Malazan Empire: Werthead - Viewing Profile - Malazan Empire

Mawukana na-Vdnaze is an unusual man. Born in the Shine, an autocratic multi-planetary government noted for its brutal repression of dissent, he escapes in the most astonishing manner possible, via an FTL jump that goes...weird. Given refuge on another world, he is drawn back into interstellar affairs when a twin star goes supernova, generating an explosion that will render dozens of worlds uninhabitable, including some in the Shine.

Catherine Webb has consistently been one of spec fic's most interesting voices since they launched their career almost a quarter of a century ago. The Matthew Swift sequence (four novels plus two spin-off books), under the Kate Griffin pen-name, was notable as an urban fantasy series with terrific prose, but it's been their long streak of stand-alone novels under the Claire North pen-name which has attracted a much wider audience. The million-selling, John W. Campbell Memorial Award-winning First Fifteen Lives of Harry August was one of the most striking genre novels of the 2010s (and it remains a mystery why it hasn't been adapted for the screen), and the World Fantasy Award-winning A Sudden Appearance of Hope was also very accomplished.

In the 2020s they've shifted gears away from supernatural-tinged time travel and identity-bending fiction into a more heartfelt embrace of genre: the Songs of Penelope trilogy has been a full-bored fantasy-historical sequence, an interrogation of Homer, and now Slow Gods is a full-on, take-no prisoners space opera, the kind of shift in genre and approach that could give other authors whiplash.

Slow Gods starts slow, perhaps fittingly, and takes its time to spool up. Early chapters establish the Shine and the imminent threat of the twin supernova, a threat which is dismissed by some since its consequences will take decades or even centuries to become apparent, and all the people who'd have to make the hard and unpopular decisions to deal with it will be long dead by then, so why bother? Other, less psychotic civilisations swing into action much more dynamically, and how the different species and polities confront this massive existential threat is most interesting.

This is contrasted against Maw himself, whose travel through jump space has rendered him...other. Not quite human any more, capable of unusual acts, possibly dangerous, but also essential for certain tasks. FTL travel in this setting is dangerous, with most starship pilots going insane after just a few jumps, but Maw's condition has given them a very different reaction, potentially highly useful. In the wrong hands this could turn into another superhero story, with Maw's amazing skills spelled out in neon five-mile-tall letters, but Webb uses their formidable experience in crafting damaged, special characters to give Maw a lot more subtlety than that. Maw himself does not know what he's capable of and is not always that interested in finding out. At one point he ponders some experiments to determine the limits of his abilities and concludes he just can't be bothered to try. Maw's characterisation is of someone driven by instincts and goals but whom also finds the idea of fame abhorrent. Maw is simultaneously the most special and ordinary person in the galaxy, which is an interesting take.

The characters around Maw, from quans (quantum intelligences) to members of a telepathic hive-race to more or less baseline humans, are fascinatingly-drawn, and come and go through the story as Maw's travels through space separate them from friends and allies (but also enemies) for decades at a time. The novel is somewhat episodic, with several distinct storylines that sequentially follow before combining into a satisfying narrative whole, bringing the story back to where it began.

The novel is highly accomplished but the opening chapters feel a little hesitant, as if the author was not entirely committed, but this feeling vanishes pretty quickly and instead we get a wide-ranging, human story about identity, loss and hope, driven by Webb's firm grasp of prose and pacing. It's a quiet, sometimes melancholic novel, with occasional bursts of action and moments of vast, profound tragedy.

Slow Gods (****½) is a quietly powerful science fiction novel about the death of worlds that starts slow and acquires an unstoppable, powerful momentum as it goes. It's a highly successful shift in tone and genre for one of our most consistently talented, if perhaps underrated, authors. The book is available worldwide now.

Over a century ago, the changelings overran the known world, destroying the ten great empires. Their survivors fled west, finding refuge in the small nation of Semilla, erecting the great Salt Wall behind them to prevent the changelings from following. Behind the Wall, the refugees have built a new civilisation, but have brought some of their old problems with them. A generation ago, a devastating civil war shattered the fragile peace and the pains of that conflict have not been fully resolved.

The memories of that war are stirred when a cold-blooded murder takes place in front of a dozen witnesses, with the killer taking his own life. The killer's best friend, the scribe Quill, is adamant that his friend would not be able to hurt a fly, and his actions have to be the result of outside influence. His investigation, pressing against tides of scepticism, starts exposing secrets many wish had been left untouched...and hinting of a greater threat to all of Semilla.

It's been some time since I sat down and enjoyed a new epic fantasy series. The subgenre had felt oversaturated for a while. Empire of Exiles, the first novel in The Books of the Usurper, helps overcome that genre-ennui by bringing enough fresh ideas to the table whilst still retaining that core appeal of a group of characters coming together to face a threat in a well-realised secondary world.
It helps that the author, Erin Evans, is neither a newcomer nor a slouch. Her six-volume Brimstone Angels series was one of the brightest rays of sunshine to emerge from the otherwise highly troubled 4th Edition period of the Forgotten Realms shared world, and she brings that experience to bear here. Empire of Exiles lands with a bang (a brutal murder, with a clear culprit), immediately complicates things (the murderer has no motive or prior history to suggest why he would do such a thing) and then gradually builds up the story and the world around it in impressive complexity.
We have two primary POV characters. Sesquillio Haigu-lan Seupu-lai, or Quill, starts off feeling like the traditional "callow youth who grows into being a world-saving champion," but what he lacks in experience is made up for by his intelligence and his impressive tenacity. His refusal to believe in a simply illogical situation - his best friend of a decade suddenly turning into a killer for no reason - becomes infectious and causes other people to start doubting the sequence of events. His confidence is also generally well-earned, and it's nice to see a character like this who isn't immediately dismissed as a total lunatic and his arguments are engaged with seriously.

The second major POV is Amadea Gintanas, Archivist Superior at the Imperial Archives, who is in charge of the records and lore of Semilla. Amadea is the older, more no-nonsense, take-charge kind of character who cuts through BS and keeps the plot on track, but she is also harbouring trauma from the civil war twenty-plus years earlier, in which she played a very reluctant part. She is also in charge of a collection of novices and students who are gifted, able to wield magic.

Magic in this setting is original and interesting. Some people - specialists - have affinities for certain substances, like ink, bronze or glass, and can manipulate that substance: one character uses her ability to manipulate ink to "pull" sensitive information out of a letter and hide it under her skin whilst it's shown to someone else, and return it later on. They can also manipulate the constituent parts of those substances, so glass-sensitives also have power over sand. The problem is that they can also become addicted to their powers, and even overdose on them to their own destruction (or those around them). Such a risk is heightened during certain times of year, which vary by substance; this is known as coming into alignment. One of Amadea's jobs is keeping her students on the straight and narrow and out of harm's way when using their powers. It's an intriguing form of magic, only lightly explored in this first book.

There are also smaller POV roles. Richa Langyun, the investigator assigned to the murderers, is refreshingly standard for such a character: he is committed to finding out the truth, no matter how many important toes he steps on in the process, and is gruff but seems to have a heart of gold. Fortunately he doesn't start the story four days from retirement. Yinii Six-Owl ul-Benturan is a specialist in ink and one of Amadea's students, who also allies with Quill early in his investigation, and provides a valuable POV on the use of magic in the setting.

The book also strikes a good balance between dropping us into the action and getting on with business - the book is just 340 pages long but packs in more worldbuilding, character and thematic development, and plot than some volumes twice that size - and explaining what is going on. Exposition is brief, pertinent and usually only delivered where necessary, which is a good balance between the Eriksonian "what the hell is happening?" in media res approach and the alternative of stopping the action every few chapters for a TED Talk on magic, religion and history.

The world is fascinating, and it's interesting that we get two large maps, one of the entire explored world and one of Semilla, but almost the whole story happens in the city of Arlabecca by itself (and a lot of it in just one building, the Imperial Archives). The world map at first feels useless, but as the backstory is revealed and the true horror of what happened to the old civilisations becomes clear, the map shows the sheer odyssey some of the refugee columns had to endure to get to safety. It's a good use of a map to enhance the storytelling rather than just existing as a reference.

With a rich world, solid characters, interesting-but-not-overwrought magic system and an enjoyable mystery plot (expanding into something grander later on), this is a compelling novel. It does have a few weaknesses. One is that it feels like the author was trying hard not to let the book become too dark, so sometime the tone feels a little unsteady with some humour appearing where it doesn't feel apt. Some of the less-well-drawn students in the Archives feel a bit whimsical or comic relief even when it's not really logical to be so. Another issue is that the ten civilisations aren't entirely human, or some were hybrids of humans and other things, so some of the people in the book appear to be entirely human, some have ram's horns coming out of their head and the most alien have tons of octopus-like tentacles. This is mentioned early on and doesn't really come up again, to the point that two characters might be having a conversation with the reader entirely unaware that one of them is not fully human until they casually use their tentacles to pick something up, which can be a little jarring (there being a quick reference to confirm which species is which would have helped).

The maps by Francesa Baerald are also beautiful but designed to be seen in colour; the black-and-white reproductions in the physical books aren't very readable, so I had to download copies from her website to read them better.

But these issues are mostly ignorable. Empire of Exiles (****) is a solidly enjoyable opening to this series, with an interesting world that seems ripe for further exploration. A sequel, Relics of Ruin, is available now and a third book is on its way.

The great city of Orane, capital of Ferrieres, is thrown into chaos when a prominent nobleman is murdered in cold blood. Thierry Villar, an advocate-turned-poet, is enlisted by the city authorities to investigate the murder, despite the likelihood of it being political in nature, threatening the city and the kingdom's peace. But that peace is already under threat, as the armies of Angland under King Hardan V have landed on the north coast.

A new Guy Gavriel Kay novel is something to be savoured. If my previous review, of Joe Abercrombie's The Devils, said that book was a whiskey with no chaser, a new Guy Kay book is comparatively a fine wine, to be savoured and its short length to be lamented, despite that also being a strength.

Written on the Dark, like much of his work, takes place in the same world, one closely based on real medieval Europe, but with the names, geography and underlying ideals (like religion) all shifted a bit aware from reality. There is no magic, in the sense of wizards hurling fireballs, but there are prophetic dreams that often seem to come true.

This book is set in the much-mentioned land of Ferrieres, an analogy for France, to the north-east of the lands in The Lions of Al-Rassan and north-west of those explored in the Sarantine Mosaic duology. Kay has a special affinity with France, with his early novel A Song for Arbonne taking place in a different version of that kingdom, and his later book Ysabel just straight-up taking place in actual, contemporary France. The real historical period being riffed on here is the Hundred Years War between England and France, during which time France also suffered significant internal upheaval and civil conflict, most notably between the French crown and Burgundy (here realised as Barratin). Kay provides a list of historical sources at the end of the novel, but as usual he doesn't have precise, 1:1 correlations, instead throwing together different people and events from across a couple of centuries to see what happens when they coexist. Some of the more obvious touchstones are present - Joan of Arc is present, albeit restyled as Jeanette of Broche - but these tend to be dealt with fairly curtly in favour of our main cast.

The main cast is described in impressive depth, with Thierry Villar an overconfident, possibly even arrogant, man who makes one mistake too many and has to make amends by investigating a murder, the ramifications of which could rock his entire world. His friend and tavern-worker Silvy, fellow poet (of higher station) Marina di Seressa, the king's provost Robbin de Vaux, and the somewhat-mystical Gauvard Colle, all fully-realised figures, are all drawn into the story of feuding politicians, scheming priests and marching armies.

As usual with Kay, his interest is less in mass combat and battles and more in the motivations that move people to violence and its consequences. He is not a bloodthirsty author: skirmishes which leave even a handful of casualties are shocking, and not to be relished, and mass battles are catastrophes that people will go to extraordinary lengths to avoid. The real battles here are fought with wits, penmanship and rhetoric. Thierry's preferred battlefield is the courthouse, the diplomatic table or the tavern where his improvisation, oratory and humour can be best appreciated.

The traditional strengths of Kay are on full display: his grasp of history in both the broad strokes and close-up detail, his firm grasp of who his characters are and what they want, and his measured prose, sometimes minimalist, sometimes ornate, known when to deploy words like bludgeons and when like scalpels. There is more humour in this book than perhaps some of his previous ones, but the amount of heart present will not be a surprise to established fans. The book may even mark a better onboarding place to Kay's novels for brand new readers than some other recent ones, being more firmly a total standalone (Children of Earth and Sky, A Brightness Long Ago and All the Seas of the World arguably forming a thematic trilogy, itself following on from the at-least nominally thematic duology of Under Heaven and River of Stars).

The biggest negative about the book is one that's not really a negative: at 300 pages on the money in hardcover, this may be Kay's shortest novel to date. The sumptuous expanses of some of his earlier, 500+ page novels are not to be found here. But that short length results in a razor-sharp focus that is quite compelling.

By this point it feels redundant to say it about a Kay novel, but Written on the Dark (*****) is a beautifully-written portrait of its world and its people, with added focus and clarity making it a good jumping-on point for new readers. The novel is available now worldwide.