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| Author: |
Richard Morgan |
| Barcode/ISBN13: | 9780575079502 |
| ISBN: | 0575079509 |
| Imprint/Brand: | Gollancz |
| Release Date: | Sep 2008 |
| Format: | Trade Paperback |
| Series: | 01 |
| Number of Pages: | 345 |
| Price in AUD: | $35.00 |
| Categories: | Book Fantasy |
When a man you know to be of sound mind tells you his recently deceased mother has just tried to climb in his bedroom window and eat him, you have two options. You can smell his breath, take his pulse and check his pupils to see if he's ingested anything nasty, or you can believe him. Ringil Angeleyes had already tried the first course of action with Bashka the Schoolmaster to no avail, so he put down his pint with an elaborate sigh and went to get his broadsword. And he's not the only one to be dragged from the serious business of drinking for something as mundane as the walking dead. Archeth - pragmatist, cynic and engineer - is called from her work at the whim of the most powerful man in the Empire. Ekar Dragonbane finds himself entangled in a small-town battle between common sense and religious fervour. And after a personal encounter with the vengeful gods Poltar the Shaman is about to be an awful lot more careful who he prays to. Anti-social, anti-heroic, and decidedly irritated, all four of them are about to be sent unwillingly forth into a vicious, vigorous and thoroughly unsuspecting fantasy world.
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This is a review of Richard Morgan's book 'The Steel Remains'. If you want an entirely positive review of a Fantasy book, read the first and the last paragraphs of this review, the bits in between are the too demanding opinions of a reader of too much Science Fiction! I started reading 'The Steel Remains' with a view that anyone who can write good SF, storytelling where the familiar is inverted into the new and novel usually via a technological 'What if?' and still makes sense, can write above average Fantasy, by inverting slightly the prevailing well known forms of that Genre to come up with something that might be a fresh treatment? Nothing I have read in 'The Steel Remains' contradicts this view.
'The Steel Remains' is a decent read. A quest story of fighting companions drawn together to meet one more threat.
The story is set on a world that might be Earth, after the Moon is shattered into a Ring and a medieval fundamentalist culture prevails. Four sorts of 'people' are involved. Human, Kiriath, Dwenda and possibly even Gods / primal Spirit creatures.
The by now mythic Dwenda used to rule the place, with Magic / technological / nearly Godlike powers, but they were defeated by the Kiriath and are now for the most part the stuff of Myth and legend. The Kiriath, modified humans, or just humans changed by their travels and technology, came from somewhere else in their Flame ships, across Space or across the dimensions of inner space? They have since done an Elvis, leaving behind Archeth and some scattered technology. The Humans are at a Medieval political and technological stage of development, a society stuck in a Millennia long Middle ages?
The three main characters are a Archeth, Half-Kiriath woman, Egar a Steppe Nomad warrior and Ringil, a fighting man of privileged birth whose criminalised sexuality has alienated him from his home society, he was forced to attend the publicly execution by grotesque torture his first teenage Gay lover. The three met a decade earlier when Lizard men and Dragons invaded from the sea, threatened humanity with extinction and had to be repulsed by a rare unity of purpose among this world's human societies, with Kiriath assistance. The Kiriath were Black skinned, so extra bonus points there, Archeth is then a Black, half-breed Lesbian woman without family in a man's world. Surprisingly little is made of this, unless it is intended as an ironic comment on all the other 'half- ' characters encountered in fiction and their alienation plus latent powers?
Archeth, at her Emperor's command is set to a search to explain why an Imperial Sea Port has been devastated, blasted out of existence by unknown insurgents Ringil is asked by his Mum to recover a Cousin sold off into Slavery by her husband's debts and Egar is getting tired of the Plains drifter life even as Clan leader before the a shape shifting god / nature spirit sets his brothers on the course to fratricide, for the good of old time traditions.
The Dwenda haven't been seen for a real long time, the Kiriath depart, and then the strange things start happening. Each is set on a path to a re-union and a showdown. Dwenda meddle in the affairs of men and shape shifting Gods appear and speak to men once more taking sides in a conflict? The Companions unite in the face of a Dwenda attack and they prevail, to philosophise on survivor guilt in a beer garden on a sunny afternoon (and Lashings of Ginger Beer!).
The Homosexuality of Ringil is essential to the plot. He encounters, fights and then has a sexual relationship with a Dwenda (how likely is that?). His encounters are described in as much detail as are the fight scenes, as they arte probably as pivotal to the progress of the story as the fight scenes, however the Lesbian inclinations of Archeth are not as well treated (look but do not touch!), she might as well have be a eunuch for the purposes of the story.
If she had been an 'available' woman, in a masculine warrior dominated society then her life and interactions on a quest with male companions would have been much more complex? Is this the new prudery, Male to Male sex is OK in the furtherance of a plotline, but describing Male / Female or Female / Female sex would be 'pornographic', or worse, non-PC?
The Faults of this Book were only those of Fantasy generally. SF, in exploration of a 'What If' has to make sense, Fantasy doesn't. With Fantasy the ride and the scenery matter, not the basis of Quest. For example in this story, set on a Planet with a known history of 4,000 or more years, has no one ever thought of guns? Secondly, the Dwenda with their nearly Ghodlike powers of magic/technology choose to fight humans in nearly equal combat in armour and with blade weapons, not blasters or even Jedi light sabres, dramatic, but dumb!
If you read Fantasy then you will probably enjoy this book a lot. What I most enjoyed about this book was the 'realism' of the world of the Quest. Life was horrible for most, and in society of intolerance and unequals, social status was precarious, certainly in this story there was no hearkening back to a Golden Age of Heroes. GD 01SEP08
