Book Review | Five Stories High ed. by Jonathan Oliver

Irongrove Lodge—a building with history; the very bricks and grounds imbued with the stories of those who have walked these corridors, lived in these rooms. These are the tales of an extraordinary house, a place that straddles our world and whatever lies beyond; a place that some are desperate to discover, and others to flee. At one time an asylum, at another a care home, sometimes simply a home.

The residents of Irongrove Lodge will learn that this house will change them, that the stories told here never go away. Of all who enter, only some will leave.

Multi-award-winning editor Jonathan Oliver has brought together five extraordinary writers to open the doors, revealing ghosts both past and present in a collection as intriguing as it is terrifying. Along with a linking narrative, this collection features five novellas by Nina Allan, Tade Thompson, K. J. Parker, Robert Shearman and Sarah Lotz.

***

The latest in a lengthening line of excellent collections edited by Jonathan Oliver, Five Stories High finds several of speculative fiction's best and brightest riffing on the same literary instrument: the haunted house. Not just any old haunted house, either, but one—Irongrove Lodge—shared by every player:

The house, like its surroundings, seemed quietly respectable, the largest and most prominent among a number of Georgian properties in the vicinity, flanked on one side by a ruddy-faced Victorian terrace, on the other by a 1930s mansion block built from the familiar yellow-grey London stock. [...] I could not rid myself of the idea that the house had, in some peculiar way, itself created the ramshackle and disparate landscape that now surrounded it, drawn the cloak of modern London securely about itself, to conceal its true purpose.

The particulars of its true purpose differ dramatically depending on which of the five authors involved in Five Stories High you ask, but although Nina Allan, K. J. Parker, Tade Thompson, Robert Shearman and Sarah Lotz diverge on the details, all agree that Irongrove Lodge is a home most hellish.

The aforementioned anthology puts its best foot forward by way of Nina Allan's 'Maggots,' the longest of the five works of fiction featured, and the least traditional. Herein, the writer of The Race follows a boy who becomes convinced that one of his relatives has been replaced:

On the 23rd October 1992, my aunt, Claire Bounsell, nee Wilton, briefly went missing in York during a weekend anniversary trip with her husband David. She reappeared again just minutes later, apparently unharmed. My aunt and uncle came home to Knutsford and went on with their lives. The incident has been mainly forgotten, but the person living as Claire Bounsell is not my aunt. She looks like my aunt, she speaks like my aunt. She has my aunt's memories and to any outside observer it would be impossible to tell the difference between my aunt and her replacement. No one, including her husband, family and twin children, appears to have noticed that anything is wrong. And yet there is no doubt in my mind that my aunt has been replaced by an impostor.

Whether Willy's conviction that Claire isn't herself—that she is, in fact, no more than a maggot—is symptomatic of a sickness of sorts or not, it dogs our narrator for ages. It ruins his first real relationship; it makes a decade of Christmases difficult; and going forward, it's foundation of a fascination that hounds him from the family home into the workplace and leads him, at the last, to Irongrove Lodge, where he'll have answers, if he wants them—albeit at an awful cost.

Sensitive yet unsettling, Allan's superlative story of simulation, of someone pretending to be someone else, is seamlessly succeeded by K. J. Parker's 'Priest Hole,' in which a shapeshifter living in Irongrove Lodge does whatever he can to get by following the loss of the lady he loved.

Book Review | The Devil You Know by K. J. Parker

The greatest philosopher of all time is offering to sell his soul to the Devil. All he wants is twenty more years to complete his life’s work. After that, he really doesn’t care.

But the assistant demon assigned to the case has his suspicions, because the philosopher is Saloninus—the greatest philosopher, yes, but also the greatest liar, trickster and cheat the world has yet known; the sort of man even the Father of Lies can’t trust.

He’s almost certainly up to something; but what?

***

If there's one thing you can say with certainty about the work of K. J. Parker, it's that there's always more to it than meets the eye, so the fact that the personage of K. J. Parker hid a similar mystery made more than a modicum of sense. Who was he really? What might his use of a pseudonym mean? Was he even a he?

For a decade these questions played a part in damn near every discussion of the aforementioned author, and factored, furthermore, into the mystique surrounding everything he'd written in addition. Then, late last April, the big secret was revealed: K. J. Parker was indeed a he, and his alter ego was Tom Holt. Of course.

In the wake of the stories surrounding the announcement, I found myself wondering whether we might not have lost some of the patented K. J. Parker magic in the course of getting to know the unknown. Well, if The Devil You Know is anything to go on, the answer to that question is a resounding no.

Book Review | The Good, the Bad and the Smug by Tom Holt

New Evil.

Same as the Old Evil, but with better PR.

Mordak isn't bad, as far as goblin kings go, but when someone, or something, starts pumping gold into the human kingdoms it puts his rule into serious jeopardy. Suddenly he's locked in an arms race with a species whose arms he once considered merely part of a calorie-controlled diet.

Helped by an elf with a background in journalism and a masters degree in being really pleased with herself, Mordak sets out to discover what on earth (if indeed, that's where he is) is going on. He knows that the truth is out there. If only he could remember where he put it.

***

Evil just isn't what it was.

Used to be, you could slaughter a dwarf and gnaw his gnarly bones all the way home without attracting any undesirable attention. Now? Not so much. It's a new world, you know? And it might just be that the new world needs a new breed of evil.

In The Good, the Bad and the Smug, Tom Holt—aka K. J. Parker—proposes exactly that as the premise of a satirical and sublimely self-aware fairytale that brings together the wit and the wickedness of the author's alter ego with the wordplay and the whimsy which have made the YouSpace series such a sweet treat so far.

Readers, meet Mordak: King of the Goblins, and winner of a special award at this year's Academy of Darkness do. The prize is just the icing on the (unfortunately metaphorical) cake; he's been turning a whole lot of heads of late. Why? Well:

It wasn't just Mordak's arbitrary and bewildering social reforms—universal free healthcare at rusty spike of delivery, for crying out loud—though those were intriguing enough to baffle even the shrewdest observers, frantically speculating about the twisted motives that underlay such a bizarre agenda. It was the goblin himself who'd caught the public imagination. Mordak had it; the indefinable blend of glamour, prestige, menace and charm that go to make a genuinely world-class villain. (p.3)

It isn't all he has to offer either, for Mordak is also the face of New Evil: a "caring and compassionate" (p.281) agenda he's in the middle of forcing down folks' throats when his eternal enemies—is there anything worse than people, really?—suddenly find themselves filthy rich. So filthy rich, in fact, that they could cause a proper problem for the goblins.

This is an obstacle Mordak simply must overcome if he's to have a chance of realising his reforms. To wit, together with Efluviel, an elf who'd do almost anything to get her job as a journalist back—a job Mordak can give her as easily as he took it away in the first place—the King strikes out on an unexpected journey in order to expose the source of all the goddamn gold the humans have gotten their grubby paws on.

Heads Up! | The Three of The Two of Swords

K. J. Parker is to my mind one of the best writers writing right now, so I was all sorts of excited when Subterranean Press announced Savages, the author's first novel proper since Sharps three long years ago. I still am; I dare say I'm delighted. But—be still my beating heart—Orbit has gone and beaten Savages to market with a serial novel project called The Two of Swords.

"Why are we fighting this war? Because evil must be resisted, and sooner or later there comes a time when men of principle have to make a stand. Because war is good for business and it's better to die on our feet than live on our knees. Because they started it. But at this stage in the proceedings," he added, with a slightly lop-sided grin, "mostly from force of habit." 

A soldier with a gift for archery. A woman who kills without care. Two brothers, both unbeatable generals, now fighting for opposing armies. No-one in the vast and once glorious United Empire remains untouched by the rift between East and West, and the war has been fought for as long as anyone can remember. Some still survive who know how it was started, but no-one knows how it will end.

Initially, The Two of Swords will only be available as eight ebook "episodes" released between now—as in RIGHT NOW, readers—and September, but collected print and digital editions are of course on the cards for some undisclosed date after the fact.

To tell the truth, I'd really rather have the whole novel in hand before I begin... but hey, you won't catch me waiting for new K. J. Parker if I can help it. And I can! And at 99 pence a pop, or less than a dollar across the pond—the perfect impulse purchase price—I've already bought a copy of the first installment of The Two of Swords, and I plan to crack open my Kindle just as soon as I've put the finishing touches to this post.

P. S. Done... and done! :)

Coming Attractions | Savages by K. J. Parker

Good news, everyone: fully three years since Sharps, Savages—the long-awaited new novel by K. J. Parker—is actually happening!

A tour through this afternoon's inbox brought the first blurb:

An unnamed man wakes to find himself facing the loss of everything that matters most to him. Against all odds, he escapes with his life and heads out into the turbulence of the wider world, recreating himself, step by step, as he goes along. 

That wider world is dominated by an empire that has existed for decades in a state of near perpetual war. A host of colorful characters will help to shape the destiny of the empire, and its constantly shifting array of allies and adversaries; among them, a master military strategist, a former pacifist who inherits his father's moribund arms business, a beautiful forger and a very lucky counterfeiter. Each of them, together with corrupt bureaucrats and the nomadic 'savages' of the title, plays a part in a gradually unfolding drama of conflict and conquest played for the highest of stakes. 

A story of war, politics, intrigue, deception, and survival, Savages is a hugely ambitious, convincingly detailed novel that is impossible to set aside. Filled with schemes, counter-schemes, sudden reversals of fortune, and brilliantly described accounts of complex military encounters, it is, by any measure, an extraordinary entertainment, the work of a writer whose ambition, range, and sheer narrative power have never been more thoroughly on display.

And if that weren't enough to whet your appetite, feast your eyes on the cover art by Bram Sels:

The limited edition of Savages is coming from Subterranean Press in the States this summer. A little birdie tells me a more affordable edition will be released in the UK in the same timeframe. That's this July, guys.

Time to get excited, right?

Short Story Corner | Let Maps To Others by K. J. Parker

A couple of weeks ago I blogged about the lead story in the Summer 2012 issue of Subterranean Press Magazine. "To Be Read Upon Your Waking" was a real treat, and it's great to see Robert Jackson Bennett on the receiving end of such recognition, but for my money - not, I should stress, that I spent any - "Let Maps To Others" by K. J. Parker is a hair's breadth better than Bennett's very fine fairytale.

It begins, as ever with the work of this wildly witty writer, brilliantly:

There is such a place. And I have been there.

They all say that, don’t they? They say; I met someone once who spent five years there, disguised as a holy man. Or; the village headman told me his people go there all the time, to trade timber and flour for spices. Or; the priest showed me things that had come from there—a statuette, a small, curiously-fashioned box, a pair of shoes, a book I couldn’t read. Or; from the top of the mountain we looked out across the valley and there it was, on the other side of the river, you could just make out the sun glinting off the spires of the temples. Or; I was taken there, I saw the Great Gate and the Forbidden Palace, I sat and drank goat-butter tea with the Grand Master, who was seven feet tall and had his eyes, nose and mouth set in the middle of his chest.

You hear them, read them. The first, second, third time, you believe. The fourth time, you want to believe. The fifth time, you notice a disturbing pattern beginning to emerge—how they were always so close they could hear the voices of the children and smell the woodsmoke, but for this reason or that reason they couldn’t go the last two hundred yards and had to turn back (but it was there, it is there, it’s real, it really exists). The sixth time breaks your heart. By the seventh time, you’re a scholar, investigating a myth.

I am a scholar. I have spent my entire life investigating what I now firmly believe to be a myth. But there is such a place. And I have been there.

This sumptuously circular excerpt is evidence enough, I think, of why I believe K. J. Parker to be amongst genre fiction's foremost talents.

And at long last, it appears I'm no longer alone (or as near as dammit) in that assertion, because of late the blogosphere has been abuzz with talk of Parker's new novel, Sharps. Which I need not add makes me very happy - this breakthrough has been an age in the making - alas, my happiness has been blunted somewhat by the sad fact that I'm going to have to stop referring to the rising pseudonymous star as fantasy's most under-appreciated author.

But hey, all's well that ends well!

In any event, like the mind behind Mr. Shivers' discomfiting contribution to the latest edition of Subterranean Press Magazine, "Let Maps To Others" is also on the long side, at 25,000 words — and the stories are thematically similar to boot.

Both, in a sense, are about discovery; both revolve around the systematic investigation of the unknown, indeed the unknowable. In "To Be Read Upon Your Waking," Bennett's protagonist becomes obsessed by a ruin in the woods which ultimately opens a door into time. Meanwhile, in "Let Maps To Others," Parker's single-minded scholar has spent his entire adult life extrapolating a map of the legendary island of Essecuivo from the only surviving sources. In this pursuit, he is bitterly at odds with another addict.

I should explain about Carchedonius. He’s a fine scholar. He’s painstaking, insightful, clear-headed, occasionally brilliant, always worth listening to. His work on the manuscript tradition of Thraso’s Dialogues was what started me on the road to my finest hour, the deciphering of the Sunao Codex. Between us, we know everything there is to know about Aeneas, and Essecuivo. All in all, it’s a shame we hate each other the way we do.

But that can’t be helped, any more than you can get an injunction to stop the winter. The stupid thing is, neither of us can account for it. I’ve never done him any real harm, though not for want of trying, and all his wild schemes to encompass my downfall have failed or backfired on him. Apparently he has some kind of grudge based on some relative of his losing a lot of money when the Company went under. If that’s really the case, he must’ve nursed it like a shepherd’s wife with an orphan lamb. I think I hate him so much because he hates me, though I’m not sure I didn’t hate him first. In any case, it’s been going on since we were both seventeen-year-old freshmen. I guess it’s an interest for both of us; cheaper than collecting pre-Mannerist miniatures, slightly more exciting than watching the donkey-cart races.

So, when Carchedonius finds proof that his rival's assertions were correct, thus definitively disproving his own competing theory, he does what any arch-enemy would: he destroys the evidence, but only after showing it to our man, who - thus spurned - takes his nemesis' deception to the next level, forging a version of the very document that Carchedonius can only disprove by confessing to his own terrible transgression.

This lie, then, this rivalry, becomes the cornerstone of a long and torturous trip to Essecuivo which of course spirals out of hand, costing the lives of many hundred men. And where, one wonders, lays the blame?

"Let Maps To Others" is a sly, sinuous narrative with - if I'm not mistaken - loose ties to The Company, K. J. Parker's first standalone fantasy, and at 25,000 words, it strikes an ideal balance between the prolonged obfuscation that can come to frustrate in Parker's long-form fiction and the necessarily abbreviated scope of his or her short stories.

(I'm currently inclined towards the latter answer, incidentally.)

It's characteristically twisty and oh so deliciously tricky... yet somehow, at the same time, fairly straightforward. Parker's talent for condensing complex narratives - or else confusing simple ones in such a way as to make them seem more involved than they are - is on superb form in "Let Maps To Others," and I'd recommend it to all and sundry, whatever their exposure to K. J. Parker in the past.

I don't know if "Let Maps To Others" reaches quite the same heights as the lately acclaimed "A Small Price To Pay For Birdsong" - which you may read more about here - but Parker's new novella is a stunner, still. It's that rare story that leaves you feeling smarter for having read it, and it's currently available online for the princely sum of nothing.

Well, what are you waiting for? :)

Guest Post | Mihai of Dark Wolf's Fantasy Reviews Blue and Gold by K. J. Parker

In Top of the Scots last year, I concluded that no other book published in 2011 surprised or excited or delighted me as much as The Hammer did -- that is to say, the latest novel from the genderless personage that is K. J. Parker.

It's been a long wait for Sharps already, and I dare say it ain't over yet. But the pain of my anticipation is not so pointed as it was, because when I approached the veteran blogger behind Dark Wolf's Fantasy Reviews about a potential guest post, he suggested a review of Blue and Gold, a novella by none other.

So please, everyone: give Mihai a warm welcome to the hallowed halls of The Speculative Scotsman! 

***

Buy this book from:

Amazon.co.uk / Amazon.com

IndieBound / The Book Depository

"'Well, let me see,' I said, as the innkeeper poured me a beer. 'In the morning I discovered the secret of changing base metal into gold. In the afternoon, I murdered my wife.'

For a man as remarkable as the philosopher Saloninus, just another day.

"Of course, we only have his word for it, and Saloninus has been known to be creative with the truth. Little white lies are inevitable expedients when you’re one jump ahead of the secret police and on the brink of one of the greatest discoveries in the history of alchemy.

"But why would a scientist with the world’s most generous, forgiving patron be so desperate to run away? And what, if anything, has blue got to do with gold?"

***

If I should name one of the most original and strong voices of modern fantasy fiction I would definitely choose without any hesitation K. J. Parker. The existence of K. J. Parker is shrouded in deep mystery, but the works published so far have been nothing but excellent. Blue and Gold is the second novella released by K. J. Parker after the wonderful Purple and Black.

As is the case with the K. J. Parker’s last works, the world of Blue and Gold is reminiscent of Byzantium or Roman civilization in the republic phase, but with plenty of personal touches for originality. And again K. J. Parker does not hit the reader on the head with excessive and bulky world-building, but unveils the setting with subtlety. The most striking details are the political and economical ones, strong factors that give the world solidity and stability. Even the smaller details in the political and economical cogs that spin the world of Blue and Gold are not left to chance, and carefully treated.

The story is told through the voice of Saloninus, a brilliant alchemist, found on the run after he is accused of his wife’s murder. Skillful, intelligent and witty, Saloninus is a very charismatic character with quite a story to be told and with a particular history behind him. I cannot place Saloninus among the positive characters of fiction; more appropriate for his definition is the Dungeons & Dragons alignment of chaotic neutral.

Nonetheless, Saloninus is one of the most likeable and memorable characters I encountered in my readings. And the manner in which Saloninus recollects his story is full of humor, quirky but attractive, and with enough charm to keep the reader glued to the tale until it is finished.

As a matter of fact, K. J. Parker’s entire novella is full of humor, sometimes sarcastic, sometimes friendly. It is in fact a step away from the majority of K. J. Parker’s novels: a radiant and entertaining read. Not that the other, darker works are not entertaining, but in a different manner and for different reasons. The plot is not overly complex, but beautifully constructed, with plenty of mystery and suspense to keep the reader guessing, until Blue and Gold is brought to a close... an end that although not surprising, is delightful and amusing.

K. J. Parker is one of the most underrated names in fantasy literature, although the works published so far are evidence enough of the contrary case. If it was necessary, Blue and Gold is another proof that certifies K. J. Parker’s originality and powerful voice. Definitely one of my all-time favorite writers.

***

One of mine as well, Mihai -- as you know!

Many, many thanks to the man of the hour for offering the preceding post to keep you all entertained in my absence. He's genuinely a great guy, and a very fine writer besides. And as I mentioned in my preamble, Mihai blogs over at Dark Wolf's Fantasy Reviews, a blog I'd heartily recommend you folks follow in the unlikely event that you aren't already.

But much as I'd like to sit here and burble a for a little longer, time is short, so let me just say that tomorrow: there will be sound, and very likely fury too. :)

No prizes for guessing who'll be guest posting then! About a fascinating-sounding book, too...

Short Fiction Corner | "A Small Price to Pay for Birdsong" by K. J. Parker

I marked a lot of firsts last year. More, I think, than can be considered entirely par for the course for a guy in his mid-20s, when short of making a baby or finally getting that blasted book published there's nothing much you can see, or do, or achieve, that in one form or another you haven't already. Yet with TSS, and the expectation that I'd have something at least faintly interesting to say to you all each day - and every day - I found myself reading more widely in 2010; giving the time of day to books and authors I'm afraid to say I'd very likely have ignored before.

Perhaps I would have ended up reading K. J. Parker one day anyway... who can say? As was, one fateful day last Summer, I cosied up with The Folding Knife in large part because its cover bore such a striking image, enjoyed its intent and intelligence a great deal - and have I looked back since? Not for a cotton-pickin' second, no.

In fact in January there I read, reviewed and rather adored The Hammer, the latest standalone novel from the pseudonymous sort, and wished upon finishing it I could somehow find the time to read it all over again, or reach back into Parker's extensive back-catalogue for one of the good old oldies of his and/or hers I'm told I've missed. A few bad eggs in a row, reading-wise - it simply wouldn't do to tell you which just yet - only served to underscore that siren song.

So I added The Company to my tower of books To Be Read, trying not to stress overly much about the entirely unreasonable sense of guilt I felt in so doing, and lo and behold, as if specifically to set my half-maddened mind at ease, along came "A Small Price to Pay for Birdsong."

You can read it here - indeed I would urge you to - as part of the stonking Winter edition of Subterranean Magazine, which I count myself quite, quite proud to have subscribed to, way back when it came on paper and cost actual money (especially, I would add, in light of the Atlantic). Also featured in this issue is fiction from genre stalwarts and rising greats such as Larry Niven, Mike Resnick, Jay Lake, Elizabeth Bear, Robert Silverberg, and another of my own favourite authors, the one, the only... Caitlin R. Kiernan.

Come on, now: you know you want to.
And as well you should.

Anyway, what with the circumstances I've explained, "A Small Price for Birdsong" was the first of the short stories I gravitated towards, and what a story, truly. I hadn't read short-form K. J. Parker before - come to that I don't know that he or (sigh) she has even written a great deal - and though I was worried such a smaller-scale narrative as in "A Small Price for Birdsong" might perhaps be unable to match up against the unimaginable cunning and the whacking great emotional impact of Parker's novels proper, it quickly came clear that whatever fears I might have harboured were for naught. This is K. J. Parker on fine form indeed, doing for music what s/he has done in the past for money... and justice; industry... and engineering.


Let me explain.


Our protagonist: a professor of the aural arts, more tolerated for his tenure at a certain academy than admired for his talent - much to his own infinite misery. Our antagonist: an esteemed student of the selfsame professor who seems frustratingly brilliant at everything he sets his sights on. This time, however, Subtilus has set his sights on murder, and when he's caught, and sentenced to death himself, he passes on his final, unfinished symphony to the professor, who must decide whether to sell it as is, or embellish a final few notes and publish it as his own.


Of course the professor's conundrum is rather complicated when Subtilus somehow escapes the noose, and returns to his master bearing an offer which, if agreed, will change the interlocking courses of both their lives.


"A Small Price for Birdsong" is a stunningly good show - a characteristically light yet more often than can be considered occasionally profound exploration of the notion of ownership, of truth as an objective fact shifting and twisting through layer upon layer of perception and subjectivity. As the student surpasses the master, and the master the student, and the weight of the world shifts to balances out the scales, Parker wrings from two typically ambiguous characters deeply at odds with one another a remarkable and natural morality play the equal of any of his or her more expansive narratives... that I've read.


I understand some readers find K. J. Parker's fiction a little cold, a little distant, and though "A Small Price for Birdsong" is perhaps a less judiciously wicked tale than we're used to from this very distinctive storyteller, if you haven't found warmth anywhere in The Folding Knife or The Hammer or The Engineer Trilogy, likely you'll struggle reading this short story too. However, for all those who've yet to experience the insidious delights of K. J. Parker - who might mayhap have wondered whether the novel-length narrative was the best place to test the waters, as it were - there can be no better place to start than here.


###


PS: I see Jared from Pornokitsch quite beat me to the punch as regards recommending "A Small Price to Pay for Birdsong," the cock. (Speaking of which, I'm still waiting!) But certainly as far as this story goes we agree on a great many levels, and I'd urge you to pop on over there to see what he has to say about the fabbiest K. J. Parker freebie ever.


If the pair of us shouting from the blogtops what an incredible short story "A Small Price to Pay for Birdsong" is doesn't move you to read the goshdarned thing, I don't know what will.


Seriously, go on now. It's still free, and it's still superb...

Book Review | The Hammer by K. J. Parker

Buy this book from

Amazon.co.uk / Amazon.com /

IndieBound / The Book Depository

The colony was founded seventy years ago. The plan was originally to mine silver, but there turned out not to be any. Now an uneasy peace exists on the island, between the colonists and the once-noble met'Oc, a family in exile on a remote stronghold for their role in a vaguely remembered civil war. The met'Oc are tolerated, in spite of occasional cattle stealing raids, since they alone possess the weapons considered necessary protection in the event of the island's savages becoming hostile.


Intelligent, resourceful, and determined, Gignomai is the youngest brother in the current generation of met'Oc. He is about to realise exactly what is expected of him; and what it means to defy his family.

***

K. J. Parker: making life difficult for book reviewers since 1998.


As previously discussed here on The Speculative Scotsman, there's a bit of a mystery about Parker. Simply put, we don't whether the author of The Hammer is male or female - as if it'd make a lick of difference one way or the other were the secret finally outed. But for whatever reason, the pseudonymous mystery persists, and so reviewing K. J. Parker feels like walking a rocky road of awkward pronouns. Thus, in the interests of even-handedness, given that I presumed masculinity the last time we spoke of this author, for the purposes of this review we're going to say he's a lady. I mean, uh, she's a... lady.


Good, yes. Right. On with the show!


The third in a sequence of three standalone fantasy novels, after The Company in 2008 and The Folding Knife last year, The Hammer is handily the most impressive of the lot. It begins with a fabulous little fable about family life in the Met'Oc compound, a hilltop stronghold of fallen-from-favour nobles exiled to the fringes of an distant island colony, where life is hard and the rich have no choice but to be as the poor: lowly subsistence farmers eking out an existence from the ground beneath their feet.


The Met'Oc haven't adapted terribly well to the calamitous change in circumstances, so when young Gignomai is tasked with the care of three chickens, he shoulders his seven years of age to take his responsibility seriously. A week of feeding and mucking on, the chickens are killed; someone or something has gotten into the run and slaughtered the things whole. No matter, Gig's brothers Luso and Stheno say to the boy... it wasn't your fault. (p.2) Thus they entrust a further three chickens to him.


A further three chickens are found dead in their coop the next day. Though in principle relieved of his ill-fated responsibilities, Gignomai takes it upon himself to discover exactly what's been doing the devouring; stays up late one night to see a wolf, quite likely "the last surviving wolf on the Tabletop, or maybe in the whole colony," (p.3) killing the things. He's afraid no-one would believe him if he tells the truth, yet if he does nothing - the selfsame nothing his family will surely continue to do, as is their way - the chickens, of which the Met'Oc's already-sparse supply is dwindling, will keep getting killed.


So it's down to him. If he can't cry wolf, his only choice is to kill wolf. Canny from the first, Gig lays a trap for the creature, barricades it inside the woodshed, and burns the beast into the great goodnight... chalking up "half the winter's supply of seasoned timber [...] and twelve dozen good fence posts" (pp.5-6) not to speak of the remaining chickens as collateral damage. He regrets his short-sightedness, but reasons that at least the job's done; no-one else was going to do it, and it needed doing. Only "Next time, he decided, I'll make sure I think things through." (p.7)


Fourteen years later, Gignomai gets his chance. He escapes the Tabletop, begins work on a factory which stands to revolutionise the colony, and in so doing sets in motion a grand scheme decades in the making and years in the undertaking. Which he describes thusly:

"This great and noble work you have undertaken---"

"It's not like that," Gignomai said quietly. "It's more sort of personal. An indulgence, really."

The old man looked at him, head slightly one one side. "But for the good of the people, surely."

"I want justice," Gignomai said sharply. It wasn't what he had been planning to say. "Doesn't always do anybody any good," he said. "But it's what I want." (p.228)

Justice seems a theme Parker could wring an entire career in fantasy fiction from. It was what Basso gave, and in turn got, so memorably in The Folding Knife, and in The Hammer it is Gignomai Met'Oc's absolute ideal, quite against good reason. Justice was what Gig served upon the poor wolf in the prologue - a wolf very likely hobbled by his own family's hunters and surviving, until it didn't, the only way it could: by scavenging, just as the Met'Oc have had to since their banishment - and justice is what he means now to serve upon another party who've somehow offended his sensibilities.


He's a monster, is Gig. You won't realise just how till the final curtain call, and I'll be damned if I ruin the last bitter twist of the knife, but believe you me. That said, you'll love him, hate him, and love to hate him... same as I did. He's a fantastic character: sly and single-minded, self-righteous, sparking with wit and cunning and eternally tormented by the vague spectre of some evil around which the book's three parts - variously entitled Seven Years Before, The Year When and Seven Years After - revolve. Add to that, Gig's as unreliable a narrator as they come: "His voice was so pleasant, so sensible and reassuring - you could trust that voice, you could be sure that anything it said was obviously the right thing," (p.260) and indeed, in the early-going, Parker's disarmingly unfussy narrative doesn't leave room for us to question the littlest Met'Oc's motives. Everything he does seems to be the right thing.


Chapter by chapter, however, a sense of unease builds. Parker is at pains to stress that what good Gig does is in service - always in service - of some other purpose. At a certain point even his closest friend and confidante realises he has "a special way of lying, which involved mostly telling the truth." (p.280) In short order you get to wondering what in the world Gig is up to, and it's a fine line to traverse - the balance between engendering empathy and emotional investment and knowingly deceiving the reader - which the author walks in step with her protagonist. Which is to say ably.


It bears saying, I suppose, that The Hammer is of a particular breed of fantasy fiction, much less intent on the fantasy than the fiction. As Gig quips, "Somewhere there might just possibly be dragons, unicorns and similar mythic beasts, but he was pretty sure he'd never encounter one, and most certainly not here." (p.114) Parker has never been one to whip out a troll horde for +5 genre appeal, nor does she do so here - and I wouldn't have it any other way. However, if I were forced to find fault in my experience of The Hammer, it wouldn't be with The Hammer itself - short, perhaps, an abundance of overbearing similes in the last section - so much as with the stomping grounds the author has over twelve novels and a handful of more abbreviated work hammered out for herself: for the more K. J. Parker you've read, the less surprising it'll be that Gignomai Met'Oc, as with her every other protagonist, is a mastermind of deviant proportions. Sometimes a track record of surprises can come to undermine, to render the next surprise that much less surprising. Surely anyone who remembers M. Night Shyamalan will swear by that.


Anyone?


Anyway. It would be doing The Hammer a terrible disservice to say it's simply the same, again, because Parker has shaved back the grander ambitions characteristic of her past work significantly, the better to tell a more personal tale; a more intimate, and so more immediately engaging narrative. Its scope might be much reduced, yet it's testament to Parker's laser-fine focus that The Hammer's smaller scale inhibits not at all the novel's sense of import.


I expected The Hammer to be a pleasant diversion: smart and fun and unfussy... you know the like. And it is all those things, indeed it is - par for the K. J. Parker course - but what the secretive author has proffered up here is so much more satisfying, so much more profound, than that and that alone. From least to most, then, this stunning standalone fantasy is a chronicle of the re-invention of industry - the particulars of which are fascination themselves; it's a many-faceted rumination on the point and the price of justice (a subject presumably so close to Parker's literary heart because of her and her partner's profession in the pursuit of said); and it is a provocative portrait, last and not least, of a character so complex and conflicted, so dark and somehow endearing, few are likely to rival Gignomai Met'Oc until Parker tops him herself, whenever the next of her novels rolls around.


Which, by the by, can't come soon enough. In the interim, take it in hand that The Hammer is very possibly Parker's finest fantasy to date.

***

The Hammer

by K. J. Parker

UK Publication: January 2011, Orbit
US Publication: January 2011, Orbit


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Book Review: The Folding Knife by K. J. Parker

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"Basso the Magnificent. Basso the Great. Basso the Wise. Basso the Murderer. The First Citizen of the Vesani Republic is an extraordinary man.

"He is ruthless, cunning and, above all, lucky. He brings wealth, power and prestige to his people. But with power comes unwanted attention, and Basso must defend his nation and himself from threats foreign and domestic. In a lifetime of crucial decisions, he's only ever made one mistake.

"One mistake, though, can be enough."

***

K. J. Parker is a bit of a mystery. Readers are in the dark even when it comes to this author's gender. I don't know that there's any pressing need to get Sherlock involved to clear things up - it makes little difference one way or the other - but for the purposes of this review, I'm going to go against the received wisdom and guess Parker's a man; a man playing an elaborate game with us to see if we'll assume he's a woman simply for the fact that historically, woman obscure their sex more often than men. That's my $0.02 on one of the genre's most baffling debates.

For me, however, the mystery went deeper. Before The Folding Knife, I'd never read a K. J. Parker novel. I'd nearly taken the plunge on a few - the Engineer trilogy in particular had appealed to me - but the diversity of opinions on each of Parker's publications stayed my hand. People bandy about the "love it or hate it" label more often, I think, than they should; usually it'd be closer to the truth to say they either adore or mildly dislike a thing. And yet with Parker, the range of reactions does indeed seem to err on the aforementioned extremes. Rarely do you come upon an author whose work can be described as superb on one hand and deathly dry on the other. Long story short: I came to The Folding Knife with some reservations. Two sittings later, I'm glad I didn't let them stop me.

Bassianus Severus is either the greatest First Citizen the Republic has ever had, or incredibly, extraordinarily lucky. The economy turns on his dime; he wins wars so effortlessly you'd be forgiven for thinking the result an accident; the Vesani people of the believe he's a leader of the little guy. His private life, however, is a shambles. Basso is a lonely man: his best friend is his father's former slave, his wife a duplicitous piece of work. He loves his sister more than anyone else in the world: she, meanwhile, has made it her life's work to make trouble for the First Citizen at every turn. Basso's only confidant is his estranged nephew, whose father he murdered, and whose murder he got away with, years before he took office. His entire administration is like a house of cards. One gust of wind and it'll all come crashing down. What better time, then, for the perfect storm to appear on the horizon?

Parker is an assiduously clever author, and his latest is as packed full of the same intellectual concerns I'm given to understand many of his other novels have hinged on: the politics, society and economy of a fantasy world not too far removed from our own. Hardly the most exiting mix of ingredients to spin a speculative yarn from, perhaps, yet I find myself struggling to sympathise with those readers who find themselves disenfranchised by The Folding Knife and its predecessors, because this book is anything but dull. Unless the subject matter itself is enough to put such people off, what waits within these pages is a whirlwind of wit and wonderment. Largely thanks to a central character that always keeps you on your toes and his snappy, doublethink dialogue with an excellent supporting cast, Parker manages to make even politics fun - no mean feat.

There's a sense of inexorable forward motion to The Folding Knife that makes it an easy and undemanding read. We don't question whether or not Basso's luck will turn because the narrative begins at the end, with the First Citizen after his downfall. When linear chronology reasserts itself, readers are left wondering when, not if, it'll all fall apart. In the interim, Basso is a fantastic protagonist to spend the time with. There's always more going on with him that you think: he's smart, forthright and conniving. He has a wicked sense of humour that'll have you guffawing into your coffee. Dry, dark and deadpan, Basso is hilariously irreverent and unimaginably clever. Except that's he got a long fall ahead of him, you never know what's next on the First Citizen's agenda. All you can be sure of is that you're going there with him, and fast. This book, you see, is paced like a hundred metre sprint. It's lightning quick out of the gate, furiously fast when it crosses the finishing let, and it rarely lets up in between.

That said, there's no real action to speak of. Readers who demand extended fight scenes from their fiction will find themselves stymied by The Folding Knife. The action herein, such as it is, tends to take the form of animated parliamentary debates, horse shortages and the occasional assassination attempt. In Parker's hands, however, such seemingly dry subjects come alive; they're as exhilarating, in their way, as any massive battle. The only real issue I have with The Folding Knife is that Basso's perspective is a touch too restrictive; you never get a sense of the larger Vesani republic except through his jaded eyes. Which is a shame, because what little of the city and its surrounding environs we do see begs for more in-depth exploration.

Otherwise, The Folding Knife is a very fine novel indeed. Intelligent and darkly comic, full of surprises and pacey as a runaway trail, it represents a great time waiting to be had for those readers who can stomach the superficially discouraging subject matter. Basso is a fantastic character I suspect I'll remember long after the particular quirks of leads from other, more prominent genre affairs are as so much dust in the desert to my memory. As I said at the outset, The Folding Knife was my first K. J. Parker. It won't be my last.

***

The Folding Knife

by K. J. Parker

June 2010, Orbit

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Amazon.co.uk / Amazon.com /
IndieBound / The Book Depository

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