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This book was nothing like I expected and all the better for it.

I was expecting a classic swords and sorcery tale of epic fantasy – one with gods and warriors and monsters, a story that doesn’t let up from the beginning to the end. (After the obligatory fantasy trope of nothing happening for the first 50 pages or so.) What I got was very different: a short-sighted young woman, with no special skills other than her tenacious intelligence, ends up embroiled in a Bronze Age war between a band of nomads and The Spawn, a race of gelatinous, almost un-killable monsters. The story follow ‘Yishka’s’ struggle to find her place and live up to the expectations of the nomads that she, the goddess, will lead them to victory against the evil that threatens them.

And this is where the story veered away from what I was expecting. The War of the God Queen is not just a long list of battles and triumphs and losses (though they are there), nor is it an expose of a magic system she has to learn to conquer The Spawn (though there is magic), neither is it just another take on dirty politics (that’s there, too). A large part of the conflict is built around something more mundane – and that, paradoxically, is why I liked it.

In the struggle against the Spawn, Yishka and the nomads sacrifice a large part of their way of life: they build a city and women earn rights beyond that of being allowed to cook for the men and bear their children. It’s a nice touch, a realistic process in a fantastical setting: building a city and everything that comes with that. It’s a refreshing change to adverb-fuelled violence and destruction.

Don’t get me wrong, there’s a time and place for the latter, but this made a refreshing break from the usual carnage found in many fantasy novels. These changes wrought by Yishka, the handmaidens (not the type in red dresses or white hoods – far from it) and the nomads, are not without loss, however. They bring resentment and conflict. Principles, roles and tradition are challenged. The role of the ‘white saviour’ is also touched upon. I thought it was very well done.

There were other things I enjoyed, too.

• I liked the writing. I’ve mentioned in other reviews that I like ‘clean’ writing with minimal descriptions that still convey their meaning.
• The characters are likeable/ unlikeable as appropriate. Also, not every character develops. I know this is not usually what teachers of writing say should happen, but it is realistic. Amir, for example. stays pretty much the same from start to end, just like some people in the real world.
• The prologue has a great twist at the end, setting up for the main story.
• And there was enough tension to keep me reading to find out how/ what happens in the last few pages.

There were a few things that I struggled with, however.

The cover. Pulpy. Not really my thing. Sorry. 

The story follows on from another story by the same author (The Dulwich Horror of 1927). I haven’t read the story and the references to the Yishka’s role in that book threw me. I kept thinking that I had missed a chapter or section in this book.

Similarly, because I don’t know much about Cthulhu, whenever the Mythos came up – either directly mentioned or its influence on creature/ buildings etc – I wasn’t sure I fully appreciated it. Some of it was a bit too surreal, too alien. Maybe that was the point – the contrast between that and the Bronze Age world.

Also, as a final gripe, the nomads go from being, well, nomadic, I guess, to having the basis of a functioning city in a very short space of time. I’m not sure how quickly this could happen in reality to a Bronze Age tribe, even with the help of modern minds, but occasionally, the process felt too smooth.

With the exception of my first gripe, these are minor issues and not ones that interfered with the story too much.

I can see that some people won’t take to this book. If you don’t like the weirdness of Cthulhu; prefer your women in fantasy to be shield-maidens, wannabe shield-maidens, scantily-clad women in need of a shield-maiden, or even scheming princess who should probably be given a talking to by a shield-maiden; or want a plot that races along rather than cruises; you may want to look elsewhere. But if you want a well-written story set amongst Bronze age nomads, with sorcerers, (weird) aliens, warriors and a steady-paced plot, I’d recommend it. But you may be better off reading The Dulwich Horror of 1927 first.

Overall rating.

5 stars

And I’m looking forwards to the sequel.

You can pick up a copy of War of the God Queen on Amazon here. (Currently not available anywhere else, I believe.) And you can read about the man behind the words here.

One Book Interview #50 – David Hambling (Author)

If you’ll allow me to mangle a well-known idiom with my unique grasp of math(s), this book is a book of two halves.

Approximately 90% of it holds some of the best writing I have come across.

• The relentless increase in tension.
• The ‘Oh sh*t, no! He’s not gonna do that.’ moments.
• The breakneck speed and drama of the battle scenes.
• The understated horror of what happens to some people.
• The realisation that Zero has been playing them for years.
• That prose, baby. The books got the kind of moves that’ll make a librarian sit up and damn well perspire in the aisles.

This 90% is phenomenal. (Just like in Book Two.)

Then there’s the 10%.

Now, don’t get me wrong. The 10% is not bad, not by any stretch. If I could get near the standard of this 10% in anything of mine, I’d be happy. But compared to the rest of the book, it jarred.

Zero’s back story drags. It’s well-written, but feels almost like a long short-book within a short long-book.

His fate, too. It came and went. As did Alicia’s. (Peter’s, too, to an extent). I’ve reread these sections and still came away thinking: “What just happened?”

It’s a theme that recurs throughout the series, everything is so well written but every now and then something pops up which seems too fantastical: Peter dealing with the drac in the cage (Book Two); virals that were unstoppable in Book One get weaker as the story progresses – they no longer have just one or two ‘sweet spots’ (the sternum & palate) but can be killed as easily as humans. There were other moments where I had the same sensation of stumbling over a plot point. I feel like I’m being churlish as the series is SO good. But precisely because of that, what I may have glossed over in other books, stuck out here.

Similarly, the prose: It is sublime: pared down to the bare minimum in places and so effective for it; a throwaway sentence of beauty in others. But again when Zero is around, things tend to wallow. It suits his personality. Maybe, that was why. But it’s also the dosage. Like salt, a little adds flavour. A pinch more? Perfect. Dump in three more spoons (AKA sentences) and it’s too much.

Overall, though, I binge-read this book like I did the other two. That pretty much tells you my opinions about it and the series.

Buy it. Read it. Once you’ve read the others first.

You can pick up a copy here.

 

Please note I am a participant in the Amazon Services LLC Associates Program, an affiliate advertising program designed to provide a means for sites to earn advertising fees by advertising and linking to Amazon sites.

I’m not really sure where to start with this book.

It’s monstrous. In the best possibly way.

Did I like it?

Yes, absolutely. I’m half-way through the sequel already.

Is it easy to follow?

Yes & no.

The plot is the yes. Essentially, the military create ‘vampires’ by unearthing a long-lost disease. (I’m not sure if paleovirology is a thing but it sounds cool.) The army think they can control their subjects and the disease. Yeah. You got it. Guess what happens…

The no? That’s twofold: the cast of characters & the massive time jump about a third in.

I mentioned in a recent review of ‘Salem’s Lot how I was struggling to keep track of a town’s worth of people. (I’ll leave the comparison of Justin Cronin’s style to Stephen King to other people.*) I have the same numbers issue here. Except a lot of the people in The Passage are related and have similar names. There came a point where I had to roll with it and think that maybe character X was Y or possibly Z or actually Q’s sister in disguise as TBWJzjsi7aaQ’s brother. Kind of. And that’s before we add in first names and surnames and nicknames…

And the time jump? Did I mention that?

The book is essentially a long prequel and main story. The prequel sets the scene – where the virus is from, how it’s released into the wild and so on. The story then skips approx. 100 years into the future to a band of survivors in the ‘Colony’. It was a big break and left a lot of questions about certain initial characters unanswered, people I was ‘invested’ in. There were moments when I felt almost cheated by not knowing what had happened to them. As I struggled with the vast secondary cast, I occasionally felt I was reading purely to see what happened to the original people. Some of my questions are kind of addressed later on, but there’s a long wait for those half-answers.

Otherwise…

The story is incredibly well-written. There are moments of poetic prose interspersed with sections that are brutally simple. The nastiness within the novel was the latter: it’s clean. There were no lengthy descriptions of monsters dripping in adjectives and doing things adverbily to their overly-described victims. The scare was all the more powerful for that.

Partly because of the quality of the writing, there were a few places were the story seemed to jump, almost like a stylus on a record. A motive that I didn’t get. An action that made no sense. A monster’s inability to do something which I thought they could. I’d be hard pressed to tell you what those moments were now, but I remember them jarring.

To wrap up…

For those interested in apocalyptic thrillers, there are a lot of staples here: the hunt for food/ weapons/ safety & surviving government f**k ups. (We’re due a major one at the moment, surely…) Then there’s the banding together of the people who have fled the relative safety of their home and the resourcefulness they need to survive. It’s well done and there’s enough realism, hard luck and fortune to keep it interesting.

For those interested in ‘vampires’ (‘virals’). You’ve got it all. With a twist. References to crosses, mirrors (reflections), hanging upside down, blood and so on.

Would I have changed anything? Yes. Filling in the gap between section one & two. Book two addresses some of that time lag (brilliantly) and it’s nice to see some of the pieces slotting into places, but I think I’d still have preferred the story in order. By the time I get to the end of the trilogy, I may have different view.

All in all – a great read.

You can pick up a copy of The Passage here.

Andy

*They’re right.

 

Please note I am a participant in the Amazon Services LLC Associates Program, an affiliate advertising program designed to provide a means for sites to earn advertising fees by advertising and linking to Amazon sites.

I read this book exactly a year ago. I wrote a review then, too. ‘Bout time I posted it…

Heard of The Grey Bastards (TGB)? Nope? Well, here’s a bullet-point review.

• Don’t like frequent swearing? Don’t read this book.
• Don’t like violence? Don’t read this book.
• Don’t like books where nasty things happen? Don’t read this book.
• Don’t like books with multiple characters? Don’t read this book.
• Don’t like plots that twist and turn but somehow come out making sense? Don’t read this book.
• Don’t like sex scenes and/ or sexual references? Don’t read this book.
• Don’t like a sense of humour which ranges from clever to crude to banter to juvenile? Don’t read this book.
• Don’t like magic? Don’t read this book.
• Don’t like disturbing, skin-crawling (literally in some cases) events? Don’t read this book.
• Don’t like orcs or whores or shaven-headed elves or mad centaurs or devious humans and power-crazed wizards? Don’t read this book.
• Do like all this stuff? Go read this book.

Now for the wordy version…

The Grey Bastards is nice twist on the classic coming-of-age tale. In this case our protagonist is not a human but a half-orc. The book follows Jackal and his friends as they struggle to deal with the fate of their home and their ‘hoof’ against a multitude of enemies and, in some cases, friends.

The novel has plenty of twists and mashes up dark fantasy/ epic fantasy/ cowboy stories (cow-orcs?) and murder-mystery-suspense tropes. Friendships become enemies and enemies become allies. Those partnerships are made and broken seemingly from page to page. This, plus short chapters, makes for a fast-paced novel which is very easy to keep reading.

That pace, paradoxically, was one of the things that I found a little wearing at around the three-quarter mark. Ending each chapter on a cliff-hanger is a very effective way to keep people reading but I find it grates if used too much.

The other thing that niggled was the main character: Jackal. He’s nice. There were some utter reprobates amongst the ‘mongrels’, but Jackal and his friends are the half-orcish equivalent of whores with a heart of gold (who also crop up in this book). Jackal always strives to do the right thing and is always prepared to make the required sacrifice. I would have preferred him to be a bit more, well, orcish I guess. (Or human, depending on your view of humanity…) Jackal almost always gets the lucky escape, too – something else that I would have liked to vary a little more. Despite that, he is a solid main character and develops well, as evident by his role in his own fate.

My last mini-gripe would be to tone down the descriptions. Most of the prose is great and suits the book perfectly, but there are a few places where it felt forced.

I feel churlish pointing a lot of this stuff out as it is a very good book. Any fans of grimdark or dark fantasy will enjoy TGB. There are a lot of genre staples here dealt with in a refreshing way e.g. flipping the ‘good’ and ‘bad’ from human to orc, the centaurs, elves and wizards, etc. I particularly like the way the author manages the half-orc world: from the reason for the hoofs and their existence (that’s a great plot twist), their hierarchy and names, the hogs (I want one!), to their levels of orcishness: frailing/ half-orc/ thrice/ thick.

The other impressive feature is how it all comes together at the end. There are so many reversals of fortunes and loyalties and reasonings along the way, that I wondered at one point how the author would tie it all in. He does, and the book ends with a satisfying conclusion. It also leaves enough teasers dangling for book two – which has recently been released and looks as good as the first.

In conclusion, The Grey Bastards is well worth your time. But this recommendation comes with one final warning…

• Don’t like the word c**t? DON’T READ THIS BOOK!