Review of Susanna Clarke’s The Ladies of Grace Adieu

The Ladies of Grace Adieu

Susanna Clarke

London: Bloomsbury, 2006

ISBN: 9-780747-592402

239 pp.

In this collection of short fiction, Susanna Clarke reports again on the world of Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell that propelled her to fame. We are in the England (and it is England and not the UK) of the Napoleonic Wars period, with some additional attention paid to the class system than most contemporaneous fiction and with the addition, of course, the world of the fantastic. While both eponymous characters of the main work were magicians of some repute and quite willing to demonstrate their abilities so as to achieve various objectives of their own, there is very little sorcery in these stories, apart from the obtrusion of Faerie. Indeed, it is the presence of Faerie in the midst of the mundane world that marks out the difference between Clarke’s vision and that of reality.

The prevalence and importance of the Faerie world may have waned a little but it is still an important and everyday aspect of life in this England. Unfortunately, it is almost entirely exploitational and even vampiric in nature. There are endless examples of people – frequently young women – who are in different ways removed from their normal lives and forced into servitude in a place which might appear to them to be places of enormous luxury and privilege but which are, in fact, no more than filthy hovels full of vermin and disease. As for the Faeries themselves, they are autocratic and hyper-violent creatures eager to create and then re-create systems of social relations that are despotic and patriarchal in nature. Women, it appears, exist for the pleasure of their alpha overlord and, should their offspring become uppity, are liable to become part of a bloodbath of sons which creates an example to encourage the others to behave. This state of affairs can only be tolerated because of the Faerie ability to make things look better than they are, such that fair is foul and foul is fair. It is hard to feel much sympathy for them to or to mourn the fact that their age is coming to an end as the forests are cut down for the industrial revolution and to make warships which will restrict their habits to ever smaller areas until finally they disappear altogether.

It is tempting to map Faerie onto the space occupied by organized religion and its ultimate defeat in what is now, in large part, a post-religious country. However, this should be balanced by the realization that Faerie is being replaced by the English class system, that was as that time and thereafter creating the British Empire that did so much to enrich certain rich white people at the expense of so many other people. Perhaps we should try to avoid these easy explanations of complex art because they do not lead us to any great leaps of insight.

As for the stories themselves, they are mostly delightful, at least in parts, although more than one of them could be read as if they were excisions (or subsequent versions of excisions) from the novel. Some are quite slight, which in itself is not a bad thing but they give the impression that they have not been fully developed. That the author has not provided an introduction or even a preface (although there is a short paragraph of acknowledgements in which she declares that she was prevailed upon to write her first short story when she did not want to do so) further suggests that the motivation for this collection came from the publisher or editor or some other third party. However, there are sections and some entire stories that make reading the book overall a pleasure. The better ones, for example Mr. Simonelli or the Fairy Widower, combine the otherworldly with the tedious details of daily life in the way that illuminated her earlier novel and which has been seen again much more recently in Piranesi. I only wish there were more of her books to read.

John Walsh, Krirk University

Review of Zen Cho’s Sorcerer to the Crown

Sorcerer to the Crown

Zen Cho

London: Pan Macmillan, 2016

ISBN: 97814472999462

373 pp.

It is England (not the UK or GB) during the Napoleonic period, when the empire was being expanded ever further east and the European nations struggle for control of the resources of the world. Alas, the English cause is hampered by the declining amount of magic available. Certain people have innate abilities to use magic and can extemporize on known spells and hexes as circumstances dictate. However, the magic itself inheres in a territory by a process of osmosis as it passes through the border with the land of fairy, which abuts every part of the Earth, somehow. It is the responsibility of the Sorcerer Royal to identify the problem and solve it so that the country can continue to achieve its obviously manifest destiny. Unfortunately, the Sorcerer Royal has recently passed away and the sacred staff has been passed to his very young apprentice, who is an African man that Sir Stephen Wythe, the deceased, had himself manumitted from slavery some years before. This person, Zacharias Wythe, has enough problems dealing with the racism and resentment within the body of wizards of which he has become the leader – they would certainly oust him if only they could find a way of doing so that did not betray their motives. He is also persecuted with a mysterious affliction that strikes him during the night and seems to make his life even more of a misery than it already was.

Still, Zacharias has a noble disposition (actually, a little too noble, in my opinion) and continues with his various duties with dignity and decorum. One of these is to visit a semi-clandestine school for girls who can use magic, where it is expected that he would continue the official policy on magic that it should be the preserve of the gentleman and women and the lower orders using it may be tolerated so long as it takes place out of sight and no challenge is made to the existing systems of class and gender relations. Zacharias, though, takes a different approach and, as a result, comes into contact with a young woman, Prunella Gentlewoman, whose subsequent adventures will drive the main plot of the book.

Prunella is a remarkable person, who has been left rather stranded at the school after the suicide of her father and the unaccountable absence of her mother. She too is a person of colour and it is assumed that her father had found himself a colonial woman somewhere or other and little Prunella I the possibly undesired outcome. Her situation betrays the intersection of the forces of discrimination arrayed against her in terms of gender, ethnicity and class. That the people of polite society may be a little mealy-mouthed in the way that they speak of and to her but there is little doubt about the nature of the discourse nevertheless. This is brought out very nicely in the text, which draws on the kind of comedy of manners so memorably bequeathed to us by Jane Austen, Elizabeth Gaskell, George Eliot (whose grave I also visited at Highgate Cemetery) and so forth. The writing is not quite perfect (there are, for example, occasional Americanisms) but very enjoyable nevertheless. Overall, the effect is most enjoyable and Prunella in particular turns into a very interesting character about whom I would be happy to learn more (I have looked online and there is a sequel available which appears to draw upon more of the author’s Malaysian heritage). The ending is both true to the form and rather amusing.

Some readers may have noticed a similarity in tone and subject with Susanna Clarke’s Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell (which is reviewed elsewhere on this site). I imagine this has resulted from certain double century anniversaries that were taking place as the authors were formulating their plans. Both books have much to recommend them and I will certainly be looking out for more from Zen Cho in the future.

John Walsh, Krirk University, February 2023

Review of Erikson’s The God Is Not Willing

The God Is Not Willing

Steven Erikson

London: Transworld Publishers, 2022

ISBN: 978-1-5291-7687-2

587 pp.

It is only a few pages into the latest of Steven Erikson’s novels that we are returned to the sense of majestic world-building taking place that is nevertheless focused on the roles of individuals that has made his tales of the Malazan Empire so admired and enjoyed. The glaciers are melting (because of magic rather than climate change) and people living in the once frozen northern lands are forced to return again to the south, where their traditions of duty and honour (and looting and pillage, to be fair) are challenged by the systematic slaughter practiced in their destination. Between the two stand the remaining forces of the Malazan Empire, who are always the real heroes of any of these books (originally ten, with a couple of prequels and now this novel as the first of a series of sequels). Much of the action is centred on the interactions between the squaddies on the ground and their various adventures and misadventures. It is in these scenes that we find the humanism Erikson injects into his work – these are people far from home, among strangers not always well-meaning towards them and required to do their best under trying circumstances. It is easy to draw parallels with recent history – easy but also perhaps a little unfair because these are different lands and people, however much the reader might like to picture them in our own image.

The Malazan Empire has not prevailed and persisted for so long just because of the poor bloody infantry, of course. It also boasts a formidable array of explosive munitions of various types and a corps of wizards or mages. Magic is derived mostly from the veins of the many gods that stud the world and are of a dazzling variety of attitudes and degrees of power. Being a mage, even in peace time, is a very dangerous undertaking and it is not very surprising that they tend to be quite a rum lot, tending towards poor understanding of the risk-reward nexus and a glib way with uniforms and saluting and so forth. We are introduced to another here, Stillwater, who is both assassin and mage and apparently in revolt against the strictures of her noble upbringing and the restrictions on her ability to explore the universe as she would that represents. Together with the Jheck – multi-bodied werewolf-type shapeshifters from the first book – she is one of the high spots of this episode (among a characteristically large and diverse cast of characters).

In terms of the plot, we follow Rant, child (by rape) of Karsa Orlong and an unfortunate local woman. His father casts a dark shadow over the lands he had previously ravaged, including Rant’s home town of Silver Lake. Rant appears destined to follow his father in being a very large and powerful fellow with superior combat and survival skills. It is to be hoped that he differs in terms of character and, in this case, the omens are good to a certain extent. This is characteristic of Erikson’s work: the intentions of the individual may be important but there are larger forces who can take over whenever they feel it is in their interest to do so – like flies to wanton boys, then, are these characters to their gods – and other creatures of power but who have not attained ascendancy to the ranks of the divine and to have their position recognized.

There is, as ever, a fair amount of death and suffering for the guilty and the innocent alike in this book (as well as dark humour) but there are also some welcome moments of respite during which characters are able to snatch a few moments of pleasure for themselves. This makes the world overall a little less forbidding; Erikson’s prose style is also a little less dense than it has been in the past, which I would attribute to a greater level of confidence by the writer in his work and characters. Works of the past could be dazzling but this one gets hold of a good story and gets on with the job of telling it. I hope for more books in this series – I note that there are planned to be two more to make up a trilogy and that other characters from earlier in the series to return. I look forward in particular to meeting Coltaine again.

John Walsh, Krirk University, January 2023

Review of Sapkowski’s The Tower of Swallows

The Tower of Swallows

Andrjez Sapkowski

London: Orbit Books, 2016 [originally 1997]

ISBN: 978-0-316-27371-8

457 pp.

Translated by David French

After two collections of short stories centring on the Witcher, Geralt of Rivera, this is the fourth of six novels telling not just his story but the story of an entire continent – roughly equivalent in scale and scope to Europe. The short stories necessarily focused on Geralt himself and created the appetite for more about this person – a genetically modified magic-wielding killer whose appointed role is to murder all those creatures which pose a threat to humanity. Consequently, when the action is spread around a large (and still growing) cast of characters, this reader at least starts to wonder whether we might get a little more Witcher, Dandelion and the rest of the gang and a little less of corrupt and thuggish would-be princes and conquerors (they are enough of such around these parts anyway). Well, too narrow a focus on a single character, as in the case of Conan or Elric, would no doubt be considered old-fashioned and Sapkowski is motivated not just by the desire to tell exciting stories but to consider the nature of life and governance in a particular setting. The Earth – one version of the Earth, anyway – intersected with another planet or another dimension or something (I cannot remember if this was ever fully explained) and so now it shares the world with numerous other peoples – elves and dwarves, for example – who form their own societies and communities and other creatures which, tending to live alone in rural or remote environments, tend to be considered monsters. It is clear that parallels can be drawn with colonization and imperialism and it is noteworthy that the author is Polish and, hence has his own history of oppression from both east and west.

Most humans depicted seem quite happy to exploit the non-human races and treat them with, at best, disdain. They also are quick to call for violence when a monster is found and Geralt occasionally has to persuade them that a live and let live philosophy might be a better response to the discovery of the other, who often is just trying to live a peaceful life of its own. By contrast, most of those characters who seek power seem to prefer to construct their own networks, irrespective of legality, and seize whatever they want by main force, in the way that mafia gangs would do. We have seen previously that some non-humans have formed insurgent bands to strike back at the hegemonic human society and, in some cases, have also resorted to atrocities. Compared to gangsterism and outlawry, then, Geralt is something of a liberal force, valuing personal freedoms and the right to live according to individual preference. It is not really surprising, then, that he has attracted a small group of fellow travellers who have come from the margins of society, in various ways. One fears how this will all end.

Anyway, the real centre of this sequence of novels is the progress of Ciri (the pronunciation of whose name is, annoyingly, not defined), the child of destiny who will rule the throne and so forth. Since Ciri has been born with not just this destiny but with precious blood lines and so possession of her is attractive to various interests. As a result, she has gone into hiding of a sort while the training to become a Witcher in her own right takes a stronger hold. When it does, she is likely to become a powerful figure who can look after herself – in other words, the oppressed can exercise agency over their own lives if they have access to education and a nurturing environment. Geralt and his co-Witchers were not very friendly teachers but Ciri had support from the wizard Yennefer, who was able to offer compassion and empathy and the other soft skills often associated with women. In this episode, we witness Ciri move from one state to another and this sets up what is likely to be found in the next, penultimate book.

Sapkowski writes about interesting topics and with a unique perspective on fantasy fiction but without much in the way of style or sparkle, despite including poetry and lyric song in his works. This is not unusual with works in translation. David French has done a good enough job here (there are a few typos in the text but I doubt that is his fault) but I cannot help but wonder what the experience would be like to read the original.

John Walsh, Krirk University, September 2022

Review of Clarke’s Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell

Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell: a Novel

Susanna Clarke

New York, NY: Tor Books, 2006

ISBN: 9-780765-356154

1010 pp.

We go to England (not Britain) during the Napoleonic Wars and focus on the struggle of one misanthropic gentleman, Mr. Norrell, to restore magic to the country. He is attempting to achieve this by obtaining every scholarly work on the subject available and creating a library to which only he has access. While believing that magic was essential to maintaining the pre-eminent position of the country, he also believes that he is the only person qualified to deal in the currency and so must, unfortunately, close down anyone else who has a different opinion. However, Mr. Norrell has made one fatal mistake in his understanding of the situation – there is another magician in the country, one Jonathan Strange, who is his opposite in nearly every respect but destined, quite possibly, to be the superior magician.

It is the relationship between these two that frames the structure of this lengthy but wildly successful book, although they are only rarely to be found in the same place together. The magicians are defined primarily by the contrasts between them: Norrell is a monomaniac while Strange is a dilettante; Strange is married while Norrell is a sociopath without any interest in other people beyond the transactional; Norrell would permit only limited expressions of magic which would be through his own hands, while Strange would democratize it and even encourage women and the working classes to contribute; Strange is happy to innovate (especially because he does not have access to the books) while Norrell trusts the classics alone. Any student of English literature will immediately recognize these dichotomies as variants of real controversies of the past (and I daresay fans of historical materialism could come up with some interesting dialectics of their own). Fortunately, there is enough life in the characters and the plot that the bones beneath do not show through too often. The most entertaining parts, in my opinion, are the ventures into the lands of Faerie (whose denizens are the real masters of magic, although degenerate and possibly devolving into Morlocks) and the recreations of the lives and times of the great magicians of the past. These are recounted largely through the medium of books and reported through often quite extensive footnotes. I, personally, like footnotes and generally welcome them wherever they are to be found. However, I am aware that my preference in this case is not universally shared and the noble footnote, the repository of so much supplementary material that does not find its way into the main text, is abhorred by others and even – say it is not so – passed by unread. On the other hand, my copy of the book runs to more than one thousand pages, each of a size of around 6.5 by 4 inches (and I cannot find out how this is categorized but it is a smaller paperback than most I have read in recent years) and that packs a lot of words to a small page, which further means that the font size is even smaller than normal and could be a challenge or irritation for some. I might also, at this point, mention the occasional illustrations that are included but I did not find them either entertaining or useful and so I shall pass over them without further ado.

As mentioned previously, this was an extremely popular and successful book and the opening pages of the edition I have are full of the prizes and commendations it won in 2004, which was the year of first publication (apparently in a volume of around 800 pages), together with some impressive blurbs. It is indeed an entertaining book, although not perhaps quite as good as advertised. I have to confess that I saw the television series based very faithfully on the book before I decided to read it and, though it is a rare occurrence, I think the television series was better. I think I might also say the same thing for A Game of Thrones and for the same reasons – not all of the sub-plots really work and there are some flaws and anachronisms in the text. Then again, I seem to be in the minority and I have no desire to be contrary just for the sake of it.

On the whole, this is a very enjoyable entertainment and tells a stirring tale of the revitalization of magic and the historiography of magic in a country facing foreign aggression (cough) with fascinating characters creating their own destinies. I am not surprised that it has been so successful – nor, frankly, that it took more than ten years to write. I note that another book has been published recently, Piranesi, which seems to be much shorter. I would be happy to give that one a go in due course.

John Walsh, Krirk University, May 2022

Review of V.E. Schwab’s A Darker Shade of Magic

A Darker Shade of Magic

V.E. Schwab

New York, NY: Tor, 2015

ISBN: 9780765376466

414 pp.

A wizard, Kell and a thief, Lila, meet as if by chance and find their paths are locked together in a deadly struggle against evil, the fate of the universe and so forth. Fortunately, they are not given much to introspection and instead get on with the plot at close to breakneck speed.

This is the first in a series of hugely popular books and it is not difficult to see why. A small cast of characters chases each other around the various versions of London that exist in this version of a world or worlds in which magic is an intrinsic part. While the secondary characters are drawn as either good or bad, the central protagonists are permitted a degree of moral ambiguity, although it is made fairly clear that this is the response to the social constraints within which they are obliged to live. They respond to these constraints as one might imagine anyone would (it was not a surprise to me to find that the author has written a number of young adult books). They unfortunately do not have much of an intellectual hinterland and are not inspired by any form of contemporary or historical cultural production – there is some music and some songs but we learn nothing about their form or contents. People eat or drink stuff but we do not find out anything about what that might be. The location is supposedly London and so there is the Thames, yet there is a paucity of boats or traffic or even bodies floating therein. The characters, such as they are, are everything. The book is set towards the end of the reign of George III (1738-1820) and so the details would not be too onerous to find. However, like Napoleon, they are absent here.

There are four versions of London and, by extension, the rest of the world. Of these, one is effectively sealed off because its black magic is too dangerous to be visited or to permit either visitors or outwards travellers. The other three versions are characterised by their relation to existing magic, which is variously of a greater or lesser relevance. The few people capable of moving from one world to another restrict themselves to obeying orders or else to minor transgressions of pilfering – compare with Charles Stross’s Merchant Princes series of books, which is based on a similar premise but in which the characters very quickly realise the possibilities for organized crime and how it might help to bring about their long-term goals. It is a bit of a gap here, especially when one considers how entrepreneurial people in the real world are able to survive with even the smallest hint of an arbitrage opportunity. However, this is not that kind of book. As for the London conceit, this is also a wasted opportunity, although I imagine there more might be made of these things in subsequent books in this series (I believe several are available). Apart from being called London, there is really nothing that would enable the reader to identify where the action was taking place. It could equally be set in Slough or Duluth or Lerwick. As a young adult novel, maybe this would be acceptable on the basis that young readers do not feel the need to burden themselves with economics, urban development or waste management (or at least so I imagine – we didn’t really have young adults when I am supposed to have been one). For proper immersion in the world, I would have liked to see a little more.

Overall, my experience was slightly paradoxical. I read the book eagerly over the course of just three post-prandial evenings while also thinking that, no matter how enjoyable it all was, at the same time it was just not very good. Well, the number of people who care whether I think it is any good is dwarfed by the number of people who are buying these books so there is not much point going on about it. Read and enjoy.

John Walsh, Krirk University, May 2021

Review of Sapkowski’s Sword of Destiny

Sword of Destiny

Andrzej Sapkowski

New York, NY: Orbit Books, 2015

ISBN: 978-0-316-38970-9

393 pp.

Translated by David French

This is the second collection of short stories about the Witcher, Geralt of Rivera, who became launched as a result as a star of video games and television, as well as a series of subsequent novels. Witchers are genetically modified fighters whose role it is to seek out and kill the monsters of the world in return for money and a modicum of respect. The world is a violent one and as a result of a kind of conjunction of the planets, which led to a migration of creatures from one to another. The world we follow is one in which fecund humanity is expanding across the planet and, as a result of the Faustian expansionism, the habitats of other sentinel beings are constricted with the obvious outcome of the need for the Witcher. Presumably, one of the later novels will reveal more of how all of this has come to pass and who has been responsible for the system which will necessitates Geralt and those of his kind. However, this will all be, so to speak, in the future and, for the time being, we are still exploring the world and its ways.

The most noticeable aspect of the world is, perhaps, its air of casual venality. Society is ruled by bullies and dogs are obeyed in office. The possession of weapons, even improvised ones, gives power to the wielder and, owing to the uneven distribution of resources, that wielder soon looks for the opportunity to take whatever a neighbour might happen to have. Even in the absence if violence, the bonds keeping society together are easily frayed and broken, which is evident from the person who is Geralt’s most common companion, the bard Dandelion. Dandelion is a womaniser in a world in which familial bonds mean little in the face of the boredom of everyday life and the inevitability of a miserable and, worse, a tedious ending to come. As a bard, he brings the possibility of a higher calling or purpose to daily existence but this is ultimately as fraudulent as the promises he abundantly issues: at one stage, Dandelion threatens to withdraw from a dangerous path to rescue because it would entail him losing his collection of self-penned lyrics. However, a few words from Geralt are enough to persuade him to throw them all away because he can easily enough create others, perhaps even the same ones again and no one would be any the wiser.

By contrast, the monsters against which Geralt is required to pitch himself tend to be altogether more admirable in one way or another. True, there are some which have lifestyles that encourage them to kill and then eat any humans they come across and these Geralt will kill and claim the bounty for them. However, there are many others that just mind their own business and happen to find themselves in the way of a new development. These, Geralt will leave alone if at all possible or, at least, persuade them to go and live somewhere else where they might find a few extra years of peace. In a central story in this collection, the eponymous ‘Sword of Destiny,’ Geralt deals with a community of dryads. As creatures with intimate relationships with the trees they nurture and which support them, dryads are symbolic of immovable forces of the earth which are confronted by the unstoppable forces of progress. The mind is drawn to Saruman’s feeding of the ancient trees to the machines tended by his orcs to amass his power and consequence. In this case, Geralt tries to broker some kind of compromise which might allow the dryads to live a little longer but it is not possible. The relentless spread of humanity is not to be stopped by the quondam equivalent of ‘newt-counting.’

This all rather suggests a kind of nihilism with which we might be familiar with the world of Stormbringer and which did indeed lead to the end of the world. The development of Geralt’s personal philosophy is a slender enough weapon to put up against this destiny and his long-term on-off relationship with the wizard Yennefer is doomed by their mutual sterility and her relentless search for a cure, no matter what the cost may be. Instead, a child – a princess and also a future wizard but a child nevertheless – reappears in Geralt’s life and she is the Sword of Destiny, which provides the reason why Geralt is content to go on living and fighting the unequal struggle. This new relationship will help drive the narrative forwards in the forthcoming novels (or, at least, certainly the next one, which I read before the two earlier short story collections by mistake).

John Walsh, RMIT Vietnam, July 2020

Review of Grossman’s The Magician King

The Magician King

Lev Grossman

London: Arrow Books, 2012

ISBN: 978-0-09-955346-5

548 pp.

We return to the magical world of Fillory, where a small bunch of magicians have mastered their art to the extent that they can penetrate the shroud that separates one realm from another. Fillory itself, the magical realm, seems somehow smaller and less exotic than it perhaps should be but events reveal that it has some sharp claws of its own. For the magicians, who tend to be self-absorbed young people who have spent their time learning recondite skills for their own benefit rather than learning to live as part of the human herd, the lack of external stimuli does not sit well with their under-developed inner lives and they struggle to make sense of what they should do next. This leads to one of the main themes of the book, which is about the purpose of living for people who can do so much in the physical world but have such deficiencies in what would once have been considered to be the natural and perhaps inevitable aspect of socialisation in the world – the contrast is with Julia, to whom we were introduced in the first book of this trilogy as the (to some extent) antithesis of the principal protagonist Quentin, whose life has been eased by the dissolution of difficulties by his materially solvent but antagonistic parents and who floated into the Magical College Breakbills mostly by virtue of his obsession with the mystic original children’s books outlining the contours of Fillory for the first time. Julia, by contrast, struggles, having to learn to make use of every possible attribute or resource she can muster. Her failures could be our failures if we let them – and her suffering is all the worse for the result. The other characters are quite pallid in this episode – those from the first book take mostly a background role here and links to future events remain vague.

In my review of the first book of this series (found elsewhere on this site), I noted both the enjoyment of considering being in control of the elements and doing the actual magic and the frustration with the characters that they do not organize themselves properly so that they maximise the value of that magic. Why are there no systematic attempts to research the healing magic everyone of the Dungeons and Dragons generations knows is essential? Why do they not organize a self-regulating industry as in Charles Stross’s Merchant Princes books that would provide passive income streams to support their various other activities so they did not have to worry about unemployment, negative environmental shocks and so forth? Why, above all, do they not just work out what it is they do want and get on with doing it? After all, I have a pretty good idea how I would attempt to improve my quality of life if I had the magic they have – is there not one of them who would be capable of thinking this way? As it turns out, vast material wealth is possible but it seems to be distributed at random, more or less. Well, this is fiction after all and these are mostly quite feckless young people suffering anomie and alienation from the contemporary world. As a result, they mess about a lot and search for quests that can be solved by perilous voyages and the application of what passes for science in these parts.

This sequel is a lot of fun and readers who enjoyed the first book (or the television series, which has rather more diversity of humanity than the books have, as I mentioned before) will surely enjoy this one and I already have the final part of the trilogy awaiting my attention. The style is easy and the pace rapid and the action moves forward in a way that might be considered imaginative but might also be considered to be determined by the throw of dice. It does not matter really – enjoy the ride. It would be better to read the first book before this but it might (just) be possible to enjoy this book without that knowledge.

John Walsh, RMIT Vietnam, June 2020

Review of Jemisin’s The Obelisk Gate

The Obelisk Gate

N.K. Jemisin

New York, NY: Orbit, 2016

ISBN: 978-0-316-22826-5

433 pp.

 

The sequel to the equally lauded and prize-winning predecessor The Fifth Season sees the remnants of humanity pushed further towards marginality in a society that the very Earth itself seems determined to destroy. This is a world of people who, with some kind of magic, can manipulate the minerals all around them for purposes that, without proper education or reflection, they can hardly understand, while those whom they expect to protect and educate them are instead inspired to acts of extraordinary cruelty and violence towards them. As the season of ruin descends more chillingly upon the world, the rule of law has rapidly turned into a spectre and been chased away by those who have power and can represent themselves as having a degree of legitimacy in exercising that power over the lives of the less fortunate. Thus Essun, the protagonist of the first book whose journeys have introduced us to this place, takes refuge in an underground cavern with a not very impressive collection of others and ruled over by a version of the one-eyed person who gets to lead the blind. It is fairly clear that this is all going to end in tears sooner or later and Jemisin does not let us down in this regard.

Given the prominence of the author as a female African American writing in one of a series of sub-genres that has so swiftly rushed in the past to embrace Anglo-Saxon exceptionalism, it has become more or less impossible to ignore her own life circumstances and the imprint this might had had on her work. In this case, it is tempting to see not just the obvious prejudice of the majority against those who can use the stone magic but the structural issues within a society in which quite clearly unstoppable forces are going to crush everyone, whether they are victims or perpetrators of discrimination. This, of course, is never laid out in such reductionist terms. Instead, there are always minor victories to achieve, milestones towards a form of survival that will keep people going for a while, long enough to inspire enough hope that the inevitable might somehow be averted. In the meantime, policing of personal behaviour might represent a means of creating a sufficiently virtuous society that would deserve to be saved in a world very notably without any opportunity for an appeal to a deus ex machina.

Jemisin is a good enough writer – indeed, an excellent one as her many richly deserved awards attest – to avoid this kind of ideological tyranny in her art. Instead, as Trotsky once complained, her characters fail to behave in what would be the approved way, following their own desires and hopes and, at least on a few occasions, mobilising a combination of luck and perseverance sufficient to get their own way, for a while perhaps. This provides the dramatic tension in the book and leads the readers to wish the characters to escape the whipping they perhaps deserve and, this time, please (please) let them get what they want. There is no Lord to observe whether or not this would be the first time. Yet there is never really a moment when this actually seems likely, given the power of the asymmetric forces foiling them.

Post-apocalyptic literature and art more generally has become increasingly common in recent years. We have had, after all, plenty of warnings that the centre cannot hold and we are all likely to be going to hell in a handcart sooner or later. There seems to be a tendency to draw survivors in the worst possible light, as if the neoliberal fraudsters Thatcher and Reagan were right in telling us we are all rats. Jemisin keeps her narrative on the more generous side of humanity, with some people at least gathering up a few shelters against the gathering storm. There is no need, after all, for us to kill each other when the world is going to do it anyway. Why not try to live a life of some decency before that takes place. Essun and her daughter survive and in some ways thrive until better times might come – it is after all, what people under persecution have nearly always had to do.

John Walsh, RMIT Vietnam, June 2020

Review of Sapkowski’s The Last Wish

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The Last Wish

Andrzej Sapkowski

New York, NY: Orbit, 2008

ISBN: 9-780316029186

359 pp.

Translated by Danusia Stok

This collection contains the short stories, first published in Polish in 1993, that first brought us the character of Geralt of Rivia, also known as The Witcher. Geralt’s fame has subsequently spread not just through the series of novels that have been published about his adventures and, perhaps more influentially, by his reinvention as the hero of a video games franchise and now a major, as they say, television series. It is through the last of these that The Witcher was first brought to my attention and piqued me to buy (and review elsewhere on this site) the first novel, Blood of Elves and it was while reading this that I realised I should have started with the two initial collections of short stories, with The Last Wish being followed by Sword of Destiny, which is also waiting for my attention on my second, slightly improvised book shelf.

So what is it about Geralt of Rivia that seems so interesting? For a start, the stories come from something of a simpler age, where problems can be solved by the swish of a sword or the seizing of the momento wrestle destiny one way or another. The world in which he lives is one which passed through a kind of grand conjunction of many worlds, during which various creatures migrated from one to the other. It seems like humans came from elsewhere to the present world and, owing to their reckless fecundity, have driven native races such as the elves to the verge of extinction. There are also numerous non-civilised creatures, such as dragons, rusalka, striga, likimora and so forth which may be viewed as dangerous and inexplicable predators bent on making life difficult for peaceable human farmers and foresters or, alternatively, as the innocent victims of a monstrous intrusion of their ecology by a rapacious breed to creatures determined to bring what had been the commons into enclosure and private ownership. In order to support their claim to the land, human elites has created through magical or scientific means to create a genetically enhanced breed of creatures – the Witchers – who would act as itinerant assassins for hire, thereby pacifying the land (and calling it peace, no doubt).

As a Witcher, Geralt has a mass if characteristically white hair, problematic but powerful eyes and a number of other medical conditions that can be managed in part by the skilful application of herbs. He is, in other words, a form of Elric reborn and Elric was a great hero of my youth. So, I am well-disposed towards Geralt from the outset and willing to sympathise with his world view and cheer him on in his many struggles with enemies with two or more legs. That he is, by necessity, an outsider, only of course adds to the sense of comradeship. And so, I happily travelled with The Witcher as he established his character by defining his moral code in a tricky situation, demonstrated his potent but not unbeatable combat skills and even suggested a wry sense of humour through his relationship with his friend, the bard Dandilion and, in a more foreboding manner, with the wizard Yennefer. The seeds of future stories are sown in the The Last Wish itself (the stories are linked and presented in novel form but remain individual stories nevertheless), when Geralt forms a long-term relationship with the princess whose care he will be involved with in Blood of Elves and, presumably, beyond. Nevertheless, there is a pleasingly episodic nature to some of the stories, as if for Geralt they represent early adventures before the main narrative of his life is written.

The text is translated well by Danusia Stok, who stands aside and lets the action take the centre stage. The pace is rapid and none of the stories outstays its welcome. Secondary characters can be vivid and sometimes even memorable. By virtue of his role as an enigma, Geralt seems likely always to be a bit of a vacuum at the centre of the stage but that is something I am happy with in my heroes. Now, on to the next book.

John Walsh, RMIT Vietnam, April 2020