The Year of Our War
July 10th 2006 11:13
The Year of Our War
Okay, your usual fair-dinkum fantasy fan probably already knows this, but when you pick up a fantasy book by a new author and read the back it's most likely to say something along the lines of "a fantasy world of such startling and original detail has seldom been realised since the likes of J.R.R. Tolkein" or "the best fantasy debut since Robin Hobb" or "the author creates a world on par with Tolkein's 'Lord of the Rings'", etc, etc. It's all a load of arse of course, the publishers will put anything on the back of a book to help sell it... fantasy books with quotes comparing them to Tolkein are a dime a dozen.
Obviously I didn't always realise this.
Obviously I wouldn't have read this book if I had known that these quotes weren't unusual.
Steph Swainston's 'The Year of Our War' is a very mediocre beginning to what I assume to be some sort of trilogy or series (I know there is at least one follow-up book, dunno if the publishers felt obliged to take it any further than that). Basically, there are three fairly boring humanoid races who co-exist in your typical fantasy realm... one are just normal people, one are people with wings (but they can't fly - oooh how interesting!) and one are a barbaric mountain people. All are ruled over by an Emperor who controls a circle of fifty immortals (appointed by him). This realm is at war with big beetle-like creatures known simply as the Insects, who are spreading across the land and transforming everything into a wasplike-papery substance. The hero of our novel is Jant, a half-breed drug-addicted dude who is pretty much the only person in the whole realm who can fly. The drug he takes allows him to travel into a weird dream-like realm inhabited by strange creatures.
It's all a lot duller than it sounds. Jant is obviously meant to be a compelling anti-hero type but the idea isn't really taken far enough, it's all very pedestrian and cliched fantasy stuff. Not much happens for most of the book. The Insects are a cool and interesting addition to the fantasy genre (and basically the only motivating force for me to continue reading) but not much is really done with them. The plot is poorly-structured, there are too many slow segments where nothing new is given to us. The dream-like realm that Jan accesses by using his drug is poorly-developed and I found the whole idea really annoying. The book ends on a cliffhanger of sorts, it leaves everything open and basically made me want to throw it into the bin when I'd finished. It goes nowhere. Don't read it.
So now I know not to be taken in by those Tolkein quotes on the backs of books... there was all this garbage on the back of this one saying what a breath of fresh air Swainston was to the genre and how the fantasy realm in this book was something new and exciting but it was all boring and too much of the same old hack-written crap. I'm mortified than a second book was released.
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