This is rather a short book, closer to a novella than a full-length
novel, but it packs a hefty punch for its size. Eurik is a human who was
found as a baby in a boat with his dead parents, and raised by a
non-human island-based society called the San. Ah, the orphan of unknown
heritage story, that's always a good one, if a little over-used. The
opening chapters, where we see Eurik living amongst the very alien San,
are terrific. I'm a big fan of non-human societies, and this one has
been very well thought out. But then, sadly, Eurik is given the living
sword of the title, the only possession found on the boat, and told he
has to leave the island to find out what happened to his parents, and
where they came from. This means living amongst humans for the first
time, a race (or species, maybe?) he's previously only read about in
books.
The humans, frankly, are less interesting, because their
way of life is very similar to that of millions of other fantasy human
societies. It’s the differences, the idiosyncrasies of this world that
make it interesting. Fortunately, the author doesn't belabour the idea
that the human world is very new to Eurik. He's well read, so he manages
to recognise many ordinary items (bread, for instance) from book
descriptions. It would be tedious if every common item he saw was
described through his eyes as something novel and strange. Still, he
does seem to accept things very quickly, without too many ‘whoa!
whatever’s that’ outbreaks.
There’s some nice world-building
going on here, with various different races and languages and customs
which have clearly been well developed. The author doesn’t infodump all
this background, it’s simply there, and the reader just has to keep up
with the various references to the unknown. Sometimes, there’s an
explanation later or the meaning becomes clear, but there were a few
times when just a little extra detail would have made it easier to
follow and increased the richness of the world. For instance, there are
throwaway lines about the San being ‘tree-people’ and ‘genderless’. Hold
it right there, that sounds interesting, tell me more. But no, the
story moves swiftly on.
I very much liked the two forms of magic
being used, or rather one form of magic and one which is merely a
different philosophy (I liked Eurik’s insistance that the amazing things
he can do, purely through his mind, is not magic). The San method of
steering a boat is particularly clever, and it’s amazing just how much
can be achieved by shifting earth about. It’s clear the author has
worked things out very carefully, and there are rules and limits and
costs involved. And for those who like wizardy-type battles, there are
some absolute crackers in here.
The characters fell a little
flat, for me. Eurik, in particular, is a very unemotional bloke, and
considering all that happens to him and the fact that he’s tossed out of
the world he’s known from babyhood and into a very different world, he
seems almost implausibly stoical. Some of his actions, too, are just too
relaxed, such as when he decides to talk to the fighting San by signing
up for the contest and walking out into the arena. I can’t believe this
was the only way he could get to see the San. Admittedly, it led to a
great scene, but it seemed to me that Eurik was far too calm about it. I
would have liked to see a little more reaction from him at times. He
gets involved in some truly terrifying incidents along the way, so a
little bit of fear at the time and angst afterwards would make him more
human. Or maybe that’s the point, that he’s been so well taught by the
San that he has lost some of his humanity. In which case, that was a bit
too subtly done, since it’s only just occurred to me. Doh.
Of
the other characters, the only one that most stands out in my mind is
Broken-Fang. Gotta love a captured female who doesn’t wait around to be
rescued. There are some interesting side characters along the way too,
and I have to give an honourable mention to one of the most important
characters, the living sword himself. He (can a sword have a gender? I
certainly thought of it as male) has a very distinct and entertaining
personality all his own, although his inexplicable lack of knowledge
until the plot requires it veers dangerously close to deus ex machina.
There are some villains, but they simply appear out of nowhere and their
motives seem a bit suspect.
The plot is rather episodic, with
spells of furious magic-fuelled battles interspersed with ambling
through the scenery or finding inns and such like. The book has a
somewhat unfinished air, and seems quite disjointed. For instance, a
section starts off: “They entered Campan together, passing the
watchtower they'd seen from afar.” There’s virtually no description of
Campan itself (it’s a town, as we find out a few lines later, but when I
first saw the name, it could be almost anything - a country, a swamp, a
fort, a castle...), and no warning beforehand that they were heading
that way. This is very jarring (I actually searched to find out if I’d
missed an earlier reference). A line or two linking the previous section
to the arrival at Campan would help the book flow better. There are a
number of places where a few extra lines of description would help to
bridge these gaps. The writing is fairly untidy, with numerous
punctuation errors, misplaced words and a couple of wrongly used words
(shoulders instead of soldiers, feint instead of faint). This didn’t
bother me unduly (I’m more of a grammar pedant), but some might find it
distracting.
This is a difficult book to review. On the one
hand, I enjoyed it a great deal, especially everything to do with the
San and their ‘philosophical’ form of magic. The world-building was
good, and the plot was full of drama. On the other hand, the choppiness
of the writing, the sloppy editing and the lack of background
information in places, often jarred me out of immersion. Still, I was
never tempted to stop reading and the action moments were very good,
even if sometimes events seemed a bit contrived. Three stars.
No comments:
Post a Comment