Book Review | The Guns of Ivrea by Clifford Beal

Acquel Galenus, former thief and now monk of no particular skill, indifferent scribe and even worse chorister, uncovers a terrible secret under the Great Temple at Livorna that could shiver the one faith to its core. A secret that could get him killed. A secret that could enable an older, more sinister form of worship to be reborn...

Pirate princeling Nicolo Danamis, mercenary to the King and captain of the largest fleet in the island kingdom of Valdur, has made one deal too many, and enemies are now closing in to destroy him.

And Citala, fair-haired and grey-skinned, the daughter of the chieftain of the Merfolk who inhabit the waters of Valdur, finds herself implacably drawn to the affairs of men. She puts events in motion that will end her people's years of isolation but that could imperil their very existence...

All their fates will intertwine as they journey through duchies and free cities riven by political intrigue, religious fervour, and ancient hatreds. Alliances are being forged anew and after decades of wary peace, war is on the wind once again...

***

With Gideon's Angel and The Raven's Banquet, Clifford Beal handily established himself as an author of fast-paced historical fiction with a generous splash of the supernatural, but in the first of his Tales of Valdur, he goes full-on fantasy with a book best described as Black Sails meets Peter V. Brett's Demon Cycle series.

Instead of the seventeenth-century England of the cracking Cromwell novels, The Guns of Ivrea takes place in a secondary world reminiscent of the Mediterranean where piracy is rife and unrest is on the rise:

To be sure, Valdur was not a happy kingdom. Five fractious duchies, three free cities, and a royal enclave not much bigger than a market town made the prospects for prosperity and concordia rather slim. Nor did it help that the king of Valdur was a distracted, vain, and rather stupid man, content to let the dukes and high stewards of the land conspire and scheme. 

But at least he has me, thought Captain Danamis. (p.19)

Captain Danamis—Nico to you and me—is the commander of "a sizeable fleet which had come into his hands as a result of inheritance, brashness bordering on insolence, and a smidgen of blind luck. And this fleet, a collection of great carracks, caravels, and cogs, was now the largest in Valdur." (p.19) This is due to Nico's negotiations with the merfolk, who've taken to trading the treasure they find on the ocean floor for a packages of a plant with intoxicating qualities that can only be had on land. 

Self-interested idiot that he is, Nico could care less what the merfolk do with the myrra, so long as the money keeps coming... but our fool has forgotten something obvious: that the bigger you are, the farther you have to fall. He's about to be reminded. See, some of the pirates under Nico's leadership have been feeling increasingly uneasy about their dependence on the people of the sea, not least because they follow the One Faith, which insists that the mer are the enemies of men.

Guest Post | Clifford Beal on Fact vs. Fiction in the Curriculum

Gideon's Angel was fantastic fun. But if you've read the preamble to my review, you'll see that I got rather distracted by the idea of real history, and how we teach it.

As an English tutor when I'm not reviewing books, a large part of my day job involves finding ways to get the kids I work with interested in reading and writing, and that's rarely as easy as it seems. Few can see past the stress and the pressure of exams, because that's what the curriculum is all about: a grade at the end of the day. On the one hand, I have to help them get a good one; on the other, it'd be easier if a few more of them gave a flying fuck about the subject.

That said, I sympathise. When I was in their position, more years ago now that I'm completely comfortable admitting, I was never particularly interested in history. I got my grades, but I didn't much care about the subject one way or the other.

That probably had a lot to do with my dreary teacher, because in recent years, I've realised I could have been. Should have been, even. History can be absolutely fascinating—as demonstrated by Gideon's Angel—but only when taught properly. And as Clifford Beal argues in the guest post I'm proud to post below, where there's a will, there's a way.

***

I’ll be truthful. I started my writing profession grounded purely in stone-cold reality. Defence journalism, articles for history magazines, and finally, a book about a little-known Anglo-American pirate named John Quelch who lived in the early 18th century and whose case set legal precedent.

It was that sense of adventure, of the mysteries of what had gone before, that drew me into switching over to write historical fiction and fantasy. I have always read historical fiction. And for me, history was always very much alive, all around us, and always a source of discovery.

As a child, I remember a near endless series of fiction books called Childhoods of Famous Americans, published by the now defunct Bobbs-Merrill company but now back in print. I would devour probably one a week. They were written from the 1930s onwards and when I discovered them in the sixties, they were just as exciting.

These books were instrumental in taking larger-than-life historical figures, somewhat dull as taught in the classroom, and making their experiences relevant to me, as a kid. So too did television often trigger a trip to the library. Watch  Henry Fonda barking orders in the Battle of the Bulge on TV? Check. Then I’d go and read the book. It was axiomatic for me then and probably for a lot of people my age.

I’m not so sure that’s the case any more. It appears today kids are taught “modules” in history where they dive deep into ancient Egypt one term and then WWII the next. They know nothing in between and end up with an unconnected series of historical waypoints that have no relevance or meaning. [All too true!—Ed.] Give me chronological teaching any day.

So here’s an idea: get kids into learning history again by teaching it as a subject that tells “how we got to where we are” and supplement it with narrative, both real and fictitious. If historical fiction can excite young people to take more interest in the actual events of the past—and their impact on the world today—then overall education will benefit and we might actually get a few more historians (and novelists) to enjoy reading in the future.

But what does this all have to do with historical fantasy or alternate history genre fiction? OK, cause and effect gets a bit weaker here I admit, but even speculative fiction can engender serious thought about who we are. And what might have been. Maybe if a kid reads H.G. Wells he’ll develop an interest in the Victorian age—or planetary science. For me, I’m chuffed to bits that I can combine my two great pleasures that are history and fantasy, have fun creating it, and give others the escapist pleasure in reading it.

***

Many thanks for that, Clifford!

So, folks... thoughts? What say you to a bit of fiction with your fact?

Book Review | Gideon's Angel by Clifford Beal

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1653: The long and bloody English Civil War is at an end. King Charles is dead and Oliver Cromwell rules the land. Richard Treadwell, Royalist, exile, and now soldier for the King of France, burns for revenge on those who deprived him of his family and fortune. He returns to England in secret to assassinate Cromwell.

But his is not the only plot in motion. A secret army run by a deluded Puritan is bent on the same quest, guided by the Devil's hand. When demonic entities are summoned, Treadwell finds his fortunes reversed; he must save Cromwell, or consign England to Hell...

But first he has to contend with a wife he left in Devon who believes she's a widow, a furious Paris mistress who has trailed him to England, and a young musketeer named d'Artagnan, sent to drag him back to France. It's a dangerous new Republic for an old cavalier coming home.

***

I've never been particularly interested in alternate history, though I grant that there's a lot to be said of the impetus animating most such stories, which is to say... what if?

For instance: what if I'd enjoyed actual history at high school? I wonder how very different my life might have been, had my teacher only been a better storyteller. Lamentably, he was more interested in hard facts than fanciful narratives, so whilst he droned on about names and dates, asserting the dominance of numbers over wonders, my attention, inevitably, went elsewhere. Instead, I stared into space, imagining other sorts of stories entirely.

But what if things had been different? Would I have the passion for fantasy that has, in some small way, made me who I am today? If there's anything to that scenario—and I think there is—I may have something to thank my history teacher for after all... because otherwise, I probably wouldn't have read Gideon's Angel, and I'm wholeheartedly glad I did.

Simply put, I had more fun with Clifford Beal's book than I've had with any other in some months.

In the aftermath of a long Civil War—a time of political upheaval, indeed outright evil—ye olde England is a deprived and oftentimes depraved place. Nevertheless, Richard Treadwell, a disgraced Cavalier, is less than pleased to be banished to France, where he has little other choice than to accept employment as an agent for a crafty Cardinal called Mazarin.

Eight years later, Treadwell is relatively well established in King Louis' country. He's met Marguerite, the light of his life, and made a few new acquaintances as well. But our man is ever aware of his increasing age, and even now home is hardly where the heart is, so after watching his dear friend Andreas Falkenhayn rot to death in a filthy French bed, Treadwell resolves to return to England, come hell or high water.

His homecoming, however, is not the happiest:

"The weather held fair the whole of my journey, but the sights that met my eyes were bittersweet ones. The lean-to sheds of tapped-out tin mines sat abandoned to fortune: no fires burned, no kilns smoked. And never had I seen so many sturdy beggars in Plympton town. They were a bold lot, following me with wary and covetous eyes. The war had laid the whole place low." (p.62)

In truth, the rogue has returned to England simply to die decently, but complications arise immediately after his arrival. Having said goodbye to the family he had abandoned, Treadwell murders a man by accident, becomes embroiled in deep-seated political and religious intrigue, and uncovers, in short order, a treasonous scheme against Old Ironsides himself, Oliver Cromwell: the very man he had planned to assassinate, or martyr himself trying.

When a rabid black beast summoned from some dark place begins to dog him from town to town, Treadwell's plot goes to pot once and for all. He realises, then, that for England to survive—for human good to prevail over otherworldly evil—he'll have to protect, of all people, the Lord Protector.

This reversal marks a telling turning point in Gideon's Angel: one which demonstrates the two genres the author cleverly brings together over the course of his fantastic, bombastic debut. Beforehand, it has been a fairly straight historical novel, made engaging by moments of character-based drama and increasingly desperate derring-do; afterwards, however, it's dark fantasy through and through, and the aforementioned hellhound is just the first such illustration of the awful horror of Treadwell is destined to come up against.

Fortunately for the fiction, which rattles along so relentlessly that a period of reflection would have interrupted the incredible sense of momentum Beal builds, our narrator has some small experience of the arcane arts. He has "seen things with [his] own eyes in many dark places. Things that would turn your bowels to water in an instant and set your bones to ice." (p.103) Treadwell simply takes these hideous sights in his stride. That's just the sort of anti-hero he is—intractable, yet adaptable. With, as established, a little bit of a death wish.

To wit, though Treadwell is a powerful guiding force for Gideon's Angel to follow, he's harder to invest in as a protagonist—another potential pitfall the author appears aware of, judging by Treadwell's man Billy Chard. He begins a common criminal, but by the end of the affair he's a markedly more relatable character than his master. Billy Chard may be a mere sidekick, but he's funny, frank, and affected by the things he sees—as, I warrant, are we. Here, then, is the reader's route through the non-stop narrative which is Beal's greatest feat.

By smartly sidestepping this issue, and pre-emptively addressing a number of other mistakes in the making—the dialogue is not overbearingly archaic, whilst women are relatively well represented, mostly by Marguerite—Clifford Beal comes out of Gideon's Angel unscathed in a way few new authors do. Clearly, he's an immensely capable creator, and indubitably, this is an assured debut, with a fascinating cast, an authentic setting in terms of place and time too, and a story that practically oozes exuberance.

I dare say I'd have enjoyed Gideon's Angel if it had been a wholly historical novel—a surprising realisation for me—or equally, dark fantasy fiction from the first, but the sheer panache with which Clifford Beal brings together the past and the supernatural results in a headlong alt-history hybrid more potent than either aspect of the entire would be without the other.

Gideon's Angel might seem slight, and in certain respects, I admit it is—on the other hand, it's intensely pleasurable, and so perfectly, purposefully paced that you'll hardly have time to mind, should you be so inclined.

***

Gideon's Angel

by Clifford Beal

UK Publication: February 2013, Solaris
UK Publication: March 2013, Solaris

Buy this book from

Amazon.co.uk / Amazon.com

IndieBound / The Book Depository

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