The Year Of Our War – Steph Swainston

What happens:

The story is set in the Fourlands, an alter-world with a climate a bit like northern Europe. It is narrated by Comet Jant Shira, a drug-addicted cross between two humanoid races and the only person in his world who can fly. He’s a member of the Castle Circle, an elite group of immortals whose job it is to protect ordinary humans from the depredations of giant, hostile insects that come from who knows where.

Jant’s narrative skips between battlefields, opulent manor houses, the weird landscape left behind by the insects, and a Naked Lunch-esque parallel world called the Shift, accessible only by nearly killing yourself through an overdose. Shira, as the immortals’ messenger, is used by them as go-between for vicious political infighting that eventually erupts into civil war.

The story differs from the bulk of fantasy, in that it’s less about personal heroism or cheesy wish-fulfilment than about politics. None of the heroes are very likeable, and all the immortals are bickering amongst themselves – so much so that the distraction of civil war among themselves nearly brings about total destruction of the Fourlands by those huge ant things.

What I liked:

It’s the strongest work of original fantasy I’ve read since Perdido Street Station.  The characters are credible, complex, savage and flawed. There are no Mary Sues, there is no epic quest for a magic stone, and absolutely no dragons. The battle scenes are grisly, with the gory detail of a Joe Abercrombie if not his computer-games-player-ish relish for spattering blood. It takes a rare depth of observation to create such a distinctive world vision – and then to set a story of group rivalries, lusts and intrigue in it, rather than the more usual prince-who-doesn’t-know-he’s-a-prince, or hidden-talent-that-will-save-the-nation-from-whatever-the-threat-is tropes.

What I didn’t like:

Having said I like the complexity and ambiguity of the characters, Jant Shira does get a bit irritating. And the flip side of such complex and flawed characters is that when one is killed there is little emotional resonance. It’s also tough to get into, as its fantasy world is radically different both from the generic sword-and-sorcery one and also from the real world. The first chapter sets up some important characters in the same breath as throwing us headlong into descriptions of an alien world, triggering a fairly high wtf-factor at least for the first few chapters.

Why it’s a good book to read on the train:

It’s a good book, but for some of the reasons above not the best for the train. I found the wtf-factor a tiny bit high for reading at 7 in the morning. It’s worth perservering, though, because this is one of the most original and inventive authors – in or beyond the fantasy genre – at the moment. I’m looking forward to the rest of her oeuvre.

Posted: February 20th, 2010 | Author: bookworm | Filed under: Fantasy, Litfic | Tags: , | No Comments »

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