Legend by David Gemmell
Ok so now we’re getting into the territory of what one might consider “proper fantasy”. Gemmell in his day was the big don-dada of straight up two fisted action adventure fantasy. While he did not write long interconnected series many of his books share a universe with the others. This one, Legend is but the first in a whole series of the world of the Drenai, who are a sort of western coded people (though not specifically Greek or Germanic or even Celtic) and takes place at a pivotal moment in their long resistance to the incursions of the Mongol-coded Nadir tribesmen (which thankfully manages to dodge a lot of the dodgy orientalist tropes that one can get what fantasy decides to dip into that tainted well for inspiration).
It’s the story of the siege of Dros Delnoch, that last
outpost of the Drenai on their northern frontier holding the gap between two
great mountain ranges, a choke point that the Nadir must overcome before then
can pass into the lands of the Drenai and is told from the perspective of the
defenders.
So far so very so very much what one might expect from a
fantasy novel, its Helms Deep but a whole book. What makes it
special is what Gemmel himself was bringing to it. By all accounts he was a very
genial and kind man, but he was a big dude and while he cut his teeth writing
as a stringer on the local beat in his home town of Hastings, he was also a
bouncer and grew up around a lot of other big tough guys for whom violence was
a normal part of their lives like his beloved step father Bill. There’s a lot
in here about masculinity of the decidedly non toxic variety. Also, I was not
aware of this the first time I read it but on hearing about it made perfect
sense; when Gemmell was writing Legend he had had a cancer diagnosis and
legitimately didn’t know if this was going to be the only novel he would ever
get to write. It was essentially a form of therapy, the siege of the fortress was
him resisting the threat of a potentially life ending illness. The characters
in the book, particularly the titular Druss The Legend (based on his stepdad) were
his imaginative actualisation of the fighting spirits of those people and the
lessons they’d taught him over the course of his life deployed against the
existential crisis he was facing down.
Luckily for us, he got over the cancer and though he would
die relatively young at 58 of heart disease he would go on to give us some
absolute bangers, Echoes of The Great Song, Dark Moon and my favourites the 4
part Rigante series, the first two of which are his take on the Arthurian
mythos. So if you read and enjoy Legend there’s a whole body of work of admittedly
variable but mostly high quality fantasy for you to get stuck into. But Legend
is the best place to start. If you are only ever going to read one David
Gemmell book this is very much the one.
Weaveworld by Clive Barker
the horror author Clive Barker who created Hellraiser and whose shorts inspired Candyman and The Midnight Meat Train definitely have a lot in them that is of the macabre and horrific. It’s a portal fantasy about magical beings hiding in a world contained, as the title suggests within the warp and weft of an intricately patterned carpet. Set in the Liverpool of the 80s, the shadow of Thatcherism and the radical kick back against that in that city with the poll tax riots and a Trotskyist faction running the city council add a lot of grit and a profound sense of place and moment to the world building. Our protagonists are all decidedly working class heroes, one of the villains seems to be the embodiment of capital and another is a bitter old cop.
Barker has also never been one to shy away from the
intersection between the horrific and the erotic and while used sparingly there
are definitely some passages in this that are on the spicy side of things so be
warned, this is not for kids or anyone who isn’t comfortable with that type of
thing. You will likely squirm at one scene in particular, no spoilers but
suffice to say that it’s a memorable depiction of the monstrous feminine specifically
the mother aspect. What you should get out of this is again a really
good story that rollicks along and keeps you guessing as it unfolds with some
great flights of fancy and Barker’s elegant and evocative prose.
Piranesi by Susanna Clarke
Clarke came right out of nowhere back in the early 00s with Johnathan Strange and Mr Norrell, a historical fantasy about rival magicians set in early 19th century Britain. It was a darling of the critics and genre fans alike, one that both the literary world and genre fiction readers could really get behind, like a latter day Doris Lessing. If I had read it myself instead of just watching the apparently very accurate and faithful TV adaptation it might be on here, but I have not. I did read her long anticipated and much shorter though no less lauded follow up Piranesi which came out only a couple of years ago making this the most recent book on this list. Clarke unfortunately for everyone is a long term sufferer of CFS and only produces a book every decade or so, so it behoves us to appreciate them when she does, and appreciate it I did.
Piranesi is the journal of a man with a dodgy memory who
finds himself in a huge Gormenghastian mansion which is half full of sea water
and has its own tidal system referred to only as The House. As far as he’s
aware, this is it, him and the mysterious and enigmatic figure referred
to as The Other who shows up occasionally to speak to him are the only two
living entities in the entire universe. The human remains of the dozen or so
other people he finds around The House are the only other people that ever have
existed. Without giving too much away, obviously we as the reader know that
there’s something not quite right going on there, particularly as The Other
makes to us what are clearly ominous references to places and things from the
real world. It’s a short book and it gives up the goods in a nicely paced and
well executed fashion so if any of that has you intrigued enough to look into getting
a copy and having a look for yourself, you’re in for a treat.
Jerusalem by Alan Moore
Alan Moore is for my money the greatest living writer at least in the English language. After blazing a trail through the comics industry becoming the undisputed king of 80s/90s writers he, after a lot of provocation and bad deals took a sickner with that whole side of the cultural sphere and concentrated on writing fiction.
His first novel Voice of The Fire
was a psycho-geographical exploration of his home city from the first human
settlers in that part of the world through to the present of 1997 when the
books was written, which is essentially him writing in first person as he takes
a walk around his neighbourhood. As great as that was, and indeed worth reading
in its own right, it was but a taster for Jerusalem, in which he draws on local
history, his own family history and such knowledge as he has gleaned from his
own esoteric investigations (the man is a fully accredited practicing IRL
wizard) he restates the case made in Voice of the Fire for Northampton city,
and specifically his local district The Burroughs being not just the geographical
centre of Britain but also of the world in general, indeed of life the universe
and everything.
It’s a weighty tome, the longest book on this list by far
and its not always an easy read. It is one which will sometimes require careful
study to get your head around certain parts of it, especially the section where
he’s in character as Lucia Joyce and goes full on Finnegan’s Wake with the
prose (no one will blame you for skipping that section tbh), but it’s eminently
readable and rewarding for those prepared to pull up their big boy smarty pants
and make the effort. It is about a lot of things, the nature of time and
reality itself. The Nietzschean notion of eternal recurrence, the degradation
of life under what once were important and thriving urban centres by neoliberalism.
Its about art and the necessity of making art, ever if its not something you’ll
make a living off and its just for you (aka why I keep writing this fucking
blog that nobody reads lol). It is rich, textured, funny as hell and if you’re
in the right frame of mind for it may rewire your consciousness and cure your todesangst,
if that’s a thing you’ve had to deal with in your life.
..........
And so we come to the last and by no means least book on this
list. A few years ago I would 100% have had Coraline by Neil Gaiman on here and
be talking about it right now but since all the stuff came out its just like
nah. As much as the books themselves are all great and whatever weird shit he got up to in his private life very little of it ends up on the page,
unlike other problematic authors, looking at You Marion Zimmerman Bradley (and
yes I did read a pirated copy of The Mists of Avalon out of curiosity and after
knowing what we know now about her, and fuck me as great as that book is in the
abstract it is really hard going when you have the full context, genuinely
uncomfortable and squicky the way horror fiction is meant to be and this was
definitely not written as a horror novel). So yeah, Coraline, American Gods,
Anansi Boys, Good Omens, which he did with Terry Pratchett are great stand alone
fantasies and read them if you must but please for the love of god buy second
hand, pirate or better still, shoplift a hard copy from your local non-independent big book chain retail store if you have to. Whatever it takes, just do not
legally purchase a physical or digital copy because even if his numerous accusers
are just money grabbing bitches who are exaggerating to fill their pockets (which
funnily enough is exactly the same line taken by Rolf Harris about his accusers)
if he only did the stuff that he’s admitted to himself, that cunt does not
need nor deserve penny one of any residual sales from his work from now until
the end of time.
So with that out of the way, what to do? Like I do love
Terry Pratchett and technically all his books in the Discworld series are stand
alone but I’ve done a whole other long essay on here about him and his work
which you can find here. The TL:DR being, if you’ve not read any of his stuff
before, Small Gods, Guards Guards!, Wyrd Sisters or The Wee Free Men for younger
and particularly female readers are all good.
Which brings us to someone who I am a massive fan of,
haven’t written about on here before and at least to the best of my knowledge
hasn’t fucked any of his twenty-something unpaid domestic servants and what I feel
is the best jumping on point for him and his whole schtick
Best Served Cold by Joe Abercrombie
Joe, aka Lord Grimdark, writes much like David Gemmell, good straight up two fisted violent action adventure fantasy. For many people he’s the go to after they’ve read all the Game Of Thrones books. He, Like GRRM does morally dubious complex characters against a complicated and dark setting animated by a black humour (and he’s actually capable of finishing a series once he’s started so there’s that…). There are some horror elements and implied science behind the fiction so it's at least New Weird adjacent. I actually first heard of him through a hit piece by a highly strung traditional fantasy author kvetching about the turn away from fantasy with a firm Christian moral basis into the modern trend of nihilism. I can’t dig up the exact quote but it was something along the lines of: imagine if at then end of the Lord Of The Rings it turned out Gandalf was just as much of a dick as Sauron and only wanted the one ring destroyed so he could be the undisputed power in the land himself and Aragorn was just some useful dupe that he’d installed, to which my immediate response was That sounds dope as fuck, sign me up, and I have been on the Abercrombie train ever since, binging through everything he’d had out up to that point and reading every new book of his as they’ve released.
Joe writes in something like the traditional fantasy style, the main series set in the First Law universe is a trilogy, followed by three stand alone books set in other parts of the same shared world peripheral to the Union, the main setting of the first three, followed by a trilogy set a generation after and starring the children of some of the characters from the previous books and recurring characters from the stand-alones. As a fan and disciple of terry Pratchett he has purposefully written each book so that they really could stand alone and be read out of order, even the individual parts of the two trilogies, but probably better if you don’t tbh. No no, my recommendation is that if you just want to read one of these books to get a flavour of the world and see everything that Abercrombie can do as a writer go for the first of the three stand alone books Best Served Cold. Aside from a very light spoiler for some stuff at the end of the trilogy that doesn’t actually matter there’s nothing in here that’s going to take away from reading the previous books if you go back, hell one of the main POV characters from that trilogy shows up in one scene but its written delicately around it so you wouldn’t actually know unless you’ve read the previous books, but if you have it’s a lovely little Easter egg for you.
This is Abercrombie doing his take on the revenge thriller,
it's his Count of Monte Christo or Kill Bill. It starts off our
heroine(?) Monza Murcatto being defenestrated after seeing her twin brother murdered
in front of her and left for dead by the Duke Orso for whom she’d been formerly
employed as one of his top generals. She survives and gathers a rag tag bunch
of misfits to seek her revenge, including a few characters you might have come
across in the previous trilogy such as Caul Shivers, who shows up in basically
every book in this setting aside from the first one and goes through one of the
wildest character arcs in genre fiction, with this being the one he’s in the most
and has his most pivotal moments. It also has fan favourite Nicomo Cosca, another
memorable and well written character who runs the gamut from anti-hero, to hero
to primary villain-antagonist in another of the books, though in this one he’s
on the side of our main characters and very much on the hero part of that arc.
It’s a great meditation on the nature of revenge as what
starts off as a righteous quest for vengeance gets increasingly murky as the
collateral damage stacks up and Monza herself begins to doubt the validity of
what she’s doing but also hammers home that once you start off on a certain
path it can be very hard to get off.
This is Joe on absolute top form, the competence in his
character work, world building and technical writing is off the scale. In the
later part of the book there’s one of the most cleverly written sex scenes you’ll
ever read, not just for the smut but for how he handles character perspectives.
The action and battle sequences are characteristically visceral. There’s a
great heist sequence. It’s just a good meal well served and you’re in the hands
of a master.
And apparently there's talk of a film of this one in the works so if you want to get hipster points by getting in early and reading the novel so you can brag about it now's probably a good time :)
So there you go. If you’re looking to branch your reading
into fantasy and don’t want to dive head first into a big chonky multi part
book series that only starts getting really good 4 books in or whatever or may
or may not at the time this is going out ever come to a conclusion, looking at you
Patrick Rothfuss and GRRM, this should hopefully have given you something to
chew on and possibly inspired you to take a peek at something listed above. I may
or may not come back to this topic for there are indeed a few books of which I’m
fond that would be considered stand alone fantasy that have been bubbling under
and might have been in here if I’d read them more recently. Or I might do something
about completed series / trilogies for people that liked A Song Of Ice and Fire
and want something similar to get into while enduring the long and possibly
unending wait for that next book. Lets just see where the mood takes me.
Anyways, I hope you’ve enjoyed this, peace out and if you’ve read any of these
and want to comment or especially if you’ve actually picked any of these up
thanks to me do leave a comment or share, it would mean the world to me.
No comments:
Post a Comment