Book Review | Riding the Unicorn by Paul Kearney

Warder John Willoby is being pulled between worlds, disappearing for minutes at a time from the prison and appearing in the midst of a makeshift medieval encampment before tumbling back. That, or he’s going mad, his mind simply breaking apart. It’s clear, to him and to his family, it must be the latter. 

His wife can barely stand him, and his daughter doesn’t even try; he drinks too much and lashes out too easily. He isn’t worth anyone’s time, even his own. But in this other world—this winter land of first-settlers—he is a man with a purpose, on whom others rely. A man who must kill a King so as to save a people. With a second chance, Willoby may become the kind of man he had always wanted to be.

***

The third of three resplendent reissues of Northern Irish author Paul Kearney's very earliest efforts completes the sinuous circle described in his dreamlike debut, A Different Kingdom. Riding the Unicorn is a darker fiction by far—it's about the abduction of a man who's likely losing his mind by the conniving by-blow of a hateful High King—but it's as brilliant a book as it is brutal, not least because our hero, Warden John Willoby, is a horrible human being; fortunate, in fact, to find himself on the right side of the cages he keeps his prisoners in.

He has, in the first, a truly terrible temper. To wit, he's wholly unwelcome in his own home, where his wife and daughter strive each day to stay out of his way. Willoby isn't an idiot—he's well aware of their disdain—he just doesn't give a two bob bit:

There was a wall between his family and himself. It had been growing silently for years, a little at a time, and the little things that would have helped break it down had been too much trouble. Now it was a high, massive thing. He was no longer sure there was a way through it. Worse, he was no longer sure he cared. (p.29)

Still worse, Willoby is worried that a few of his marbles might be missing, so fixing things with his family is hardly his highest priority. He's been seeing things for some months—inexplicable visions of a luscious landscape—and hearing voices in his head; talking nonsense, no less, in some untold tongue.

He should see a doctor, obviously. His wife Jo certainly thinks so. But Willoby, in his infinite wisdom, refuses to face facts, presupposing a diagnosis delivered with "a bottle of pills and a pat on the head, some medical gibberish about stress, or insomnia. Bollocks, all of it." (p.26) That said, he can't shake the suspicion that a crisis is coming, "some crux of events inevitably advancing towards him. The sense terrified him. It was like a dark cloud always in the corner of his eye." (p.123)

Book Review | The Way to Babylon by Paul Kearney

Michael Riven has fallen off a mountain. The author is broken in both body and mind, as the fall also claimed his wife and climbing partner Jenny. Readers are desperate to know what will happen next in the fantasy world Minginish, but neither writing, nor living, are of interest to the author as he lies in traction.

But there are others seeking the scribe out. Men—and someone who is not all human—have begun a quest to rescue their blighted homeland, and their road will take them between worlds. Michael Riven will return to his home in Scotland, and accompany a stranger into a place altogether more familiar and terrifying: Minginish itself, a real place stranger even than the world of his novels.

Michael must take up the companions of his stories—Bicker, Ratagan and Murtach—and find a way to mend the sundered world. He may even find that Jenny's existence did not end that day on the mountain.

***

The year of Paul Kearney continues with a reissue of the underrated author's second novel, and if The Way to Babylon can't quite hit the highs of his astounding debut, its expansive narrative nevertheless fondly recalls some of the finest in fantasy.

In the beginning, Michael Riven—the author of a successful fantasy saga himself—is miserable. Months after a tragic climbing accident, we find him broken in body and soul, and not a little bitter. Slowly but surely, he's coming into his own in a home, however he'll never be whole again, as the aforementioned catastrophe also claimed the love of his life: a ravishing lass from the Isle of Skye.

Fans are apparently clamouring for the conclusion of his unfinished trilogy, but our man's imagination is a mess at the moment. Indeed, he decides it's unlikely he'll ever return to writing. "There was something there, something black and futile, which stopped him every time his pen touched paper." Something... or someone.

See, "Jenny was in that world also, in every word he had ever written, as surely as if her picture smiled behind every sentence," and Riven isn't yet ready to be reminded. Instead, when he has most of his mobility back, he heads home, alone, to a broken-down bothy "where the mountains meet the sea." He's hardly settled in when a stranger appears in his porch; a rambler by the name of Bicker who invites Riven into the wilderness with him.

Riven can't resist, particularly given that Bicker's destination is Sgurr Dearg—the same sheer slope he and Jenny fell from. But his travelling companion has other plans. He leads an unwitting Riven through a portal into another plane that proves particularly familiar to our author. Incredibly, he seems to have stepped into the fantasy kingdom of his fiction—and that's when he realises who Bicker is.

"It was mad—crazy and insane. He was treading a non-existent world with a character from one of his own books." By all accounts his situation beggars belief, but Riven's incredulity can hardly withstand the real injuries he receives when a huge hound made of wood and wickedness attacks the party awaiting him and Bicker on the road to Ralath Rorim.

This is just the first of the recreated creatures he sees—beasts intent on ending him, no less—for Minginish is sickening. Since Jenny's death, chaos has overtaken the placid place written into existence by Riven:

You know the gogwolf—though that is the first one we have seen this far south. A bad omen. There are normal wolves also, but bolder than we have ever seen them before. And then there are things such as the grypesh, the rat-boars, and the Rime Giants and the ice worms. All these we have known to exist for a long time, but they stayed in their highland haunts and only hunters and wanderers encountered them, making for a good tale in the winter. But now they terrorise the very folk of the Dales and stalk the hills in between at will, cutting one village off from another; only the hardiest travel far these days, and then only at great need.

It becomes clear that Bicker believes Minginish is finished... unless Riven can come up with a way to save the day.

What follows is "a long story, spanning two worlds and riddled with the inexplicable," but of course "there's more to it than that." Too much more, to tell to truth. Though The Way to Babylon begins in the nursing home where Riven is recovering, this is but the first of a few false starts. A second is promised in the bothy; a third in Minginish; but the story only really gets going after a prolonged pause in Ralath Rorim.

The Way to Babylon's aimlessness is frustrating, as absorbing as these introductory acts are. It may be that they aid our understanding of the narrative's protagonist—a necessary evil given how churlish Riven is initially—but fully half of the whole is over before Kearney finally focuses. Suddenly, the text has direction. A quest takes shape. A goal is disclosed:

It was speeding up. Riven felt incredibly mortal, but at the same time there was a rising restlessness in him. He felt that time was slipping through his fingers. The Greshorns were calling him. And so was Sgurr Dearg. He only wished he knew why. Perhaps the Dwarves would tell him.

The Way to Babylon's second half is leaps and bounds better than its flailing first, in large part because we're almost helplessly propelled through this section as opposed to the previous puttering.

Pace, people. It's important.

Thankfully, the setting is never less than superlative; reason enough to keep reading even at the story's slowest. I'm probably a bit biased, having holidayed on them since I was a sprog, but the Western Isles off the coast of Scotland are one of my world's wonders, and Kearney does a cracking up job of nailing the way beauty and brutality go hand in hand on the Isle of Skye and its fantastical equivalent, Minginish.

On the one hand, "the world was wide and fair, hung over with a haze of sunlight and shimmering with warmth." But this "green and pleasant place, wrinkled with silver rivers" also takes in "great ragged masses of stone rearing up to the sky in twisting ridges and peaked, veined with snow, bare as gravestones." It's a genuine pleasure to see these special spots rendered so remarkably.

As are Kearney's characters. Riven's redemptive arc is inordinately rewarding; Bicker and his beery bodyguards—a blessedly bawdy bunch—keep things lively in the low moments; and Jinneth, a character Riven based on his late ladyfriend, presents a painful problem for our author to solve.

A Different Kingdom's untraditional structure was one of its strengths, in that its frame felt fitting. Here, however, it's a hindrance... but The Way to Babylon is well worth reading regardless of the fact that it puts its worst foot forward. Its setting is simply superb; its central characters are a class apart; and once Paul Kearney is done manhandling his narrative, the immersive quest we're left with is winning as well.

***

The Way to Babylon
by Paul Kearney

UK & US Publication: June 2014, Solaris

Buy this book from
Amazon.co.uk / Amazon.com
The Book Depository

Or get the Kindle edition

Recommended and Related Reading

Book Review | A Different Kingdom by Paul Kearney

Michael Fay is a normal boy, living with his grandparents on their family farm in rural Ireland. In the woods—once thought safe and well-explored—there are wolves; and other, stranger things. He keeps them from his family, even his Aunt Rose, his closest friend, until the day he finds himself in the Other Place. There are wild people, and terrible monsters, and a girl called Cat. 

When the wolves follow him from the Other Place to his family’s doorstep, Michael must choose between locking the doors and looking away—or following Cat on an adventure that may take an entire lifetime in the Other Place. He will become a man, a warrior, and confront the Devil himself: the terrible Dark Horseman...

***

If you go down to the woods today, be sure of a big surprise... but I dare say it won't be bears. And that's assuming there are even woods within reach of you.

Where I live, I'm lucky. I have natural landscape to the left of me, supermarkets and the like to the right: the conveniences of 21st century living combined with the beauty of the world as it once was. But so many places today have no balance. Particularly in cities we have systematically stamped out the environment to make more room for humanity to do what humanity does: taint everything it touches.

Young Michael Fay, a boy about to become a man in rural Ireland sixty or so years ago, has been aware of this fact most foul ever since his parents passed:

He lives amid the acres his family has occupied for generations. They have multiplied through the years, growing from a single unit into a clan, a tribe. Sons have built houses and scraped together farms in their fathers' shadows. Daughters have married neighbours. Exiles have been and gone, have sailed away and returned to where they were born. His family has roots here as old as the hill fort nestled on the highest of the pastures. They have possess the land, raped it, nurtured it, cursed it and been enslaved by it.

His parents have been killed by it. He was orphaned by a bomb meant for someone else. (p.12)

In their place, Michael is raised by his grandparents, however he finds more in the mode of closeness with his Aunt Rose. Ten years his senior, she's like a big sister to our man in the making, but also a little like a lover, so when she's bundled away by scandalised nuns, only to die giving birth to her baby—gone beyond "like a letter lost in the post" (p.61)—the poor dear is devastated.

Years later, Michael's isolation grows greater when his teachers turn to despair over his behaviour. His abiding love of the land leads him to seek solace in the forest, where he haunts a special spot. Playing there one day, he sees something unbelievable. There are wolves in the woods!

Wolves and weirder: men with fox faces...

But I Digress | The Recommendation Engine

Some days, it's hard to be a blogger.

Some days - all your best laid plans be damned - real-life commitments rear an ugly hydra of heads to demand you attend to this thing or that thing, when all you really want to do, if the truth be told, is burble about books like a good, old-fashioned fanboy.

Alas: some days, there simply isn't an hour to set aside, and on those days - especially when there's a certain something you really want to say, or praise - the feeling of guilt, that people will be coming and going with nothing to show for it, can be... if not crippling, then certainly painfully frustrating.

But believe it or not, today's blog is about why, equally, it's awesome to be a blogger. It's about one of the reasons that arise from time to time to remind exactly you why you love doing this thing. Specifically, today's blog about a tweet I received from a reader - namely Celyn Armstrong - with a link to his Goodreads review of Kings of Morning by Paul Kearney.

You'll recall, first of all, that I really rather enjoyed Kings of Morning — indeed the entirety of The Macht Saga. Well, Celyn did too. After having read my reviews, he bought into the trilogy beginning with The Ten Thousand, and evidently didn't look back, going so far as to set down his adulation for all to see.

I only wish this sort of thing happened more often, because for a few, fine moments, it makes you feel like it's all been worthwhile. Which isn't to say it isn't otherwise... only that the rewards, and they are many and various, are rarely so naked. Maybe this is the megalomaniac in me - in all probability it is - but hearing from Celyn the other day made me feel like I'd changed the world a little baby bit. Influenced an influencer, who can help spread the good word in turn.

This, I think, is how we make our presence felt most meaningfully. This is what we leave behind, if we leave anything at all.

So please, I implore you: if you read a brilliant book or watch an awesome movie, or whatever... if you experience something superb, or perhaps something especially terrible, because a blogger has recommended you do so — and no, I don't just mean me here... then please and thank you too: take a second, and say.

You might just make someone's day. :)

Giving the Game Away | Everyone's A Winner!

Actually no... that's not strictly true. But three very lucky people are!

If you can, cast your mind back to last week. You might recall that I went on about Paul Kearney a lot. I reviewed all three volumes of The Macht Saga, pledged allegiance to the aforementioned author, and - in a rare moment of happy madness - I hosted a giveaway of three sets of the complete trilogy, the better to get this stunning series into as many hands as I was able.

The response was overwhelming, actually. For various reasons I haven't hosted a whole lot of giveaways here on TSS in the past, but within 24 hours of announcing this particular contest, over 100 people had given it a go. Entries have been arriving steadily ever since, more than doubling the pool of wannabe winners, all told... so I guess The Macht Saga is on more radars than I'd imagined. Good! It absolutely should be.

Before I give up the gory details on our winners, however, a reminder of the simple question you all had to answer:

Which of the United Kingdoms

does Paul Kearney come from?

The answer was of course:

Northern Ireland

Alas, there can only be three winners of these three books, and much as I'd like to buy every last person who entered the competition a copy of The Ten Thousand to get 'em going, three is still one better than two and two better than one, and one is the loneliest number, as I'm sure we all know -- but anyway! Our winners are:

• Sascha Walter, of Germany
• Ryan Thomas, of Colorado
• and finally Henry Ward, a Northern Ireland man himself!

So that's nice. :)

Well... nice for those three. Not so much for all the others who entered and answered the question correctly but lost out in the end, but for those three at least, pretty damn sweet!

Sascha and Ryan and Henry can expect to receive an email from me to confirm their details as soon as possible, and their winnings forthwith. I'm afraid everyone else will have to get their hands on The Macht Saga the old-fashioned way - you really ought to give it a shot - but seriously, thanks for all your entries anyway. Quite the show of support. And that's exactly what this series needs.

Show and Tell | What Every Speculative Scotsman Wants

Oh, hey! I turned 28 yesterday, by the way.

I was working, unfortunately -- or fortunately, as the case may be. Had a lovely day anyway. A buffet breakfast-come-lunch with my parents and my partner, an afternoon and evening of easy teaching, then last but not least a night of sleepy gift-giving.

So I thought the thing to do was blog a bit about what all everyone thought I'd enjoy. It's actually unspeakably illuminating. You can group all but a few of the gifts into three categories. The first is of course coffee, that best friend of bloggers since time immemorial.

 

Alongside a bottle of Tia Maria that I immediately "tested," the day also saw fit to deliver into my clutches some delicious Illy espresso, which I gather is the best ground coffee to be had without grinding the beans yourself. Truth be told, I wouldn't know; I've always balked at the cost.

Meanwhile, tying into the second category too, this thing, and I'll be filling it with a vast amount of the steaming stuff later today:

It's a thermos, Captain... but not as we know it! :)

The second of our three categories, then, involves a miscellany of things to take on holiday, because we're jetting off to the States shortly, the other half and I, and why not get ahead of the game? Speaking of which, another excellent gift: Carcassonne. 

I've loved Catan for years, playing online and off. Also Ticket to Ride. And Risk. I'm certainly no expert at any or all of the above, but sitting down to a good strategy game always makes me inordinately happy. Carcassonne is a German-style, tile-based board game that I've been hugely curious about for ages, so this will definitely be coming to America with me.

Last but not least... books! That is to say two review copies and one Amazon Marketplace purchase that just so happened to pop through the letterbox yesterday, thus in a weird way I think of them as gifts:

The Lions of Al-Rassan is a very timely reissue from Voyager, and I imagine it'll be excellent company on my international mission. The Steve Rasnic Tem - new from Solaris and very intriguing too - I aim to have read and reviewed in advance of my departure in a few short weeks. Meanwhile A Different Kingdom by Paul Kearney came highly recommended during last week's shenanigans with the Macht, and you may or may not ever hear me mention it again. It really depends.

That isn't everything either, but this post has already taken longer to put together than I'd imagined, so it'll have to do for today.

Obviously, I am a very happy camper, and incredibly grateful to everyone who cared. In part because of the goodies and the games and the gadgets, yes, but at this (late) stage in my life, it really is the thought that counts, more than any individual gift. And what thoughtful thoughts they were this year!

In Conclusion | I Heart The Macht

Forgive me for stating the obvious, but in some cases, it's got to be better to be clear than to worry about repeating myself. With that caveat, then, let it be said: I really, really like Paul Kearney.

That mightn't be entirely surprising to you, given the content of the blog this week, but I wasn't exactly expecting it. I mean, I enjoyed The Monarchies of God a great deal, yet in 2010, when Solaris reissued the series in two almighty omnibus editions, I gobbled both books up and got on with my life. I didn't feel the need then to make a song and dance about it. Evidently, I did - and I have done - as regards The Macht Saga.

That's because Kearney, in my admittedly limited experience, is getting better and better. Going from strength to strength, as they say. And I wish more people were reading his work to realise it. If you ask me, the best of his fiction stands shoulder to shoulder - in its own way - with a who's who of my favourite fantasists; with the likes of Steven Erikson, George R. R. Martin, Guy Gavriel Kay and, at a stretch, R. Scott Bakker. 

But I don't think he sells as well as any of them, and therein's the thing. I have no actual information here - this is just speculation, loosely informed by a smattering of press releases and the buzz around his books versus the buzz around new releases by the other authors above - but the received wisdom seems to be that he's little league, as opposed to being one of the big hitters. And that's a damned travesty.

So fingers firmly crossed that I've managed to turn a couple of you on to a series you mightn't otherwise have considered. Here's hoping that perhaps a few of my fellow bloggers will now consider reading and reviewing The Ten Thousand or Corvus or Kings of Morning -- or all three!

That sort of groundswell, or show of support, can make or break a book, a series... even an author. And Kearney's hardly had an easy time of it to date; indeed, I believe bloggers have played a crucial role in his writing career. Now The Speculative Scotsman is hardly a Hotlist equivalent, but it's been a modest success nonetheless, and because of that, I have a bit of a platform here. A platform which, in cases like this, you can be damn sure I'll make use of.

If you have something similar, I hope you'd do so too -- for the right reasons, that is. With any amount of power comes some measure of responsibility, but this pretense of objectivity we all wear as if it meant anything at all... well the hell with it. I heart the Macht. If my recommendations have led you to a few good books before, I would urge you to please, give this series a go. And if you enjoy it: spread the word, as I've tried to. Find a good spot - or not - and shout about it!

The Scotsman Abroad | The Kings of Morning, In the Evening

Some of you may have noticed that The Speculative Scotsman looks quite a bit different today than it did. If you haven't, don't click through from your feed readers just yet! I'm hoping to spend some more time with the new design soon, and I'll be sure to ask you all for your thoughts just as soon as I'm 100% finished with my fiddling, or as close to 100% as I can get without everyone's input.

As a matter of fact I only mention it by way of explanation, which is to say yesterday, I, uh... fiddled with the blog instead of actually blogging, so this review is going to have to go without the usual preamble. It's of Kings of Morning, of course - the third and final volume of the magnificent Macht saga - and it's up now on tor.com.

Here's a bite-sized bit from it:

In an ingenious inversion of The Ten Thousand, Kings of Morning begins on the other side of the divide. Not with the Macht, as they march into death or glory – or both – but with the Kufr; with the Great King Ashurnan, his conniving wife Orsana, and their three children, Rahksar, Roshana and Kouros, who are of course at odds with one another over the very diadem Corvus aims to take. Only some 125 pages later does Kearney give us a glimpse of the invading army readers have become intimately familiar with, and even then, we are as often with the ostensible enemy as we are in amongst Corvus’ colossal company, mired in the osthimos of war.

For a time it feels strange, this sudden, if not utterly unsurprising shift in perspective – and at the beginning of the end, no less – but Kearney is canny enough to understand that the impact of the behemothic last battle Kings of Morning builds inexorably towards will be all the more keenly felt, whichever way things tip, if readers come to care about the individuals it is destined to affect. After all, to paraphrase one of our generation’s great thinkers, the death of one is a tragedy, whereas the death of many tens of thousands is just a statistic.

And so, though a major note resounds throughout, it is in the minor key that Kings of Morning succeeds most meaningfully.

 

(continue reading)

 

Please do click on through to tor.com for the rest of the review, and leave a comment if you can.

 

I'll have another thing about the Macht saga tomorrow. A conclusion of sorts, as is proper. But other than that, and the results of the giveaway - which is still going, and going strong - this is the end, my friends. And as sorry as I am to see it, for once in my life I can leave behind my cynical side and say: what an incredible ending!

Book Review | Corvus by Paul Kearney

 

Buy this book from 

Amazon.co.uk / Amazon.com

IndieBound / The Book Depository

It is twenty-three years since a Macht army fought its way home from the heart of the Asurian Empire. The man who came to lead that army, Rictus, is now a hard-bitten mercenary captain, middle-aged and tired. He wants nothing more than to lay down his spear and become the farmer that his father was. But fate has different ideas. A young war-leader has risen to challenge the order of things in the very heartlands of the Macht. A solider of genius, he takes city after city, and reigns over them as king. What is more, he has heard of the legendary leader of The Ten Thousand.

His name is Corvus, and the rumours say that he is not even fully human. He means to make himself absolute ruler of all the Macht. And he wants Rictus to help him.

***

It is all too easy for those of us who live in the past’s long shadow to fall into the trap of thinking history a particularly passive pursuit. The preserve of academics and ancients, with long books and longer beards.

But no.

Maybe now, but in the thick of it, I think not, because history does not simply happen: it is made. It is shaped. Created, and then, over time, finessed into fineness, like a spearpoint thrust through the years. As to those who hone history - just so - they do not somehow stand outside of it. On the contrary, they become a part of it. In a very real sense, these men and women of whispered myth and inherited legend become history, and not always to their credit, nor indeed their pleasure.

Rictus is one such specimen. Twenty-odd years on from the great tale of the Ten Thousand – in which an army of Macht mercenaries that he led (towards the end) fought into and inevitably out of the vast continent beyond the hills of the Harukush – Rictus, to his chagrin, has become as much myth as man. As his friend and fellow soldier Fornyx marvels:

“What you saw, in your youth. The places you marched, the world you wandered across. You were part of a legend, Rictus, and you saw sights few of the Macht have ever imagined. The land beyond the sea, and the Empire upon it. For all of us it is nothing more than a story, or the words in a song. But you were there.”

He was there, yes. This much is indisputable. But Rictus is one of a rare few who remembers what it was to be in the midst of that mess of men. He remembers “the shattering heat of those endless days on the Kunaksa hills, the stench of the bodies. The shrieking agonies of the maimed horses. And the faces of those who had shared it with him. Gasca, dead at Irunshahr [and] Jason, whom he had loved like a brother, who had come through it all only to be knifed in a petty brawl in Sinon, within sound of the sea.” It was not such a pretty picture, whether then or in memory.

In any case, Rictus has moved on. Hardly a young man when the Ten Thousand marched, he has since grown old, made a home, and fallen in love with a family fashioned from both blood and the brotherhood of battle. Summers he still spends campaigning for coin with his Dogsheads, an army of motley mercenaries in an age with no seeming need for real redcloaks... but this matters little to Rictus. After all, he lives now for winters, when he can come back to Aise and Rian and Ona on the farm, and set his spear by the door.

Rictus dreams of the day when he can put his weapon away for good, but that day is not this day, because this winter, Rictus returns home to find rumour rife. There is talk – endless spoken speculation – about a man called Corvus, a would-be conqueror named after “a black carrion bird” who has blazed a trail inland from Idrios, declaring himself overlord of all the Macht cities whose armies he has effortlessly overcome. His next stop is likely to be Hal Goshen, which stands barely a handful of pasangs away from Rictus’ farm.

So, something wicked this way comes? Well... Corvus – if he exists – is either something wicked, or something wickedly different, but whatever his purpose, whatever his principles, Rictus doesn’t intend to involve himself in this murderous myth-making. He’s secured his place in the history books already.

But then, cruel and unusual, the rumour comes a-calling: Corvus and a centon of his men arrive at Rictus’ homestead, and pressgang the old legend into service. With his family in immediate danger, Rictus has little choice in the matter... and sure, he’s curious too. Passing fascinated with this powerful young man who seems to be “standing on the threshold of some change in the world,” just as Rictus did in his youth. Corvus, as it transpires, does not make war in order to destroy the Macht, but to finally unite this fragmented force. If he succeeds, the Macht will be one people for the first time since time immemorial. This is another chapter of history in the making, and Rictus, though older and wiser, is old enough now, and just wise enough, to know it. Thus, he takes up his spear, and marches mercilessly – with the Dogsheads and many other thousands of men – on his own people, side by side with this strangely persuasive invader.

Corvus may take place in the same timeline as The Ten Thousand, and star the same central character, but – and here rears a more meaningful inheritance – it is a remarkably self-contained story. What the reader needs know about its predecessor, Paul Kearney imparts precisely, concisely. Even at the outset of this summarily standalone sequel the events of The Ten Thousand have faded to myth and old man’s memory, such that returning readers and complete newcomers will be equally well met, and warmly welcomed besides, because Corvus is a markedly more intimate novel than the first volume of this disparate trilogy.

The return to Rictus’ perspective is like coming home to gruff uncle, worn and torn by a long war abroad, but no less beloved for his far-distant hardships, meanwhile Kearney spends a pleasantly surprising span attending to matters of character, little and large alike. Assuredly, our main man and the unstoppable invader occupy the larger part of the limelight, but Aise also has an arc, as do various players on the other side of the divide, like Kassia, Kassander, and particularly Karnos, a common man’s man who single-handedly raises an army to stand against Corvus.

It would be unfair to say that The Ten Thousand lacked character, exactly, but Kearney’s considerations are certainly more minute herein than as regards the mass of mercenaries from the last part. Where its antecedent revolved around immense armies, Corvus is concerned with individuals, so there is an easier foothold for the reader from the offing, and a gathering impression of personal jeopardy as the narrative inches on... but I’m afraid it also follows that the big picture appears a little diminished. Furthermore, this sequel is somewhat less... eventful than The Ten Thousand: of the two big ol’ battle scenes – already a scant number next to the innumerable encounters strung together in book one – only the second, a long siege on a comparatively complicated battlefield, feels genuinely momentous. Tragic, in fact, because even here Kearney punctuates the Macht’s phalanx fighting with a more discrete dilemma, which – to twist the knife one final time – occurs mere minutes away from the frontlines.

The storm of Corvus’ last gasping act is as harrowing as it is exhilarating, then, in large part thanks to the character-focused calm before, during and after it. The author’s willingness to wholeheartedly savage his supporting cast is important, but without the emotional moments aforementioned, the cacophony of noise which concludes Corvus would have been a fraction as impactful, with little meaning to speak of beyond the visceral immediate experience. This, as I see it, has always been the single most significant issue of histories: lacking little guys with little problems – without context, and character – the big pictures they present often err on the unfathomable. In Corvus, however, Kearney brings his players home handily. What with its far narrower focus, it may be a surprising species of successor to a tale of The Ten Thousand’s scope and scale, but be assured that we have here a truly bravura book, as ambitious in its way as the magnificent myth before it.

***

Corvus

by Paul Kearney

UK and US Publication: October 2010, Solaris

Buy this book from 

Amazon.co.uk / Amazon.com

IndieBound / The Book Depository

Recommended and Related Reading

Giving the Game Away | Win One of Three Complete Sets of The Macht Saga

Perhaps you've read Paul Kearney before... or perhaps you haven't. Maybe you've wondered about The Macht saga from afar, or ogled the omnibus editions of The Monarchies of God and wondered: would I like this?

Well yes, you would. Or at the very least, you should. I don't think it's spoiling the reviews of Corvus and Kings of Morning you'll be seeing from me subsequently to say that they're terrific books, to a one. Reading through these three volumes over the past three weeks has been a beautiful, bloody, bittersweet experience, and I'm officially on board with whatever Kearney writes next. Up to and including this Spartacus tie-in.

But let's not get ahead of ourselves just yet, because in a rare turn of events, I've got some books to give away. I enjoyed this series so much that I wanted to get it into the hands of a few good folks, and Solaris have been more generous than I could have hoped for. They've offered not one, not two, but three complete sets of all three volumes of The Macht saga.

Which is to say, if you can answer this simple question correctly, you'll be in with a chance of winning copies of The Ten Thousand, Corvus and Kings of Morning, which hasn't even been released yet, here in the UK.

You don't have to be British to stand a chance, either! Entries are welcome from the UK, the US, and Europe too. All you have to do tell me:

Which of the United Kingdoms

does Paul Kearney come from?

Simple, isn't it? And if you're not so sure, you'll find the answer somewhere in the text of yesterday's review of The Ten Thousand.

All I'd ask is that you send along your guesses to thespeculativescotsman [at] gmail [dot] com and mark you subject headers "The Macht Saga".

I'm going to let this one run for a week at least, so there's time to get your entries in, and then tell your friends so they can try their hands as well. At the end of that period, our lucky winners will be picked at random, as ever, to the envy of everybody who isn't one.

That's it! Go on, now. You know you want to... and if you don't, well, I beg to differ. :P

### EDIT @16:47 ###

Actually, that thing about a Spartacus tie-in? Turns out that's Amazon trying to make a monkey of me: it's being written by a Mark Morris, and the page only updated today. Never mind I've been secretly excited about it for months.

Anyway, go go giveaway!

Book Review | The Ten Thousand by Paul Kearney

Buy this book from 

Amazon.co.uk / Amazon.com

IndieBound / The Book Depository 

On the world of Kuf, the Macht are a mystery, a seldom-seen people of extraordinary ferocity and discipline whose prowess on the battlefield is the stuff of legend. For centuries they have remained within the remote fastnesses of the Harukush Mountains. In the world beyond, the teeming races and peoples of Kug have been united within the bounds of the Asurian Empire, which rules the known world, and is invincible. The Great King of Asuria can call up whole nations to the battlefield. His word is law.

But now the Great King's brother means to take the throne by force, and in order to do so he has sought out the legend. He hires ten thousand mercenary warriors of the Macht, and leads them into the heart of the Empire.

***

War. War never changes.

Of course, one could as easily – and as righteously – state that war changes everything.

In The Ten Thousand, the ugly truth – and indeed, it is a fearsome-looking thing in this book, and this series, the truth – lies sprawled and spewing somewhere in the midst of this blood-muddied mulch:

"The army marches, there is a slaughter, and a form of words is made to make the world change. But the world does not change; the water still flows, the seeds still sprout, and those who work the soil continue to work it, a little poorer, a little thinner and sadder than before. The storm moves on, and in its wake the world goes once more about its business. This is war, this passing storm on the land. This stink on the air, this dust-cloud which hems the sky. These creatures marching in their thousands, changing everything and changing nothing with their passage. This is war."

These creatures, as Northern Irish author Paul Kearney has it, are the Macht, "a seldom seen people of extraordinary ferocity and discipline whose prowess on the battlefield is the stuff of legend," and the Macht live to fight: to triumph against the enemy, or die well (if one can possibly die in such a fashion, and there are no guarantees here) in the trying.

They have warred with the vast Asurian Empire before, have the Macht, only to be beaten back by an overwhelming force, and some centuries have passed since they dared cross the sea to meet their sworn enemies in battle. They've occupied themselves with feudal in-fighting in the interim; a meaningless business, given the greater threat, but a business it is, for the Macht are a mercenary folk, by and large. Small armies exist here and there, but most of the Macht's fighting forces are united under the crimson rather than some cause: a colour beholden to no better motivation than gold – and where there is demand, it follows that there must be a supply to meet it, or exceed it.

To wit, The Ten Thousand begins, in earnest, in the immediate aftermath of one such clash: with a sole survivor – Rictus – of the rape of his great city, Isca. Having failed to beat back the attackers, the strawhead’s only hope is for a good death, but in the process of earning one, an admiring opponent grants him an unexpected reprieve.

Rictus lives on, then – and it's as well, for he is our through-line from first to last in the ambitious narrative Paul Kearney tells in The Ten Thousand, and beyond – but for now, he has nothing. He is "alone. Cityless. Ostrakr." And exiles such as he "sometimes chose suicide rather than wander the earth without citizenship. To the Macht, the city was light and life and humanity. Outside, there was only this: the black pines and the empty sky, the world of the Kufr. A world that was alien."

All Rictus has to hold on to hereafter is the colour: the crimson of the mercenary men he aims to join, alongside another young soldier he meets on the road to Machran, where he and Gasca are hired. Their mission is a mysterious one, to begin with – the force mustering in this city is large enough to seize even Machran, the capital of these fragmented lands (if capital it has) – but soon they take to the sea, these ten thousand men, with Rictus and Gasca in their midst. And when at last land is sighted, it is the land of the Kufr, of course.

In this kingdom across the sea, you see, a rebellion is afoot. The Great King's brother Arkamenes means to seize the throne by force, and to that end he has called upon the legendary forces of the Macht. With his inexhaustible riches he has bought these mythical mercenaries, these businessmen who deal in death, and they have been paid handsomely; some of the men certainly have their qualms as regards the march to the Asurian capital, where Arkamenes means to take Ashurnan's place, yet the bottom line is solid, so they keep their concerns to themselves.

I would not hesitate to say that the Macht are an incredible creation, except that they are not an original creation so much as a tremendous and oddly timely recreation, given the present-day relevance and prevalence of PMCs: of a factual historical force – aking to the 300 Frank Miller and latterly Zack Snyder recently repopularised – which waged the self-same campaign we find the Macht engaged in amid this low fantasy landscape. These Greek mercenaries were also known as the Ten Thousand, and by way of Xenophon's Anabasis – that bastion of classical Socratic philosophy as it relates to the subjects of government and leadership – they can be traced back to fully four centuries before the common era. Paid in full, they took to Persia – enemy territory, in other words – under the orders of Cyrus the Younger, who planned to force his way into power over the entire Achaemenid Empire.

The tale did not end well. Cyrus was killed in the great battle at Babylon, and the Ten Thousand whose fate you will find discussed in the history books were stranded, now leaderless and practically purposeless, deep in the realm of their old enemy. This marching republic, for so it was, had to take charge of themselves thereafter, and a similar, if not identical conundrum awaits the Ten Thousand of Paul Kearney's darkly fantastic fictionalisation.

Considering how closely The Ten Thousand follows Xenophon's account of the originating events, the most significant narrative beats of Kearney's inspired adaptation will be familiar – perhaps to a fault – to an audience who know the story, but even these readers are apt to be impressed, because there is a richness and a texture to this rendering that the renowned record is largely absent, never mind its seven fulsome volumes, or its contemporary currency in academic circles. Like the revolutionary mercenary army at its heart, The Ten Thousand is a "picture brought bright and colourful out of myth," brilliantly depicted and embellished in all the right ways by its ambitious author, a former history student himself.

Heedless of whether Kearney created them whole-cloth or not – and to a certain extent of course he has – the Macht are truly an awesome force to behold:

"They raised a dustcloud behind them, a tawny, leaning giant, a tolling yellow storm bent on blotting out the western sky. It seemed a nation on the march, a whole people set on migrating to a better place. The sparse inhabitants of the Gadinai drew together, old feuds forgotten, and watched in wonder as the great column poured steadily onward, as unstoppable as the course of the sun. It was as grand as some harbinger or the world's end, a spectacle even the gods must see from their places amid the stars."

Perhaps the most remarkable thing Kearney brings to the table – a table sumptuously laid in any case – is his characterisation of the Macht as mercenaries; as men going about the business of making money above all else. As beaten but not broken soldiers of fortune as opposed to idealistic war-makers, I know of no equal for them in fantasy fiction. As one spearman asserts:

"There was no extravagance to the fighting; no glory, Gasca realised. These men were doing their job. They were at work. They did not raise battle-cries, or scream curses. They pushed with their comrades, they looked for openings, and they stabbed out with a swift, economic energy, like herons seeking minnows. [...] The Kefren could not match this remorseless efficiency."

Meanwhile another observer, the Great King himself, notes that:

"Their bronze was different. Ashurnan could not quite puzzle it out, until he realised that it was old metal, tarnished and dimmed. These man had carried their harness a long time. It was not a matter or burnishing; it was a matter of years. And there was no decoration to it. They did not take joy in their turn-out. They wore their panoplies with all the pride and elan of labourers set to a day's heavy shifting. Ashurnan's mouth began to sneer under the komis as he regarded them, and then his lips straightened. Their formation was perfect, as though someone had gone running along their front with a plumb line. They stood at ease, almost unmoving. [...] They seemed almost bored."

You could sharpen a spear on Kearney's prose, so pointed is it, yet at times it is poetic as well; as above, so below. Meanwhile the author builds his world brilliantly – majestically, but not oppressively – atop the foundations of a true story, terrific in its own right. The pace is perfect, and the pitch is too, to boot. Though his characterisation of certain purveyors of the ensemble of perspectives on offer herein could be better – I speak of Gasca and Tiryn specifically – I do not think that The Ten Thousand need necessarily look to individuals to make its indelible mark. The power it possesses, and the gruesome scar it carves, is not the result of any one man, after all, but ten thousand of them... armed to the teeth and armoured from head to toe, warring for a wage.

Even if grim militaristic fantasy like this isn't your usual purview, please: take a chance on The Ten Thousand. Unlike the men of the Macht, and their historical equivalents, you've little other than time to lose. The series certainly continues in Corvus, to conclude in Kings of Morning, but The Ten Thousand was originally conceived as a standalone narrative rather than the first volume in a trilogy, and it functions as such. If "black flies laying their eggs in the eyes of the dead" and the like prove too much for you, then no harm, no foul... you need not read on.

If you have the stomach for it, however, you won't be able to stop yourself, because for what it is, even if what it is is not for everyone, The Ten Thousand is an utterly gripping reading experience. Powerful... poignant... profound, even.

***

The Ten Thousand

by Paul Kearney

UK and US Publication: September 2008, Solaris

Buy this book from

Amazon.co.uk / Amazon.com

IndieBound / The Book Depository

Recommended and Related Reading