Title: Behold the Man

Author: Michael Moorcock

Genre: Science Fiction

Publisher: Gollancz
Publication Date: New Edition 11 Nov 1999 (First edition 1967)
Paperback: 128 pages

Karl Glogauer is a disaffected modern professional casting about for meaning in a series of half-hearted relationships, a dead-end job, and a personal struggle. His questions of faith surrounding his father’s run-of-the-mill Christianity and his mother’s suppressed Judaism lead him to a bizarre obsession with the idea of the messiah. After the collapse of his latest affair and his introduction to a reclusive physics professor, Karl is given the opportunity to confront his obsession and take a journey that no man has taken before, and from which he knows he cannot return. Upon arriving in Palestine, A.D. 29, Glogauer finds that Jesus Christ is not the man that history and faith would like to believe, but that there is an opportunity for someone to change the course of history by making the ultimate sacrifice.

First published in 1969, Behold the Man broke through science fiction’s genre boundaries to create a poignant reflection on faith, disillusion and self-sacrifice. This is the classic novel that established the career of perhaps contemporary science fiction’s most cerebral and innovative author.

Stand alone or series: Stand alone

How did I get this book: Bought

Why did I read this book: Browsing my loval Waterstones, I saw this displayed alongside several SF and Fantasy novels. The cover and title grabbed my attention, the blurb did me in.

Review:

Warning! This review contains spoilers. HOWEVER, given as how the blurb itself spoils the most important FACT about the book, my own spoilers which are necessary for the discussion of the book, are inconsequent and do not, I believe spoil the EXPERIENCE of reading the book.You have been warned!

Behold the Man was originally published in 1967 in the New Worlds magazine, winning the Nebula Award that year and published on its own in 1969 with several new editions throughout the years. It is simply put, a brilliant piece of fiction and one of the best novellas I ever read with an extremely flawed, unlikeable-yet-sympathetic protagonist and a potentially explosive subject.

But I am ahead of myself. That’s what a truly awesome book will do to me.

It begins as Karl Glogauer stumbles out of a broken time machine (a womb-like sphere filled with a fluid that leaks, rendering the object useless) in 28 AD. He is rescued by followers of John the Baptist and nursed back to health amongst this group of Essenes, who believe him to be a magus who will lead them against Rome. Eventually Karl breaks away from the group in order to search for Jesus Christ as his impending crucifixion is the event he has come to witness. When he finds the man, he is shocked to see that Jesus is a blabbering, mentally incapacitated hunchback who lives with his mother Mary (who is so not like a virgin) and his “father” Joseph (a bitter old man) and his brothers and sisters. Karl then does the only thing that a self-aware time traveller can ever do: he takes upon himself to play the role of Jesus Christ, determined to pull it off till the bitter end.

But things are never ever as simple as one could hope them to be and this is where the beauty of this book lies. It has so many layers I don’t even know where to start. I can only say that peeling back, or rather observing and absorbing each one was an adventure and a privilege. There is plot, character, writing, format, themes and ideas to consider and all of them come together beautifully.

Karl is one of the most messed up characters I have ever had the pleasure to come across. Moorcock alternates the happenings in 28AD with short flashbacks to Karl’s life in the 20th century. From a problematic childhood which includes paedophilia and abuse at an early age to an adulthood overwrought by neurosis including a tendency to stage suicide attempts, masochism, repressed homosexuality, a messiah complex (of course) and a very fucked up view of religion which he associates with sexuality (a silver cross = women; wooden cross =men). We observe several of his relationships, especially one with girlfriend Monica (God, Karl, what you’ll do for attention) with whom he talks about myth, religion and psychology. Karl admires the work of Psychologist Carl G. Jung and hopes to become one, one day but this attempt at becoming something or doing anything with his life is thwarted by another aspect of his own personality , a certain avoidance of reality as it presents itself mingled with self-doubt. Karl is not really a religious character but his obsession with Jesus Christ, and his self-sacrifice is what propels Karl to become a time traveller (well, that and the need to prove Scientific minded Monica wrong).

Mind you, the time travelling per se is not really important. We never learn the specifics and the mechanics of how it is even possible but this matters none at all (which quite possibly makes it less “Science” fiction than it ought to be). However, in another stroke of genius, the author does play with the ideas that are often associated with time travel. As any self-aware time traveller will tell you, it is very important to stick with the facts and let history run its course.

And that is exactly what Karl tries to do but it opens up the possibility for a glorious MESS of Biblical (hee) proportions. The Crux (hee –sorry so many inevitable puns) of the problem here is thus: because the historical Jesus proves to be an idiot who never did what he was supposed to do, Karl takes upon himself to do what historical events he knows to have happened. But did they really happen? By making the events effectively real – he picks up the 12 apostles, he engineers his arrest and eventual death – he might in fact have changed them all by making then factual rather than symbolic and possibly removing any and all real meaning from it all.

And from this comes another layer to be exposed, the difference between myth and religion and beliefs and fact. The absolutely fascinating discussion with his girlfriend Monica about how the myth is unimportant and that the impulse that creates it is the important thing. In this scenario, it is proved by what he has come to witness: Jesus, the historical figure is not the important thing, but how the creation of this myth (because if he never did what he did, then he is most definitely a myth) is fuelled by people’s need to believe in the idea of compassion, of love and forgiveness. Because then the myth of Jesus is less than an individual and more of a collective NEED perhaps stemming from archetypes (which links beautifully with Jung, by the way). It points to the idea that Jesus as a man, doesn’t need to have existed at all, as long as the ideal of Jesus can live on.

I find this absolutely beautiful. I have no doubt that to some this idea is completely blasphemous but to me (mind you, I am not religious at all, that needs to be taken into account) organised religion and deep seated belief do not necessarily go together (although they are also not mutually exclusive, obviously).

One of the most striking aspects of the book though is how everything is open to interpretation: none of the things I have said so far are exactly final. Karl might or might not have fulfilled a needed historical event or he might or might not have changed things. I also think that what I see as repressed homosexually and connection between religion and sexuality (as he is dying in the cross – a wooden cross mind you – he gets an erection) could probably be the result of trauma as he was sexually abused by men who were connected to the church. Hey, I would even say that Karl is so messed up that maybe, the entire story happens only inside his head. I don’t care, what is important here is the fact that with this short novella Moorcock opened up a dialogue between fiction and me, which made me think, consider, theorise, relate, sympathise and mourn.

I have considered and re-considered and found myself unable to find anything remotely resembling a problem or a fault with this novella. Although I am sure they exist because no book can ever be perfect because we are all after all, only humans (behold, the man) subjectively speaking, to ME, the reading experience this book provided, is as perfect as it gets.

Notable Quotes/ Parts: At one point, Karl finds himself lost in the desert and has to fight his demons (or Monica, inside his head). Which you know, is exactly what the historical Jesus was meant to have done – so…playing events? Creating them? or living them? Does it matter?

YOU DECIDE.

Additional Thoughts:

Behold the Man is part of the SciFi and Fantasy Masterworks collection that Gollancz has been publishing throughout the years. And now a group of intrepid, awesome bloggers took upon themselves to read and review them all.They even created a blog: Science Fiction & Fantasy Masterworks Reading Project has gone live recently – go and check it out.

Also, one of my favourite bloggers, Paul Charles Smith of the excellent Empty Your Heart of Its Mortal Dream is organising a month long event (date to be confirmed) dedicated to Michael Moorcock with contributions s from Jeff VanderMeer,China Mieville, amongst others and Moorcock himself. I can’t wait and will make sure to mention it again once I know more.

Verdict: Brilliant and thought-provoking, Behold the Man deserves many acolytes, and a place in my keeper shelf.

Rating: 10 – Perfect

Reading Next: City of Ruin by Mark Charan Newton

Braziiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiil!!!! Ana here, taking a break from World Cup’s Concentration to bring you the latest Stash. First up:

Giveaway Winners

The 15 winners of Paper Towns by John Green are:

Paul Carroll (comment#5)

Ali (comment#13)

Laura Blakemore (comment#20)

Nikki Egerton (comment# 175)

Caroline (comment# 144)

Shy (comment# 163)

Hannah (comment# 15)

Alice (comment#18)

Rhiannon (comment#92)

Hannah (comment#79)

Gerd D (comment# 96)

Andrew (comment# 125)

Harry Markov (comment# 107)

Kim Ammons (comment# 66)

Gethin (comment# 146)

You all know the drill. Email us (contact AT thebooksmugglers DOT com) with your snail mail address and we will get your winnings out to you as soon as possible. NOTE: due to the increasing number of unclaimed prizes, winners have one week to contact us/reply to our email. After one week, we pick a new winner. Thanks again to everyone that entered, and congratulations to all of the winners!

And you still can enter the Simon&Schuster BIG FAT YA GIVEAWAY – with 8 upcoming titles in their fall lineup including: Passing Strange by Daniel Waters, Night of the Solstice by L.J. Smith, Crescendo by Becca Fitzpatrick and Shade by Jeri Smith-Ready.

Author news, Internets, etc:

We have excellent news for Juliet Marillier fans! It has been brought to our attention that the author will be publishing a new YA trilogy, the SHADOWFELL Trilogy, out in 2013, 2014, 2015. (via Publishers Marketplace). Since are both huge fans, Thea in particular, we are totally salivating over the news!

Malinda Lo, author of the FABULOUS YA novel Ash has written a series of helfpul posts for writers about LGBTQ stereotypes and how to avoid them when writing YA fiction. Each blog post has a subject like Major LGBTQ stereotypes, Gender, Word to Watch For, Secondary Characters and Gay Jokes and Resources. I think it is well worth a read even if you are not a writer.

Meanwhile, over at one of my favorite blogs, Things Mean a Lot, Ana (yes, another Ana) has posted an article entitled: “On Writing About Books” where she talks about different perspectives on reviewing or writing about the books, objectivism x subjectivism. The post includes loads of links to interesting articles on similar subjects at other blogs and they include even more links. I spent an entire afternoon reading all of them and two things came to mind then: whoa baby there are so many book blogs out there that I do not know about; and WHOA, there are so many inteliggent, articulate, bloggers! Makes me so proud to be part of this community.

And speaking of book blogs and community (how is that for a segue?):

Book Blogger Appreciation Week – September 13-17 2010

That time of the year is approaching again – the third annual BBAW will take place between 13 and 17 of September. Here is the rundown:

What: Book Blogger Appreciation Week is a week long festival celebrating the community of book bloggers and their contribution to preserving a culture of literacy through book reviews and recommendations, reading reflections, and general bookish chat. BBAW also includes an awards component. For more information on the BBAW 2010 Awards and how to participate, please visit the BBAW 2010 Awards Blog. BBAW events include daily blogging topics, blogger interview swaps, special guest posts, and so much more!

Who: If you self-identify as a book blogger, this festival is for you! We have been excited to welcome participants from all over the world for past BBAWs.

When: September 13-17, 2010.

Where: Right here at the Book Blogger Appreciation Week blog. You can participate in the comfort of your own home and the convenience of your own time zone.

Why: Because book blogging is a fun and time intensive hobby that has created communities around books and played a crucial role in the continuing evolution of what books mean in our society.

How Can I Participate?
You can participate by filling out the registration form for BBAW 2010. Subscribe to the blog’s feed and follow us on Twitter to keep up with all of the developments!

And just like last year, there will be awards although you do not have to take part in the awards to be a part of the BBAW. THE RULES HAVE CHANGED QUITE A LOT with regards to the process of registration and nomination. Everybody is invited to register their blogs for the Week (and everyone who does so, will be entered into the Book Blogger Directory) – the self-registration is also how you nominate your blog for a niche award (Best Speculative Fiction blog or Best YA Blog for example) but you can opt-out of the award when you are registering.

You can read all the details and explanations here.

It is also part of the new sets of rules, in order to secure transparency of the process that bloggers post their self-registration for the awards by listing the 5 posts that they think best represent their blogs in the category they wish to run for.

Thus, we now list the five posts we wish to enter for an award consideration in the Best Speculative Fiction Blog:

Review of Shades of Gray by Jasper Fforde
Review of Hush, Hush by Becca Fitzpatrick
Joint Review of The Hero of Ages by Brandon Sanderson
Cover Matters Article – On Whitewashing
Chat with an Author: Interview with Karen Healey

Let’s see how this goes! Fingers crossed.

Meanwhile, we invite everyone to take part – it is a great opportunity to get to know other blogs and bloggers!

This Week On The Book Smugglers

We kick off the week with Thea’s review (and giveaway) of Naamah’s Curse, sequel to Naamha’s Kiss the new trilogy by Jacqueline Carey.

On Tuesday, Ana reviews YA Superhero book The Rise of Renegade X by Chelsea Campbell

On Wednesday, Thea is back with a review of the dystopian novel The Line by Teri Hall

Then, on Thursday we joint review upcoming title from the brand new Gollancz YA line Crossing Over by Anna Kendall

Finally on Friday, Ana reviews another Contemporary YA: A Blue So Dark by Holly Schindler.

Aaaaand that’s it from us today. For now, we remain,

THEA ninjas in with her addition to the stash:

~Your Friendly Neighborhood Book Smugglers

“Inspirations and Influences” is a series of articles in which we invite authors to write guest posts talking about their…well, Inspirations and Influences. The cool thing is that the writers are given free reign so they can go wild and write about anything they want. It can be about their new book, series or about their career as a whole.

Today’s guest is Fantasy Author M D Lachlan – the pen name for the author and journalist Mark Barrowcliffe. His first Fantasy novel, Wolfsangel, a tale that combines Norse Mythology, Vikings and the myth of the werewolf, is being published by Gollancz this month. To celebrate its release, we invited the author to talk about the ideas behind the book.

Please give it up for M D Lachlan!

It’s a bit strange to talk of inspiration just because I’m not entirely clear how it works for me. I’m sure there are some people in the arts (Noel Gallagher, for instance) who see or hear something they like and think ‘I’d like to do something just like that’ and do. That’s actually an under-rated talent and one that can produce some great work. It’s also a good thing to do for people who are starting off. The poet Philip Larkin wrote his first works with a book of WB Yeats open on the table in front of him. It taught him the fundamentals of poetry, which enabled him to go on and find his own voice.

I don’t work like that, not from any high-minded principle but just because I don’t think I could do it very well. Some people can take a top thriller, virtually copy it, and produce a convincing top thriller. They then buy their house in the Bahamas and continue writing from there. I’m not so lucky. For some reason I just can’t do that and I know I can’t because I’ve tried.

So I’m pretty much stuck with originality, whether I like it or not. That sounds like a statement full of lightly veneered hubris but I genuinely think that originality is an unhealthy aim in any art form. I’m pleased that I’ve done something people consider original but my aim was to produce a bog standard fantasy story. My failure to do so was, luckily, a failure people seem to like.

Originality seems to have replaced beauty, truth or just entertainment as the yardstick by which the arts are judged. You can see why. It’s easier to say if something’s new, rather than if it’s any good. This, I fear, has been the curse of conceptual art. I don’t say there’s no good conceptual art, just that there’s an awful lot of bad stuff that people hesitate to condemn because it appears to be original.

I think we should be suspicious of originality. The reason something may not have been done before might be because it’s inherently rubbish. If something’s never been seen in human history, the likelihood is it’s been considered and dismissed at some point in the past and for good reason. However, as a writer, sometimes you do come up with something that you consider new and worth showing to other people. This was the case for me with Wolfsangel – a book that surprised me when I wrote it because things buried deep in my mind seemed to come bubbling to the surface, seize the fantasy novel I thought I was writing by the throat and drag it down, like Grendel, into the mire.

Wolfsangel is a historical fantasy, set in the Viking period and containing various supernatural elements – witches, werewolves and Norse gods. Just a warning, there are some mild spoilers, to do with the theme of the book below. I don’t give away plot but if you want to read Wolfsangel totally unsullied by explanation then you might want to look away now.

I don’t think I was inspired by any one thing to write this book. It’s more that certain things I’ve read and watched on TV have created a sort of mental microclimate into which I step every time I sit down write the book. If you think that’s a pretentious statement, try the next one. If the book is a landscape, these are the things that rained on it, blew on it and scraped across it to form it. I know that seems a pompous description but it seems about right.

Inspiration comes from the fact that I love dark fantasy. By this I don’t mean fantasy with dark characters – evil or psychopathic characters don’t really interest me as a writer – but something where the protagonists seem to be up against strange and unknowable forces. When I say I don’t want to write about evil characters – I like bad people in my books but I like you to know why they’re bad. One person’s evil is another’s unsentimental self interest.

TV obviously had an enormous effect on people of my generation and no more so than Children of the Stones – a tea time series in the 1970s. I could tell you all about it but it’s better to just listen to the theme tune (not the HTV bit, which comes first, clearly) Kids today would need counselling if you stuck this on a TV programme. It’s about ancient supernatural forces impacting on modern life – not too dissimilar from the theme of Wolfsangel. It also contains the idea of ancient stories playing out in the modern day.A book with a similar theme is Alan Garner’s Owl Service – set in Wales with a different mythology, that of the Welsh Mabinogion. I have to say, I enjoyed the idea of this book – ancient stories playing themselves out through modern people – more than the book itself when I was a kid. I’d loved his Weirdstone of Brisingamen with a passion and The Owl Service seemed a bit subtle and dated for my tastes back then.

The film The Wicker Man has a related feel. Please, in the name of sanity, don’t confuse this slice of 1970s genius with the Nick Cage remake, for which crime I think he should be set upon by pagans and sacrificed to the darkest god available within a four hour car journey. I said at the time it had all the charm of watching a dear old friend beaten to death. The 1973 Wicker Man has a great look to it and a superb plot – it involves a staid police inspector going to investigate the disappearance of a child on a remote Scottish island. Christopher Lee, pictured, takes a great part as the lord of the island.

Without wishing to spoil the plot I will say that it’s full of surprises – one of which I have just realised is very near to a surprise that comes up in Wolfsangel. Perhaps these influences have a more direct effect than I’d thought.

Very often when I’m writing a book I’ll have a tune that comes insistently into my head. For Wolfsangel it was Psychic TV’s Thee Full Pack. I can only really find it on Spotify so I can’t post a link. It’s a semi-pretentious, very atmospheric song which could really be about Odin, the chief god of Wolfsangel. ‘He is the father of fear…ripping the line of the time.’ It also includes the sound of a dog attack, treated through some sort of synthesiser, which is very werewolf-like. I’d recommend giving a listen because it’s very interesting and doesn’t give a hoot for being commercial. The one in my head with the book I’m writing at the moment is this, which is clearly a work of sublime genius by the greatest female artist ever to draw breath – The Hounds of Love by Kate Bush.

This is what I mean by not striving for originality. I have the strong sense that she was just writing songs. They happen to be totally original and mad as a sack of badgers but that wasn’t her aim – she just wanted to write something good. I could be wrong about that, of course, but I don’t think I am.

Some things you don’t even have to see or read for them to have an effect on you. I have no memory of ever seeing the western A Man Called Horse but it seems certain that it informed my view of Sioux magic as a quest for magical insight brought on by pain rituals. I tried to check to see if this was based on actual practices but drew a blank so this must have been my source for it.

However, other rituals that certainly stuck in my head were the pain rituals and human sacrifice of the Mayans, Incas and Aztecs – with practices such as body piercing or drawing a rope of thorns through a slit in the tongue.

I had a view that the important magical aspect of the human sacrifice was the terrible and horrific effect it had on the priests. This led me to the idea that a magical reality could be accessed by shocking the conventional mind into numbness. That’s not my real view but it was an interesting one to follow for the purposes of the book.

Of course, there is no Mayan or American Indian culture in Wolfsangel. The specific inspiration for that came from The Edda – the collection of Icelandic texts that give us our picture of Norse mythology. Edda means grandmother in old Norse – indicating that the stories were old at the time they were written down.

I was particularly fascinated by the figure of The Fenris Wolf, here pictured fighting Odin, I think, though the horse seems to only have four legs and Odin’s has eight:

Here is the wolf again in a wonderful picture by the Swedish painter John Bauer. It’s taking the hand of the God Tyr in his mouth as an insurance against the gods tricking him into allowing itself to be tied with unbreakable bonds. This is among my favourite sort of fantasy art.

Unfortunately it’s a bit staid for modern publishers to put on the front of books! The story of the Fenris Wolf is rather long for this blog but interested readers can find in on Wikipedia here.There is a chilling prophetic verse concerning the death of the gods at their final day which I carried in my head throughout the writing of Wolfsangel.

‘The fetters shall burst and the wolf run free
Much do I know and more can see.’

This is a mean wolf, he eats gods.

I was also fascinated by the self sacrifice of Odin (the chief Norse god, sort of), losing his eye and hanging on a tree for nine nights to gain magical knowledge. Here is an image I like from eighteenth century Iceland of the one eyed god riding his eight legged horse Slepnir. I’ve always preferred this sort of stuff to conventional fantasy art, from Roger Dean to men in hoods.

This is a key verse from the Edda, spoken by Odin.

‘I know that I hung on a windy tree

nine long nights

wounded with a spear, dedicated to Odin

myself to myself

on that tree of which no man knows

from where its roots run

No bread did they give me nor drink from a horn,

downwards I peered;

I took up the runes, screaming I took them,

then I fell back from there.’

This is a superb piece of writing that contains many of the ideas present in Wolfsangel – self sacrifice, the hanged god, and – of course – the runes, magical symbols.

The runes were a big influence on my writing an I think my interest in them stems directly from Tolkien and the mysterious writing Gandalf (this name appears in The Edda, meaning ‘magic elf’ in old Norse) carves on Bilbo’s door.

The one area where I do concede I tried to be original is where I sent my protagonists. I’d first decided to send them with the Viking fleets to Celtic Ireland but I thought the Celtic tradition had been well done by others. So I sent them north into the Sami lands, for which I had to do a lot of research. I shan’t say much about it, other than here is a Sami rune drum.

Another influence on my work is that I played Dungeons and Dragons to the point of Vitamin D deficiency when I was a kid. I loved it and would have to say that it must influence my writing. I’m not sure how, exactly, other than meaning I spent a youth with a head full of elves. However, I found its idea of magic too different to my own concept of magic.

The biggest influence on the feel of the magic in Wolfsangel comes from my early reading of books on the history of witchcraft. I used take these books to bed with me and scare myself stupid reading stories of witches vomiting pins or the excesses of the witchfinders. I think it’s the look of the illustrations I liked. Everyone has their own preferred sort of fantasy art and I think mine is woodcuts. It’s the strangeness of them that I like so much. This is the sort of book I used to read, or rather secondary texts that would contain quotes and pictures from this sort of thing.

The other magical practice – at least we assume it was a magical practice – that fascinated me as a kid was connected to the discovery of bog bodies.

These are presumed ritual sacrifices that have been preserved in peat bogs. Again, it’s the alien and strange nature of these images that appealed to me. Mire magic – you can’t really say bog in a modern novel without eliciting smirks – is a big part of Wolfsangel.

So all these things and more influenced me while I was writing Wolfsangel, or at least these were the things that I think helped form the mental climate in which the book was produced.

Thank you, Mark! And now for the giveaway:

GIVEAWAY DETAILS

The Viking King Authun leads his men on a raid against an Anglo-Saxon village. Men and women are killed indiscriminately but Authun demands that no child be touched. He is acting on prophecy. A prophecy that tells him that a child of the Gods will be found among the Saxons. If Authun takes the child and raises him as an heir, the child will lead his people to glory.

But Authun discovers not one child, but twin baby boys. Ensuring that his faithful warriors, witness to what has happened, die during the raid Athun takes the children and their mother back to Norway and the witches who live on the perilous mountain known as the Troll Wall. He places his destiny in their hands.

And so begins WOLFSANGEL, the first of a stunning multi-volume fantasy epic that will take a werewolf from his beginnings as the heir to a brutal Viking king, down through the ages. It is a journey that will see him hunt for his lost love through centuries and lives, and see the endless battle between the wolf, Odin and Loki – the eternal trickster – spill over into countless bloody conflicts from our history. This is the myth of the werewolf as it has never been told before and marks the beginning of an extraordinary new fantasy series from Gollancz.

We are giving away ONE copy of Wolfsangel to a lucky reader! Entry is simple – just leave a comment here telling us what your favorite werewolf book/movie is. The contest is open to ALL, and will run until Saturday, May 22 at 11:59 PM (PST). Only ONE comment per person, please! Multiple comments WILL be disqualified. Good luck!

Title: Tome of the Undergates

Author: Sam Sykes

Genre: Fantasy (Epic Fantasy)

Publisher: Gollancz (UK)
Publication date: April 15 2010
Hardcover: 612 pages

Stand alone or series: 1st in a planned trilogy

Lenk can barely keep control of his mismatched adventurer band at the best of times (Gariath the dragon man sees humans as little more than prey, Kataria the shict despises most humans and the humans in the band are little better). When they’re not insulting each other’s religions they’re arguing about pay and conditions. So when the ship they are travelling on is attacked by pirates things don’t go very well. They go a whole lot worse when an invincible demon joins the fray. The demon steals the Tome of the Undergates – a manuscript that contains all you need to open the undergates. And whichever god you believe in you don’t want the undergates open. On the other side are countless more invincible demons, the manifestation of all the evil of the gods, and they want out. Full of razor-sharp wit, characters who leap off the page (and into trouble) and plunging the reader into a vivid world of adventure this is a fantasy that kicks off a series that could dominate the second decade of the century.

Why did we read the book: Numerous reasons, really. First there is the incredible hype surrounding its release: Gollancz, the house that found and published Patrick Rothfuss, Joe Abercrombie, and Scott Lynch amongst others has publicly declared that this is THE book to read in 2010. We also happen to be quite friendly with Sam Sykes: Ana met the guy at the Gollancz party last year, he has guest blogged for us here during our Smugglivus celebration. In turn, Sam interviewed us at his blog, not to mention, we are avid followers of his on Twitter.

Needless to say, we really wanted to read this.

How did we get the book: Review Copies from Gollancz

REVIEW:

First Impressions:

Thea: When I started Tome of the Undergates, I was excited. Really excited. Like, really gorram, gonna pee my pants excited. With publisher name drops like Rothfuss, Abercrombie, and Lynch, the hype around Tome of the Undergates grew a life of its own – and I happily lapped it all up.

Unfortunately, as almost always seems to be the case with hype, the let-down was brutal. These publisher comparisons are more than a tad….licentious.

Though undeniably imaginative and featuring a band of characters that amusingly hate each other, I found myself growing tired, very quickly, with this book. Unnecessarily long, unfathomably repetitive, and ultimately pointless, I could not find much to love in Tome of the Undergates (and this hurts me to say, since Sam Sykes is a stand up guy).

Ana: Like Thea, I approached Tome of the Undergates with excitement and yes, high expectations coming not only from the hype surrounding its release but from experience as well: I have read a short story by the author in The Dragon Book anthology and well, I loved it.

Thea is right though, hype can be such a pernicious device when publicising a book, because it can create unreasonably high expectations and when those are not met, when the promise is not upheld, the fall from grace comes from a much higher place.
Regrettably, that’s exactly what happened to me when I finished the book for the same reasons that Thea stated. I did however enjoy it a little bit more than she did and that’s because I dig Sam Sykes’ writing style and I actually liked the characters – when they were on their own (more on that later).

On the plot:

Thea: The plot is simple – a group of adventurers (not to be confused with their more reputable siblings, mercenaries) is traveling across the seas on a mission to protect the equivalent of a high priest, and to find a hoity-toity sounding gateway. The pay sucks, but hey, they’re adventurers. Hence, they can’t really complain as they’re the dregs of the by-the-sword wage earning community. Then, their ship is attacked by pirates and a formidable demon. After hacking a lot of the crew down to so much mincemeat, the demon shakes down the emissary and steals the titled Tome of the Undergates – the book that will, well, unleash hell. Lenk and his band of…er, colleagues (they aren’t really “friends”) are given the opportunity to hunt the demon down and save the Tome and the world – for an exorbitant sum.

The biggest problem with Tome of the Undergates is how wasteful the book is. It is a tome in itself, yet despite its substantive girth, nothing really happens in this book. It is literally much ado about nothing. Allow me to explain with an example. The first two hundred pages of Tome of the Undergates details a single battle sequence.

That’s right. ONE battle. Two hundred pages.

This isn’t necessarily a bad thing – if this was some scintillating Steven Erikson or Paul Kearney style of epic battle or something. Unfortunately, it’s not. The first two hundred pages are just a lot of pointless, poorly-conceived action. The whole concept verges on the ludicrous; these characters are snarling at each other about how they are going to run away/kill each other, meanwhile what sounds like a never-ending pirate hoard is seizing the boat. (How the boat stays afloat in this chaos and supposed onslaught of destruction is quite beyond me) Even worse, however, is that this battle doesn’t even provide the visceral entertaining thrill that such hyperbolic carnage should otherwise offer! What begins as a mildly entertaining skirmish at sea becomes a protracted nightmare of bland tedium – and that, dear friends, is a hard thing to do when you’re racking up a body count.

This is basically the story of the entire book. Characters trade insults (humans suck! shict suck! I will stab you in the back!) – the same insults, mind you – over and over and over again, only to have that constant stream of monotony interrupted from time to time with sporadic, uninspired action and plot progression.

On the plus side, Sam Sykes does have a sense of humor which translates nicely in his writing, and there are the sporadic glints of promising plot seeds throughout the tome. Too bad the humor wears thin very quickly – there are only so many jokes one can make about making water – and while I very much liked the watery setting (as I do like the general feel for the cover), any interest sparked by a glimmer of background mythology, geography or politics was immediately squashed under the unrelenting weight of mindless tedium (humans suck! non-human monsters suck! KILL!).

There were also some odd, offsetting writing choices and awkward, cliched descriptions. For example, “Despite the oppressive heat, Kataria felt her blood run cold,” or “Asper could feel Lenk’s eyes with such intensity they threatened to crack her skull,” or “He had felt it once before, so keenly, when he held two bodies not his enemies’ in his arms, stared into their eyes as rain draped their faces in shrouds of fresh water,” or “The journal fell to the sand. The sound of it crashing upon the earth echoed through the dawn,” (how exactly does a book make a reverberating crashing sound on sand?), etc. You get the picture.

And for a book so obsessed with the most tedious of minutae, I have to remark that I only saw the characters eat and sleep once (on page 395). Just sayin’.

Ana: There isn’t much to be said about the plot – as it is very simple: there is a Tome which opens the doors to the undergates and this bunch of adventurers must try and rescue it before all hell breaks loose. Of course, there are complications (and unexpected twists) and gritty battles and adventure in their way to get the tome. For what it is, for what it proposes to do, yes, Tome of the Undergates is a wasteful book in need of serious editing.

Going back to the first two hundred pages and the infamous battle scene that lasts forever. When I started reading it, I actually enjoyed the opening sequence. I thought it was a clever, ingenious idea to start the book by showing us the characters doing what they do for a living – “here, there is a bunch of adventurers and this is what they do and this is who they are.” I liked that, I liked getting to know the main characters in the thick of battle and seeing what they thought, how they reacted to what was happening and to each other. But the novelty wore off really soon. How many pages does one really need for this exposition without becoming repetitive? Furthermore, the battle itself reads…not entirely right. Mostly because at times, the characters would start having lengthy dialogues in the midst of it all, cutting the action off.

After the battle ends, the story progresses a little bit further but again, it is bogged down by repetition – dialogue, motivations and even the bad guys, repeat themselves in their discourse. I grew tired of it all pretty soon. Which is a shame because as I mentioned before, I quite enjoy Sykes’ writing and sense of humour. Some of the interactions between the main characters were downright hilarious and amusing but again, how many times does one have to read the same thing to realise the author’s point: that the characters are together for reasons other than camaraderie and friendship.

Which brings me to my main point: is the book really about the search for the Tome of the Undergates? I don’t think so – to me, the book is about the characters and what motivates them. The second part of the novel reads more like a character piece than anything else and that was actually what kept me reading.

Through the fog of repetition and seemly pointless scenes I saw sparks of true brilliance. In my opinion, if you cut away about 100 pages from the opening battle scene, edit out another 100 pages or so here and there voila, this book would have been much better. The premise, the general idea of the book is good, the interesting background of different peoples (a dragon man? Cool! ), mythologies, religions and politics are there: it is just really, really hard to actually see and care about them.

Having said that, a couple of interesting developments towards the ending of the novel (again, character-driven ones) , guarantee that I will be back for seconds.

On the characters:

Thea: Like the plotting, the characters of Tome of the Undergates begin this journey as interesting, only to grow tiresome in a hurry. Our introduction to the characters is good fun, and I loved the initial wit and banter between the snarky adventurers – they clearly hate each other, which is a welcome novelty in a group of traveling adventurers. Lenk, as the leader, is clearly mentally unstable from the outset, struggling with the commanding voice in his head. Kataria (whom I cannot help but compare to Neytiri from James Cameron’s Avatar) is a strong, vocal character that discriminates and feels discriminated against by disgusting humans. There’s a pacifistic priestess, a hotshot wizard, a cruelly powerful dragon-man, and a funny coward. It’s a ragtag team that has a lot of potential.

And then…

It all becomes the same. Repetitive. Monotonous. Everyone sounds identical – which is to say, they are funny and witty and hate each other and the snark is cool, but when it’s nonstop hundreds upon hundreds of pages of the exact same conversations, it’s coma inducing. I hate to be so harsh, but someone’s gotta say it. No one develops, no one grows, and these characters feel very much like caricatures. I just could not bring myself to care, after the four hundred page mark.

Ana: Now, this is what I really liked about Tome of the Undergates: the characters and I will have to disagree with Thea. I don’t think they sound identical, quite the contrary. I thought they were unique and interesting, each having different issues to be dealt with. Even though they all fit into Fantasy stereotypes, they each have something that marked them as different. Lenk, their leader is struggling with a voice inside his head and what exactly does it mean – his inner battle to accept it or not is rather interesting. As interesting is his relationship with the non-human Kataria – there is a budding romance there even though, they are supposed to hate each on principle. Kataria’s race absolutely abhors humans and I loved to see how she too, struggles to accept herself as someone who doesn’t really hate them all as her father hoped. Denaos (who is probably my favourite character) is the “rogue” and obviously someone who has a carefree façade that is far from being true. There is Asper, the Healer (or is she?) hoping to find a place in the world, then there is Dreadaeleon, the magician and Gariath, the dragonman, possibly the last of his race.

Individually these are rather complex characters but their complexity is undoubtedly simplified when they spend any amount of time with each other. The premise is this: they are adventurers – they have freedom and they work for whomever pays them more. They belong to no place and uphold no ideal. They have been together for about one year, even though they hate each other. We are told that they hate each other, every other page. They bicker and they snark and they fight. The humans hate the non-humans, the non-humans want the humans to die a miserable death. Yes, it is monotonous and some of the conversations are exact replicas of previous conversations. As much as I loved the Lenk-Kat interactions for its potential, every single time they are together reads the.same.way.

And yet. Their animosity is not what is shown all the time. In fact, they all present, at one point or another, loyalty to the group and especially to Lenk (in the end of book, I understood why) . I am not sure if this difference between what they seem to think or feel and what they do is on purpose as part of their development. I prefer to think so. Or in the words of Fox Mulder: I want to believe.

Final Thoughts, Verdict & Rating:

Thea: Tome of the Undergates is a victim of its own hype – because while Sam Sykes has a lot of potential, The Name of the Wind this ain’t. The book feels very much like manuscript from an exuberant young author, attempting to write epic fantasy for the first time. There are moments of creativity and flashes of what might one day be brilliance (especially towards the ending of the book) – but they are soon lost to so much noise and nonsense. In my opinion, Tome reads like a decent first draft – but one that needs a lot of cutting down, cleaning up, and development of a sharper focus. And for this, I don’t blame the author at all. Rather, I wonder how did someone not step in at some point and blow the whistle? Is it like Entourage when the guys were making “Meddellin” – being too close to the source material, not seeing the forest for the trees sort of deal?

Bottom line, I wasn’t crazy about Tome of the Undergates. Though it ends on a high note, by that point I simply did not care. I won’t be reading the sequel, but I will give Sam Sykes another try in the future.

Ana: I agree with Thea’s final, overall assessment to a “t”. But even though I didn’t fall in love with the book as much as I hoped and wanted to, I do think there is still great potential in the trilogy. I love the idea that the characters choose to live as adventurers because of the freedom it provides them whilst at the same time they are basically chained by their past and beliefs – this is super compelling to me and I do want to see how it all progresses.

Notable Quotes/ Parts: From the official excerpt:

“Contrary to whatever you might have heard in songs and stories, there are only a few productive things a man can do once he picks up a sword.

“He can put it to use for his country, if he’s got any pride. He can use it to defend his loved ones, if he’s got any. And if he’s got any intelligence at all, he can put it down.

“For those who are lacking all three, the only viable option is to embrace that meanest and most disrespected of professions: adventuring. Falling somewhere just below the rank of mercenary and just above the classification of scum, adventurers are chiefly a source of cheap labor, providing with violence and misfortune what they lack in standards.

“And I count myself among the cheapest.

“Amongst my allies I count a murderer, a zealot, a heretic, a savage and a monster. Amongst my problems I count demons that shouldn’t exist, pirates with a loquaciously murderous bent, a society that wouldn’t care if I was rotting in the earth and my allies. Amongst my dreams…

“I count survival.

“I’ll get to the others after that one’s taken care of.”

Rating:

Thea: 5 Meh, take it or leave it

Ana: 6 Good, recommended with reservations

Reading Next: The Poison Throne by Celine Kiernan

Title: The Red Wolf Conspiracy

Author: Robert V.S. Redick

Genre: Fantasy

Publisher: Gollancz (UK) / Del Rey (US)
Publishing Date: February 2008 / April 2009
Paperback/Hardcover: 464 pages

Stand alone or series: The Chathrand Voyage, Book One (out of four) .

Why did I read the book: Because of the positive reviews

How did I get the book: Bought

Summary: The Chathrand – The Great Ship, The Wind-Palace, His Supremacy’s First Fancy – is the last of her kind – built 600 years ago she dwarves all the ships around her. The secrets of her construction are long lost. She was the pride of the Empire. The natural choice for the great diplomatic voyage to seal the peace with the last of the Emperor’s last enemies. 700 souls boarded her. Her sadistic Captain Nilus Rose, the Emperor’s Ambassador and Thasha, the daughter he plans to marry off to seal the treaty, a spy master and six assassins, one hunderd imperial marines, Pazel the tarboy gifted and cursed by his mother’s spell and a small band of Ixchel. The Ixchel sneaked aboard and now hide below decks amongst the rats. Intent on their own mission. But there is treachery afoot. Behind the plans for peace lies the shadow of war and the fear that a dead king might live again. And now the Chathrand, having survived countless battles and centuries of typhoons has gone missing. This is her story.

Review:

I will start with a most obvious statement: this book is about a Conspiracy. But not just any conspiracy:a Sinister one, a Bold one, to bring war about the world. A Conspiracy that spans across time and different countries (and even different dimensions); and which takes place, for most part, inside a ship. A ship of gigantic proportions, almost a world in itself (with seven decks and a hold) capable of holding over 800 souls, the oldest ship in the world (600 years old and counting) and one with a History and a secret mission: The Chathrand.

Yes, this is a book about a Conspiracy but also about the last voyage of the Chathrand, a fact we learn in the prologue. According to the newspaper clipping, the ship has been lost at sea. Whatever happened to the Chathrand and its passengers and how it connects with the Conspiracy is the main story-arc that will take place over the four books of the series. This first volume reads exactly like this: the first act of a major dramatic production. And when I say major, I mean major. To the point where stripped to its bare essentials, critically examined under a microscope that lists each element of this endeavour, separately, The Red Wolf Conspiracy could be a recipe for a mess of Titanic proportions:

Ancient artefacts, Assassin Spies, several evil villains with a Plan working together or maybe against each other, a King turned God, a Crazy infamous Captain, an Ambassador and his consort, Mages, different dimensions, a teenage girl who is a martial arts expert, a teenage boy who is cursed with a Gift for languages, a doctor with suspicious behaviour, giants, talking animals, a book that speaks only lies unless you have the never-seen-before 13th edition, a soap merchant, mermaids, fish-peoples, an Ixchel (think Tinker Bell- sized warriors) infestation, rats and pirates.

However – and this is all that stands between failure and success – mix them all together under the expertise of a skilled plotter who clearly has a plan of his own then add a few awesome details here and there and voila: mess it is no more. On the contrary, to join the author and his characters on their voyage is a most pleasurable way to cruise for a few hours.

With a complex world-building and an interesting plot, The Red Wolf Conspiracy is a great Fantasy novel and I really liked it. Starting with quite a few chapters of set-up and character introduction before they even embark on their journey, the plot expands and aggregates characters very slowly. I have seen reviews that mention how the setting up is rather slow but I actually really enjoyed the slow pacing of the first pages, I had more problems later on when the pacing changed abruptly but more on that later.

It is hard to give details of the plot because there is so much. I guess it is enough to say that there is not only the aforementioned Conspiracy but also a Conspiracy within the Conspiracy and a Counter-Conspiracy, all happening at the same time. And all that stands between the villains and their plan to plunge the world into war are a ragamuffin bunch of underdogs: the tarboy Pazel Pathkendle, whose only skill (or is it?) comes from a curse which allows him to understand any language but also leaves him with crippling headaches; the girl Tasha Isiq, daughter of the Ambassador to Sidpa , the chosen Bride to marry the enemy and bring peace to and who is the unwilling key figure (and yet, expendable) of the Conspiracy; Lady Driadelu, the Queen of the Ixchel; Hercol , former spy and Tasha’s tutor and his friend Ramachni, a mage who takes the form of a mink when in our dimension and the woken rat Felthrup. All of them are aware of parts of the master plan but only together can they put together the puzzle. All of these characters, to some extend or another, are relatable characters. I especially liked Pazel and Felthrup when they both fight adversity and strive to do their parts.

The book is not without its problems though. For all that the characters are interesting, they are never truly, deeply fleshed- out. Tasha is especially puzzling and not a bit annoying – I had huge problems with the fact that she is such an expert fighter. Not that I have anything against kick-ass female characters. Quite the contrary. It is just that it made little sense to me, that this specific character would be so adept at fighting. For starters, how exactly did she learn? Being a closeted daughter of an Ambassador, when exactly did she have time to have secret lessons and how was that kept a secret in the first place? Plus, at the book opens she has just spent two years in a school-convent without any chance to train and yet as soon as she is out, she is a master again. It required quite a lot of suspension of disbelief from me. There is also a romantic storyline with a very contrived love triangle.

Given the scope of the story and the plotting, and the sheer amount of characters – the ones listed above are the GOOD ones, there is a plethora of antagonists as well and rather clichéd they are, I am afraid – it is not a surprise that character development takes a backseat to the overall story; in all fairness there will be three more books in the series and the potential is undoubtedly there.

Another problem is the narrative itself. You see, it is rather schizophrenic. It alternates between omniscient narrator (even addressing the reader) and several third person limited. It is not necessarily bad but it did make me jump at times. I mentioned that in the beginning the author takes his sweet time with setting up and characters’ introductions but at some point in the book, things shift rather quickly. To the point where, instead of being privy to the happenings in the novel as we had been up to that point, all of a sudden things happen outside the pages and we learn about them through other characters. It is as though huge chunks were removed because the book had enough pages already – maybe an editing constriction?

I should also probably mention that my copy (a final copy, bought in the book store, not an ARC) was missing about 20 pages in a VERY IMPORTANT POINT. I was able to surmise what happened via characters’ conversations though but that was certainly frustrating. To the point where I yelled to the Gods “This is not happening!!!!”. That I actually screamed in agony over the loss of 20 out of 500 pages should probably tell you that in spite of the problems above, I enjoyed this fantastic adventure very much.

The bottom line is this: all of the problems I had with the book were duly noted as I read the book but they didn’t mar at all the experience of reading it. The overall plot with the conspiracy, all the political intrigue, THE TALKING RAT, the coming of age storylines of Tasha and Pazel were amazing. I sailed through The Red Wolf Conspiracy as though I was standing on the deck of a cruise ship with the breeze caressing my face and…you get the drift. I will read the next volume, The Rats and the Ruling Sea pronto and I swear by Poseidon’s Trident that there will be zero nautical references in that review.

Notable Quotes/ Parts: I like the opening paragraphs of chapter one:

It began, as every disaster in his life began, with a calm. The harbour and the village slept. The wind that had roared all night lay quelled by the headland; the bosun grew too sleepy to shout. But forty feet up the ratlines, Pazel Pathkendle had never been more awake.

He was freezing, to start with – a rogue wave had struck the bow at dusk, soaking eight boys and washing the ship’s dog into the hold, where it still yipped for rescue – but it wasn’t the cold that worried him…

You can read more here.

Additional Thoughts: The series has its own website with maps (I heart maps!), crew listings, details of the ship (with a sketch) plus details of the world, the calendar and even selections from the Merchant’s Polylex. These are the sort of details that I LOVE!

Verdict: The Red Wolf Conspiracy is a great mixture of fantasy and political intrigue, of adventure and romance. Although it is obviously the “first” in a series, it is certainly imaginative and exciting. And I can’t wait to read volume 2!

Rating: 7 – Very Good

Reading next: Magic Under Glass by Jacklyn Dolamore

Gollancz, the FANTABULOUS Sci-fi/Fantasy imprint of Orion Books has a new line of Paranormal Romance coming to the UK in 2010. I have known about this since their Autumn party and since then have waited with abated breath to see the covers and authors (I only knew about Nalini Singh) they are going to be releasing! I think the line has a lot of potential here in the UK especially after seeing the covers they came up with. Here are some of them:

Nalini Singh’s Psy/Changeling series:

You probably know by now how much I LOVE this series (understatement of the millennium). I think the UK covers are WAY better than the US ones. And will you look at Lucas and dear lord, Judd (Caressed by Ice is my absolute favourite in the series) !

Nalini Singh’s Guild Hunter series:

Angels’ Blood, the first in the series is in my top 10 of 2009. I love the US covers for these but the UK covers kick-ass too.

Ann Aguirre’s Corine Solomon series:

LOVED Blue Diablo and can’t wait for Hell Fire. And I think the UK covers are as cool as the US covers.

So, what do you think? Like, dislike?