The Lies of Locke Lamora - Scott Lynch

In 2006, the fantasy genre welcomed the debut effort of Scott Lynch.  To almost unanimous praise, The Lies of Locke Lamora arrived, heralding the revival of something that the genre had been missing for a while.

Adventure.

Sure we've had our fair share of quests and epic showdowns.  Of romanticised worlds and quasi-European medievalism.  Of orphaned children taking on Kingdoms and Gods.  You see, somewhere along the way, someone took stock of what makes fantasy.  And the stock take showed a list of elements and plot devices that we're happy to trot out again and again.  Don't get me wrong, I believe the word derivative is overused when it comes to critiquing books.  In fact if you want to subscribe to Christopher Booker's theory, there may really only be seven stories to tell.  (I'll let you make your own mind up on that score.)  But this is also true: too often we forget what really lies at the heart of the fantasy genre.  The sense of wonder.  The feeling of adventure. In short, the fantastical.

And that is where Scott Lynch excels.

Now let's get a couple of things out of the way first.  Lynch's prose?  Great.  Clean.  Evocative. His dialogue?  Outstanding.  Both excellently written and always present in a way that serves the story.  Storytelling?  Second to none.

But here's what you really need to know.  Lynch is so good at all this, that he really doesn't need you to know it.  His greatest accomplishment as a writer is that he gets out of the way.  His sense of character is so well rounded that they drive the story more than any of the above.

What do you get when you read a Scott Lynch novel?  A feeling.  Too often I feel as though the science of writing is plain in what I'm reading.  I can appreciate it.  I can enjoy it, sometimes I can even marvel at the skill involved.  But what Lynch does as a writer, is remind you why you read. You're not impressed by his writing.  You're not overcome by his skill.  What you are, is in the story.

And the story?  Swashbuckling fun.  High adventure.  Wonder.  A rising sensation which is heightened along with the stakes, the feeling of a high stakes gambler who is fully invested in his hand.

Locke Lamora is someone you need to meet.  His story is an interesting one.  Raised by thieves in an extraordinary fellowship known as The Gentleman Bastards, he quickly becomes that part of the reader that exists in daydreams.  Profane.  Quick on his feet.  Dashing.  Daring.  And at the same time, all too fallible.  Too often becoming a caricature of himself, to his own detriment and downfall.

But here is the number one reason you need to get to know him.  Locke Lamora is the man who brought adventure back to fantasy.  Introduce yourself.  Have some fun.

My score - 9/10

Scott Lynch's Republic of Thieves Gets Publication Date

Exploding onto the scene in 2006 with his debut novel The Lies of Locke Lamora, Scott Lynch is widely regarded as one of the new innovators of the Fantasy world.  His follow up, Red Seas Under Red Skies was quite honestly, just as impressive.

With a style that is richly evocative and plot structures that unfold in the mind like a well told action-adventure movie, Lynch quickly had fans clamouring for more.  With a few road bumps along the way, Lynch has had to overcome some serious obstacles in the ensuing years, but it would appear that his perseverance has paid off.  Gollancz have announced that the third volume of Lynch's Gentleman Bastards series, The Republic of Thieves will land on October 8, 2013 in the U.S. and October 10, 2013 in the U.K.

If you've not had the opportunity to check out Scott Lynch's work, I recommend you do.  With a swashbuckling roguishness that is absent from many fantasy adventures.  It will satisfy an urge you hadn't even realised you had.

Vikings - the History channel

Looking for something to tide you over until the return of HBO's Game of Thrones on March 31?

Moving quickly to capitalise on the success of last years mini-series Hatfields & McCoys, the History channel have released Vikings, a historical drama which tells the tale of one of Scandinavian lore's most influential figures.  Created by the same people who brought The Tudors to the small screen, Vikings is sure to appeal to fans of Rome  and Game of Thrones.

Here's the official synopsis:

Vikings follows the adventures of Ragnar Lothbrok the greatest hero of his age. The series tells the sagas of Ragnar's band of Viking brothers and his family, as he rises to become King of the Viking tribes. As well as being a fearless warrior, Ragnar embodies the Norse traditions of devotion to the gods, legend has it that he was a direct descendant of Odin, the god of war and warriors.

Having watched the first three episodes, I highly recommend it.  With outstanding production values and attention to detail, Vikings is thoroughly entertaining genre fare. 

Vikings stars Travis Fimmel and Gabriel Byrne.

If you don't get the History channel, episodes 1-3 are currently available online at history.com

American Gods - Neil Gaiman

There are two authors I am particularly jealous of, and for identical reasons.

Their names?

China Mieville and Neil Gaiman.

Why?

To put it simply, they are so full of creativity, it just seems to leak out of them.  You see, most writers are human and have limits.  Whether they tell their stories in a sandbox world of their own creation, or in a more contemporary setting, the story itself demands most of the creative attention.

And then, there's Mieville and Gaiman.  With every novel they not only tell an original and compelling tale, but manage to create a completely new and broadly imaginative universe for that tale to unfold in.  Very rarely do they trot out the same setting.  Granted, creating one of these "sandboxes" as most fantasy authors do takes a lot of creativity, but to do it again and again?  To colour each new world with unique elements, great characters and cultures and technology? Creativity to spare.

My first introduction to such restrained and channelled delusion was Neil Gaiman's American Gods.  It's atmospheric.  Stylistic.  Downright weird, in a marvellous way.  Gaiman reminds the reader how important good prose is to the pacing of a story.  In American Gods, that prose is poetic when it needs to be, simple and restrained when it doesn't, and at all times, evocative. Which is just as well, because in this case, atmosphere is the most important element of the novel.  A dark, dreamlike, metaphysical weirdness pervades every particle of the story and if the prose was not up to the challenge of holding it all together, the book would fail.  Therein, perhaps, lies the reason that Gaiman is held in such high regard.  He is more than up to the challenge.

Following the story of ex-con Shadow upon his release from a federal prison, Gaiman leads the reader on a vivid journey through middle America.  Soon after taking a job as a bodyguard for the mysterious Mr. Wednesday however, Shadow finds himself caught up in a world where manifestations of ancient Gods walk the land.  Depleted in strength, these once powerful beings face extinction as the numbers of their believers and worshippers dwindle.  Wednesday, an avatar of Odin the All-Father, journeys across the continent in an attempt to recruit these ageing and waning gods for a final battle against the New American Gods - likewise, avatars of the modern world, referencing technology in particular but also the dangers of mass consumption and media.

Perhaps the greatest triumph of American Gods, is the manner in which these gods, both ancient and new, are portrayed.  Consistently boorish and aloof from the world around them, they are so invested in their own cause that they are ignorant of anything beyond it.  People rarely figure into their reasoning, if at all.  And while they may be out of touch, Gaiman is most certainly not.  His finger is on the pulse, in a way that only he could manage.  Well, other than China Mieville perhaps.

My score - 8.5/10

The Windup Girl - Paolo Bacigalupi

In the world of Speculative Fiction, there are award winning books and then there are award winning books which sweep all before them and make an impact across genres. Paolo Bacigalupi's 2009 work of art is one of the latter.

Evoking memories of genre masters Philip K. Dick and William Gibson, The Windup Girl creates a vivid and hauntingly plausible future against which a compellingly original tale is told.  A recipient of the 2009 Nebula Award and the 2010 Hugo Award (an honour it shared with China Mieville's The City and the City), Bacigalupi's novel also cracked TIME Magazine's top 10 works of fiction for 2009.

The Windup Girl  is set in the 23rd Century. In a world devoid of fossil fuels and largely submerged beneath rising ocean levels due to the effects of Global Warming, bio-engineered plagues sweep the globe. In Thailand, severe government regulations keep the nation separated from the rest of the world in an attempt to bypass the need to rely on calorie companies and their genehacked produce. The government employs brutally effective measures to protect the nation's food supplies from the dangers of mutated pests and diseases like blister rust and cibiscosis.

Against this startling and lucid backdrop, Bacigalupi introduces a cast of well-realised characters, including calorie company rep Anderson Lake, the windup girl Emiko (a bio-engineered humanoid organism), and disgraced military captain Jaidee Rojjanasukchai.

Throughout The Windup Girl, Bacigalupi uses an impressive combination of tight prose and well-paced action to tell a story of conspiracy, political corruption and global devastation which somehow manages to remain achingly human. Politically mature, and philosophically complex, The Windup Girl is the perfect mating of story and character.  In the words of Lev Grossman, it's ridiculous how good this book is.

Give it a go.

My score - 9.5/10

The Gone-Away World - Nick Harkaway

Books that genuinely surprise are rare these days.  Let's face it, we've seen just about every story, every trope and every plot device there is at this point.  The weight of all that's come before makes a surprising effort all the more difficult to come by.

Perhaps then, the only way to surprise these days is to write something that's absolutely bat-shit crazy.  Off the wall.

Allow me to introduce The Gone-Away World, the début novel from English author Nick Harkaway and one of the most surprising works of speculative fiction in recent times.

It's the tale of a world suffering from the devastation of the Go-Away War.  Where particles of matter left over from the war float around in storms which cause apparitions, hallucinations and the sub-creation of new and supposedly soulless people.  There's conspiracy.  There's adventure.  There are pirates and ninja-mimes.  There's a troupe of ex-special forces soldiers turned truckers known as the Haulage & HazMat Emergency Civil Freebooting Company of Exmoor County.  And trust me when I say, it's crazy.  It's off the rails, plain old nuts.

Funny, enthralling, and above all surprising, Harkaway's début effort is the sort of work which makes writer's jealous.  His obvious intelligence and mastery of humour, political savvy and philosophy shine through.  His use of language is entertaining, if at times convoluted.

If you can handle all that, then I dare you to read this book.  Invest the time and you'll be engaged, thrilled and delighted.  Sometimes all at once.  And just when you think you've nailed it down, this slippery, ambitious marvel of a book will surprise you again.

To be perfectly honest with you, my main concern with the novel is that Harkaway may have used up all of his creativity and his daringly silly ideas at once.  But that, after all, is not this book's problem.  It's also one I'll find the answer to when I dive into his sophomore effort, Angelmaker. Which I absolutely will.  With The Gone-Away World he earned it.

My score - 9/10

Shogun - James Clavell

Let me warn you right now, I have nothing bad to say about this book.

My opinion about James Clavell's Shogun has always been that it will go down as a classic piece of literature.  That it should be spoken about in the same breath as The Count of Monte Cristo, Moby Dick and The Hunchback of Notre Dame.  It's that grand.  It's exactly that compelling.  And for a fat novel running at around 1,200 pages, it's exhilarating in it's pacing and sense of adventure.

Set in feudal Japan, Clavell's masterpiece tells the story of English seaman John Blackthorne, Pilot-Major of the Dutch trader-warship Erasmus.  Far from home in uncharted waters, the Erasmus  is the last surviving ship in its fleet when it is driven by a furious storm onto the shores of Japan.  At a distinct cultural disadvantage, Blackthorne is soon caught up in the political machinations of the society and the rise of the daimyo Toronaga to the Japanese Shogunate.

Displaying a deft touch, Clavell's storytelling is flawless.  With an incredibly well realised cast of characters, Shogun weaves a compelling tale of ambition, of discovery, of love and adventure.  Charting Blackthorne's rise from foreigner to trusted advisor and political trading chip, the narrative arc is as impressive as they come, told as it is against a backdrop of religious tension, political ambition and the threat of civil war.

Shogun is one of the more ambitious works of fiction you'll find.  The novel misses nothing, touching on religious tensions, the ramifications for trade and culture of East meets West, and the dense social and political hierarchy of feudal Japan. None of it is over-explained, but it's existence is felt, creating a rich and compelling tapestry for the story, bringing an authenticity that is often missing from historical fictions.  But however high it reaches, Shogun never once falls short.

Above all, Clavell's tale is one that I consider a seminal piece of work, though in an interesting way.  While not necessarily the influence on political and historical fiction that it might have been, Shogun is however a major influence in the world of speculative fiction, particularly epic fantasy.

My score (predictably) - 10/10