofs a bit odd, in fact, so this was quite weird to begin with. Also, Morgan's approach to fantasy feels somewhere in the same ballpark as mine. I mean, it's not actually alike in any meaningful way, far further apart than a whole host of writers are to Tolkien, say. But close enough that I felt not just like a glass-blower assessing someone else's glassware, but a maker of little glass unicorns looking at someone else's glass unicorns. A pathetic metaphor. What I'm trying to say is it drops you in at the deep end, in the middle of the action, and lets the reader sink or swim. It's harsh, with some occasional black humour, has used-up, world-weary, semi-likeable characters, some heavy violence, a very modern sensibility and a feel of edgy realism. Probably it was that much harder for me to achieve "submersion" in it, if you like, than it will be for most, because it's my cup of tea, and I was therefore tasting it with much greater and more critical discernment than usual. It's my cup of tea, only a lot stronger than I usually take it, I must admit. Real brown and soupy. Like the bag's been left in overnight, or something. This is some strong medicine, and as I was going through, I must admit that I found myself often wondering - how extreme, in all sorts of ways, is too extreme?It's not that I'm a prude (he says, loosening his well-starched dog collar by just the tiniest fraction that strict social decorum will allow), and often I got caught up in it all and the heart would be pumping, but sometimes I'd wipe the latest explosion of gore, shit, or spunk from my face and just think, "must we? Must we, again?" It occasionally gave me that feeling of, "if you're playing on 10 all the time, and you want that little bit more, where do you go?" Some will definitely love this book and some will definitely hate it, but a few may reasonably think it could have been just a tad less lurid at times and gained punch as a result...There's also an unremitting grimness that makes it all pretty heavy-going in places. Ariel coined the term "Brutalist Fantasy" and I think that's very apt. Everyone is in fear, in danger, alone, oppressed, hated, self-loathing, tortured by their pasts, and the result is that it feels, at least for the first half, perhaps a bit one-toned. The upside is that a couple of deft touches of humanity later on, from some of the places you least expect them, shine brightly against the grim backdrop, and when the central characters finally come together for the finale, the bond between them is surprisingly effective and really quite touching.But probably the biggest problem I had with the book, and this is a personal reaction rather than a general criticism, is its utterly unflinching modernity - in the prose, and in the dialogue. No doubt it's entirely intentional, but I did find it jarring. Barbarians use phrases like "back in '55", everyone from swineherd, to knight, to emperor, says "yeah," frequently, and everyone, and I mean everyone, says "fuck." They say it a lot. They say it a fucking lot.Now, don't get me wrong, I despise faux victorian romanticism in prose and dialogue as much as the next man. A lot more, in fact. I'm not asking anyone to go all "prithee", "pon mine honour" and "ifaith, my liege", but at the same time I feel the words you pick are very important, and for me some of the language didn't necessarily communicate much about the characters and the settings in question, in fact it conflicted with them quite badly, at least at first, and gave it all an oddly schizophrenic feel. An epic fantasy with the prose of ... well, of a Richard Morgan dystopian sci-fi. The issue of what is or is not anachronistic is one we could spend a great deal of time discussing, so I'll duck it like the coward I am. I must say I got used to the unflinching, unapologetic modernism over time, but I never quite liked it. I would not be at all surprised if Morgan has used the word "fuck" more in one book than Scott Lynch in two and me in three all put together. In fact I'd be surprised if he hadn't. He may well have used it more than in all of his previous books put together. I love a bit of swearing, I've written empassioned defences of its use in fantasy but there definitely is such a thing as too much. I wouldn't consider it an anachronism, but in the end, five times in one paragraph, it just gets repetitive, boring, ineffective. Obviously, everyone will have a different threshold there, but for me, there was waaaaaaay too much, at least early on.Now I know what you're all thinking. "Joe, you hypocritical bastard, these are just the same criticisms you're constantly and shrilly defending yourself against!" Ooops. You're right. Modern verbiage. Too much swearing. Too much dark. Over-the-top violence. I can only scratch my head and say, it's all a question of balance, and every reader or writer will find theirs in a different place, and if you think my stuff is in any way extreme, then think again, rapidly, because fantasy just got a whole lot more extreme, guys. I am proudly middle-of-the road, now. I am made bland, and inoffensive, and believe me, so is everybody else.Anyway, these are details, really, which made me struggle at first, but that generally fell away as the book went on and I got drawn into the setting, and the people, and the unfolding of the mystery. By the last hundred pages or so I was properly gripped. It's a slow builder, and takes a bit of time getting there (another criticism everyone always has of my books), but has a cracking action finale, and an ending that would seem to promise some very interesting developments as the series goes on. It also strikes a nice balance between resolution of a book and setting up of a trilogy, something that's harder than you might think. I hesitate to say, "if you like the works of x, y, or z, then give The Steel Remains a try," because really it's pretty much unlike anything else, and that's why you should give it a try. You might love it, you might loathe it, but you'll certainly find it difficult to ignore...

"Bold, brutal, and making no compromises - Morgan doesn't so much twist the cliches of fantasy as take an axe to them. Then set them on fire. Then put them out by pissing on them."

Valashu a écrit :Ce bouquin a vraiment l'air de sortir des sentiers battus, mais j'espère que la violence omniprésente et la prose trop moderne ne viendront pas gâcher la lecture.

Hype has a funny way of raising one's expectations to an unattainable plateau. Richard Morgan wasn't even halfway done with the manuscript of a forthcoming fantasy novel which had yet to be titled, and already we were hearing how the author would turn the genre on its head. And given Morgan's talent and reputation, all of us believed that if someone could do it, then the author was the most likely candidate. Advance reading copies had not even been printed, yet early readers raved about The Steel Remains. Fantasy, or so it was claimed, was about to get real.The vagaries of life (or the fact that I reside in Canada) mean that European reviewers already had their reviews up before I even received my ARC. The verdict appeared quasi-unanimous: The Steel Remains probably was the fantasy novel of the year.Now, at this point the hype made it so that anything short of one of the genre's top reads of the year would be a disappointment. Hence, with such expectations, is it any wonder that Morgan's fantasy debut failed to deliver? It comes as no surprise that The Steel Remains is of the dark and gritty school of fantasy. And yet, though the author endeavored to be edgy and different, Morgan appears to have failed to realize that most of the "shocking" aspects he was throwing at us had been done before. The grit, the nastiness, the explicit language, the "in your face" violence, the drugs, the sex, homosexuality, etc; if you've read George R. R. Martin, Hal Duncan, Steven Erikson, and R. Scott Bakker, then you'll immediately realize that Morgan's take on fantasy might not be as original as some appear to believe. . . Moreover, those aforementioned authors pushed the envelope further and did it with more depth than Morgan did in The Steel Remains. One of the novel's shortcomings is the fact that the author appears to have mostly relied on those factors instead of concentrating on his superior plotting and storytelling skills to write this tale.The Steel Remains is a character-driven book, and the various story arcs focus on three main characters. Ringil Eskiath, homosexual hero of the infamous battle of Gallows Gap, is wasting is life away now that the war is over. Then his mother shows up, asking him to find one of his cousins who was sold into slavery. His quest to locate his lost kin will soon make him realize that there is a lot more at stake, and that a greater menace threatens this post-war world. Archeth, a kiriath half-breed abandoned by her brethren is now advisor to the Emperor of the Yhelteth Empire. Sent to investigate the scene of a carnage which took place in a distant port city, she discovers that a formidable enemy of unknown might seems to threaten the empire. Egar the Barbarian, who fought for the Yhelteth Empire during the War against the Scaled Folk, is driven away by his own people and must make his way south to save his life. Not since the last war have the three come together, and they are now forced to do so in order to discover what lies behind this phantom menace. Characterization has always been Richard Morgan's strong suit. Although well-defined to some extent, by trying to make them too edgy and over-the-top the author sort of shot himself in the foot and the whole thing backfired. Archeth possesses some depth, but more often than not Ringil and Egar fail to rise above the clichés they are meant to break. Morgan created a cast of morally (and sexually) ambiguous characters, but I feel that he didn't inject enough life in their personalities and back stories to make them memorable.Black Man/Thirteen was my favorite read of 2007. Richard Morgan's name has become associated with quality, and any scifi yarn he writes has the potential to be a candidate for book of the year. Unfortunately, Morgan's style, which deservedly rank him among the very best science fiction writers out there, doesn't have the same kind of impact in the fantasy genre. Readers who are expecting the fantasy equivalent of Altered Carbon and Black Man/Thirteen might be sorely disappointed. In terms of style, this novel is very similar to Joe Abercrombie's The First Law( minus Joe's snarky sense of humor). By that I mean that it has a fairly straightfoward plot, with very little worldbuilding to speak of, and a relatively small cast of characters. But where Abercrombie used traditional tropes to trick readers into believing that they knew what was coming, Morgan utilizes the more "sensationalist" elements to shock readers, or to generate some reactions. The problem is, when you strip The Steel Remains of the grit, the profanities, the gratuitous sex scenes, and the bloody violence, were are left with rather thin plotlines. The last portion of the novel hinted that there is more depth to A Land Fit for Heroes than meets the eye, but this means that we must now wait for the sequel, The Cold Command, to discover if that's truly the case or not.It's no secret that fantasy became nastier and more violent in recent years. Dark and brooding epics have irrevocably altered the genre, or so it seems. Had it been released a decade ago, The Steel Remains would have made quite a splash. In 2008, however, the book is following established paths and not uncharted waters.Make no mistake: The Steel Remains is a good book. It's simply not the great novel which everyone appear to have anticipated. Richard Morgan, through likely no fault of his, is a victim of the hype and his own reputation. The author has raised the bar extremely high, and it was probably unfair of fans to expect him to raise it even higher by jumping genre.My only advice: Don't believe the hype the way I did. If you like dark and gritty fantasy novels, then chances are that you'll enjoy The Steel Remains. Just don't expect the book to make an impression similar to that of GRRM's A Game of Thrones when it came out.Regardless of the fact that it's nowhere near as groundbreaking as advertised, The Steel Remains is nevertheless an entertaining and action-packed read. If you go into this one with the appropriate expectations, there's no reason why you shouldn't enjoy it.The final verdict: 7.5/10