Tag: Heroic Fantasy

Ghost King by David Gemmell

Ghost KingAnother review of a David Gemmell book?  Yes, because I’m just that much of a fanboy.

With the Drenai series finished, I decided to sink my teeth into the Stones of Power series.  This series confuses me, because I’ve read The Jerusalem Man, which was retroactively put in as book three, but that’s a post-apocalyptic tale of the gunslinger Jon Shannow, but the series actually starts in Arthurian England.  As soon as I got a couple chapters into the first book, though, I began to see the connection.

Ghost King is an alternate history tale of King Arthur (Uther, in the book), and how he rises to become the Blood King of Britannia.  His grandfather, Culain, takes him into the mountains after the Brigantes assassinate his father, and there trains him to become a leader and a warrior.

Culain, of course, is one of the immortal Atlantians, just like his friend Maedhlyn (Merlin).  After the fall of Atlantis, they have wandered the Earth as gods, using the powers of the Sipstrassi stones to accomplish wonders.  Worshipped in turn by the Greeks, the Romans, the Hittites, and the Babylonians, Culain has tired of immortality and now wants to live out a mortal life.  But his jilted lover, the Ghost Queen, wants revenge on him for leaving her.  She was the one who killed Uther’s grandmother and mother, and who now wants to kill him and rule all of Brittania.  But her son Gilgamesh has corrupted her, so that in a parallel universe she must kill twenty pregnant woman every month just to replenish the magic of her Sipstrassi …

Okay, I might as well give up trying to explain the plot, because it only gets crazier.  Somewhere in this parallel dimension, a lost Roman legion has been wandering for hundreds of years, consigned to the void by Culain.  Also, Gain Avur (Guenevere) is in there too, as well as the Lance Lord (Lancelot), though he doesn’t come in until the epilogue.  There are also demons and vampyres, all sorts of battles, and lots of other crazy stuff.  It’s pretty freaking dang awesome.

I really enjoyed Uther’s transformation from the weak, bookish boy to the warrior king, as well as the budding of his relationship with Gain Avur (what can I say, I’m a sucker for romance).  My favorite character, though, was Prasamaccus, a crippled Brigante peasant who becomes one of Uther’s close advisors.  He’s basically a regular guy who gets sucked up into the whole adventure, but he’s level-headed and practical enough that he manages pretty well.  He’s also just a good person, which was quite refreshing in a world full of death and drama.

At one point, after rescuing Uther, he’s a guest in Uther’s chief general’s villa.  The general gives him a servant girl for the night, since in this world most men think nothing of bedding a slave.  Prasamaccus is a peasant, though, and he’s kind of shy.  The girl was actually captured in a raid in Germany, where she was raped, and this is her first time bedding someone since those traumati not the monster she’s afraid that he’ll be–they actually share a really tender moment of intimacy that heals much of her trauma and introduces him to the love of his life.c events.  She’s absolutely terrified, but so is Prasamaccus–he’s a cripple, and assumes that women just don’t want him.  He spends the night with the girl but doesn’t force her to sleep with him, and when she realizes how gentle he is–that she holds the power, and that he’s not the monster she’s afraid that he’ll be–they actually share a really tender moment of intimacy that heals much of her trauma and introduces him to the love of his life.

It’s poignant, story-rich moments like that that make me such a David Gemmell fanboy.  Usually they happen in the midst of war, between battle-hardened friends who are forced by circumstance to do something heroic, but they also happen in the quiet moments between characters who carry other scars.  That whole thing in the previous paragraph only happened in three pages or so, but it was still so incredibly powerful and moving.  Every moment of a David Gemmell book is like that, sometimes from the very first paragraph.  It’s awesome.

As far as David Gemmell books go, I’d put this one in about the middle of the pack.  It’s not quite as powerful as Legend or Wolf in Shadow, but it doesn’t meander as much as White Wolf or have such an anti-climactic ending as Ironhand’s Daughter (which was probably split by the publisher–more on that when I review The Hawk Eternal).  The characters aren’t quite as memorable as Druss, Skilgannon, or Waylander, but they are pretty awesome nonetheless.  I’d rate this book a 3 compared to Gemmell’s other books, but a 4.5 out of fantasy overall.  Definitely worth a read.

The Legend of Deathwalker by David Gemmell

legend_of_deathwalkerI’m not even going to try to write a synopsis of this story.  It’s just like all the other books in the Drenai series, which is why I love it so much.  Basically, this one gives the story behind the rise of Ulric, khan of the Nadir, and the origin of the Nadir people.  Interestingly enough, Druss the Legend plays a major role.

This was the last book in the Drenai Saga that I hadn’t read, so reading it was a very bittersweet experience.  On the one hand, this one is just as good as all the other books in the series, and made me want to revisit Legend and some of the others.  On the other hand, I knew that once I’d finished it, there wouldn’t be any more Drenai books left.  So I took it slow for the first half, but naturally I finished it at a breathless late-night sprint a day or two later.

I’ve been thinking a lot lately about why I love David Gemmell’s books so much.  There are many reasons, but I think the main reason is that his writing is honest.  He strips away all the incidental stuff and gets right at the heart of the stuff that matters.  He doesn’t pussyfoot around, either–if his characters do something despicable, he doesn’t make any excuses for them.  He tells it like it is.  This can make for a very brutal story, but it also makes for a very cathartic one.

The other reason I love his books so much is because he does such a good job depicting raw, unrepressed manhood–not the stupid stuff like driving big cars and eating meat, but manning up and facing your greatest fears.  It’s about friendship, and honor, and fighting with all of your strength for something you believe in.  It’s about all that raw, pent-up energy we all have, that animal urge that drives us to competitive sports and first person shooters, and channeling it for a heroic cause.

The craziest thing is that the fight itself is actually more important than whatever side the characters are fighting on.  In this book, Druss is actually fighting to help bring about the rise of the Nadir khan who later invades his homeland and kills him on the walls of Dros Delnoch.  None of that matters, though, because Druss doesn’t fight with malice.  For him, it’s all about fighting for something, not against something, and the battle itself is just as important as the victory.  I don’t think I can put it better than this:

“Can we win here?” Sieben asked, as the shaman’s image began to fade.

“Winning and losing are entirely dependent on what you are fighting for,” answered Shaoshad. “All men here could die, yet you could still win. Or all men could live and you could lose. Fare you well, poet.”

The best thing about David Gemmell’s books is the fact that none of the characters–not even the bad guys–are defined by their own evil.  The Nadir are supposed to be the evil chaotic race of the Drenai universe, but when you come to understand what they’re fighting for, their hopes and dreams for a better future, you can really see what’s good in them.  Likewise, the more civilized Gothir are kind of like the evil white men who want to put down the savages and keep them in their place, but there are good and honorable men among them too.

And yet, even though the two sides clash, and good men die on both sides, it somehow isn’t tragic.  That’s the crazy part.  It’s almost like you can feel the characters salute each other as they die in a good cause, the way Ulric gave Druss a proper funeral in Legend, even though the two were blood-sworn enemies.  In David Gemmell’s world, honor and courage are more important than life or money.  Everyone dies; dying well is more important than living without honor.

This book is incredible.  As I was reading it, I decided it was the best David Gemmell book I’ve ever read–which is something I do every time I read one of his books.  I feel like I’m a better man for having read them.  If he had written a hundred books in this series, I would happily read them all.  The fact that there are no more new ones deeply saddens me, but I know I’ll revisit these stories again in the future.

The First Chronicles of Druss the Legend by David Gemmell

druss_chroniclesBefore Dros Delnoch, before Skeln Pass, before the Legend there was a seventeen year old woodsman and his young bride Rowena.  They lived a happy, simple life until slavers attacked their village and carried her away.

But Druss would stop at nothing to save her.  With the demon-cursed blade Snaga, he crossed oceans and continents, fighting corsairs, brigands, armies, empires, even chaos beasts to find her.  And with each battle, the legend grew.

But the greatest challenge Druss would face was not a warrior or a monster, but an old family curse from beyond the land of the living.

Oh man, it’s been far, far too long since I’ve read a David Gemmell book.  Far too long.  And this one was perfect.  It had everything you could possibly ask for in a book by David Gemmell: honor, glory, blood, war, mystics and evil sorcerers, monsters from beyond the grave, great empires and epic sieges, and even a good deal of romance.  And Druss himself is such an awesome character, an unassuming, simple hero who may be brash and may have a temper, but is never completely corrupted by evil.

That said, this is a brutal, brutal book.  The pithiest way I can describe it is Taken meets Lord of the Rings.  People get killed.  Women get raped.  In fact, I think most of the women in the book get raped.  Certainly, more than 50% of the characters die, most of them in a grisly, violent way.  And not everyone is redeemed.  In fact, some of the noblest characters fall.

But man, this is a good book.  Where other fantasy books start off with the lore of the world, painting an exquisitely detailed picture of the world and the magic and the history, Gemmell just throws you right in and grabs you with the story.  Things happen, and they happen quickly.  From the beginning, he snags his hooks in you.

But more than anything, the story means something.  Not in the sense that there’s some kind of underlying moral, or the characters are all black and white.  They aren’t.  People do good things for the wrong reasons, and bad things for the right reasons.  Some of the most despicable characters rise up to do heroic things, while some of the noblest and most honorable characters end up fighting for evil through no fault of their own.  But through it all, there’s so much truth, so much insight, that you can’t help but come away feeling like you’ve been through life and death, and seen the best that both have to offer.

I’m gushing, I know.  This book is INCREDIBLE.  Definitely on par with Gemmell’s best.  I wish he could have written a hundred novels just like it.  I would have read them all.

This is the second to last book in the Drenai series that I’ve read.  The only one that I haven’t gotten to yet is The Legend of Deathwalker, and I plan to get to that one right away.  After that, I’ll probably move on to the John Shannow novels, and then the Rigante series.  In three years, I wouldn’t be surprised if I’ve read every book that David Gemmell has ever written.  He’s just that kind of an author to me.  And if he were still alive, you can bet I’d be ravenously devouring every new book that comes out…

Sadly, the number of David Gemmell books in the world is finite.  But still, there’s quite a few left before I read them all.  And one day, somewhere in the far-off future, I hope to write books as incredible as his.  To one day surpass him would be an impossible dream…but as the Ventrians say, may all your dreams come true save one, for what is life without a dream?

Awesome, awesome book.  If you’re a fantasy reader and brutal stuff like rape doesn’t trigger you, you definitely need to give the Drenai Series a try.  Start with Legend, but get to this one shortly thereafter.  It’s an amazing, incredible read.

Up to my elbows in book surgery

That’s probably the best term for what I’m doing with Heart of the Nebula right now.  Basically, I let some of my darlings live, and they grew some extra limbs and started drooling acid without my realizing it.  But now, I’ve put enough distance between myself and the first draft that I have no qualms about grabbing the axe and chopping off heads.

Don’t worry; this is all a normal part of my creative process.  Maybe someday, stories will burst fully formed from my head like Athena from the brow of Zeus, but for now, my ideas are a lot more like baby turtles–if I’m lucky, one or two out of a dozen will actually reach the water and survive.  Protip: don’t follow the lights.

Speaking of ancient mythology, I’m reading the Argonautica right now, and I can’t help but notice that it would make a really, really, REALLY awesome science fiction story.  No, seriously–think about it.  A group of legendary heroes sets out on an epic voyage in search of some applied phlebotinum macguffin, have all sorts of adventures on strange and distant planets, get the girl to fall in love with the captain, and bring her back with them to their homeworld.  It would also work well as a heroic fantasy, but space is so much more awesome.

Incidently, Kutaisi was the capital of ancient Colchis, where Jason and the Argonauts came seeking the golden fleece.  People still speak of Medea as if she were a real person–generally, they think she was a dirty traitor who sold out her own people.  But people still enjoy the love story, and if you keep your eyes open you can see restaurants and hotels named after her.

So yeah.  Ancient Greek mythology + science fiction = win.  You can definitely expect to see some more of that in my own writing in the future.

In other news, I recently did an interview on fellow indie author Ty Johnston’s blog.  In it, I talk a little about my travel writing, what draws me to speculative fiction, my favorite number (hint: it’s 12), and my insights into the ancient Mayan calendar and the 2012 apocalypse.  It was a lot of fun–you should definitely check it out.

If you would like to host me for an interview on your blog, shoot me an email!  I’m always up for stuff like that.  Otherwise, I’d better roll up my sleeves and get back to hacking up operating on my book.

Trope Tuesday: The Cavalry

Things look bleak: the Big Bad is on the verge of conquering the world, and the heroes have gathered for one last stand.  Just when it looks like all hope is lost, a horn sounds in the distance, and the cavalry arrive to save the day.  Whether a ragtag bunch of minor characters, an army of unlikely heroes, or the ultra-heroic Eagle Squadron, the timely reinforcements use their overwhelming force to crush the villains and save the day.

When done right, this trope can be one of the defining moments of greatness of the entire work.  When done wrong, however, it becomes little more than a Deus Ex Machina of the most unsatisfying kind.  How, then, can this moment be done right?

As with any Deus Ex, one of the keys is to adequately foreshadow the end.  This often takes the form of Gondor Calls For Aid, when the heroes petition the cavalry for assistance before going into battle. To make things interesting, the relationship between the two parties is often complicated and ambiguous, making it doubtable that the cavalry will actually show up.

However, I think it goes deeper than this.  In order for the arrival of the cavalry to be satisfying, it needs to not invalidate everything that the heroes have already gone through.  If the cavalry shows up after the heroes have defeated the Big Bad, and essentially rescue them from a heroic sacrifice, that’s satisfying.  If the heroes are still fighting the Big Bad and the cavalry comes out of nowhere to hand them an unearned victory, that’s cheap.

In English 318R, Brandon Sanderson often used the film versions of the Lord of the Rings Trilogy to illustrate this.  The Battle of Helm’s Deep was satisfying, because the entire premise was to hold out until the third day.  When Eomer arrived with the Rohirrim on the morning of the third day and swept away the Uruk-Hai, that didn’t invalidate King Theoden’s efforts because all he was trying to do was survive.

In the Battle of Minas Tirith, however, Aragorn’s arrival with the unbeatable army of the dead was kind of cheap, because the premise was to defeat the orcs, not to hold out for reinforcements.  Gondor could have just stood down and let the orc army capture the city, and they still would have won in the end.

The two genres where you’re most likely to see this trope are westerns (trope namer) and heroic fantasy. Just about every David Gemmell novel involves a cavalry moment of some kind, and I looove it.  It’s also quite common in military science fiction, too–basically, any story where war is a major part of the narrative.

The variations on this trope are also quite fascinating.  For example:

The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins

This book review is going to be a bit unconventional, so please bear with me.

Normally, I only review books on my blog if I feel I can recommend them.  They might not be perfect, but overall, the praise outweighs the criticism. However, for me personally, The Hunger Games was a huge disappointment.

I’m not going to do a little book blurb like I usually do, because I want to spend all the available space on this post explaining the reasons why I was so disappointed.  Also because of that, this post will be full of spoilers.  Consider yourself warned.

First, let me say that I don’t think this book was all bad.  Suzanne Collins is very good at plot and pacing, and she knows how to keep a reader hooked.  In that way, this book reminded me of the old Michael Crichton thrillers that I devoured as a kid.

However, two crucial things killed about half of the suspense for me: the fact that this book was the first in a series, and the first person viewpoint.

From the very beginning, we know that Katniss isn’t going to die.  We know it, because she’s narrating the story to us directly (in present tense, which personally irks me, but I won’t go into that).  Unlike other gladiator-style heroic fantasies, where the major draw is to see who lives and who dies, we have that spoiled for us.

Of course, the argument in favor of the first person is that it helps the reader feel a closer connection with the viewpoint character.  The problem is, I never did.  At the end of the book, Katniss still feels like an outsider to me; I never felt like I got inside her head well enough to know who she really is.  When I try to imagine her, all I can envision is a wide-eyed mannekin.  She just didn’t come alive to me.

Why? Because the whole time, she’s only got one thing on her mind: survival.  I don’t see anything but fragmentary glimpses of her other motivations, and those are never fully fleshed out.  Her experiences growing up were just so traumatic that I can’t relate to her, and Suzanne Collins never provides a reference point outside of the awfulness of Katniss’s crapsack world.

Which is another thing that got to me: the setting.  Every time I opened the book, I dreaded going back to Collins’ world–and not in a good, “ooh, this world is so creepy/frightening” way, but in a “man, this place just makes me depressed” kind of way.  It wasn’t even that original–Panem is basically the USA as North Korea (though it could take place anywhere, for all the details Collins gives us).

What’s more, the setting is full of inconsistencies.  The people are starving to death, but the forests are full of game and wildlife.  In North Korea, people raze the forests for fuel and timber, driving all the game out.  Yes, I know the people of District 12 mine coal, but all of it presumably goes to Capitol, just like in District 11 all the grain goes to Capitol and the people still starve. Which makes me wonder: why are all the districts specializing in only one commodity?  That’s just stupid.

Which brings me to another thing: the sheer idiocy of the rulers of Panem.  If the Hunger Games are supposed to remind the people of how subjugated they are, why allow the tributes the opportunity to do something like pull a romance stunt?  Why spend all that time primping and preening them, interviewing them, and giving them an opportunity to manipulate the crowds?  When the people of District 11 sent Katniss the bread, why didn’t a government censor stop that from happening?  And finally, when Katniss and Peeta were the only ones left standing, why give them the opportunity to upstage the games by falling on each others’ swords?

Seriously, that last point got to me more than any of the others.  When they announced the rules change, that Peeta and Katniss were supposed to kill each other after all, why couldn’t the GM see the potential for things to go wrong?  Seriously, having them both kill each other–or refuse to kill each other–was such a blatantly obvious choice, I saw it the moment the rule change came into play.  The fact that the villains didn’t just threw me out of the story.

But that wasn’t the first thing that threw me out of the story.  The first thing was the parade, with Katniss and Peeta marching into the arena with their flaming cloaks.  All this time, Katniss has been set up as the underdog–she isn’t pretty, she isn’t strong, she’s mildly sympathetic for volunteering in place of her sister, but the audience in that arena is looking for blood, not sympathy.  So when the crowd goes wild for her and Peeta, I just didn’t buy it.

It only got worse as things went along.  When the tributes did the skill check, Katniss–who, from the beginning of the story, has been set up as the underdog–scores higher than anyone else.  Every time she’s in front of an audience, everyone is oohing and ahhing.  It made me want to gag.

Honestly, you know what it seemed like?  It seemed like Suzanne Collins fell in love with Katniss so much that she wanted to spoil her, even though the story required her to keep up the pressure.  She made sure to torture Katniss in the games–so much so that it felt downright melodramatic at times–but while they were still in Capitol, waiting for the games to start, Katniss felt like a spoiled Mary Sue.

And as for the romance, it fell completely flat from the beginning.  Katniss was nothing but a manipulative faker from the beginning–granted, because she needed to in order to stay alive, but the least she could have done was coordinate that with Peeta.

And that’s another reason why I had such little sympathy for her–she’s a callous, manipulative, lying little heartbreaker, like far too many women in this world.

So yeah, The Hunger Games was, in my opinion, a huge disappointment.  I can partially see why it did so well (strong female protagonist, excellent plot structure and pacing, lots of hooks and cliffhangers), but personally, I don’t think it deserves half the praise it’s gotten.  And after what friends have told me about the rest of the series, I can guarantee that I won’t be reading them.

The King Beyond the Gate by David Gemmell

Tenaka Khan was a child of two nations and an outsider to both.  Half Nadir, half Drenai, the only home he ever knew was in the ranks of the Dragon, the elite fighting forces of the Drenai.  But now, a mad dictator rules the land, and the Dragon has been destroyed.

With all his friends dead at the hand of the evil Drenai emperor, Tenaka has only one desire: to steal into the palace and assassinate him.  Along the way, however, he makes a number of friends, all of whom seek the same thing, but all for different reasons.  As they join forces with the Skoda rebels, Tenaka realizes that he not only has something to die for–he has something to live for.

But in order to defeat the mad emperor, the rebels must fight the Joinings–terrible creatures made from man and beast, who slaughtered the Dragon years before.  Only the Nadir can save them–but the Nadir want nothing more than to ravage the Drenai.

If  you’ve read my review of David Gemmell’s Legend, you know why I love his books.  This one was no less incredible.  Parts of it were just as poignant as anything in Legend, and the ending, while bittersweet, was no less satisfying.

It’s really fascinating to me, because Gemmell’s books are not particularly flowery or well written.  His descriptions are sparse, his prose is unassuming, his characters, while distinguished from each other, sound more or less the same, and his viewpoint is often inconsistent.  But in terms of raw storytelling, his books are unequaled by anything else I’ve ever read.

He makes me fall in love with his characters: I cheer for them when they rise to the heroic deeds that circumstances demand of them, I cry when they fall short of what they could have been, and I weep when they give their lives in the service of something greater than themselves, which is almost invariably the case.

My favorite part of any David Gemmell book has got to be the order of warrior priests known as the Thirty.  They don’t show up in every book, but they show up in many of them, and they always share the same characteristics.  The warrior priests are dedicated to the Source (Gemmell’s equivalent of God in his Drenai universe), and have the supernatural abilities to speak telepathically, put thoughts into others’ minds, shield their comrades from the magic of the Chaos brethren, and leave their bodies to fly across the world and do battle in other dimensions beyond the grave.

The way the order is run is absolutely fascinating.  One person is the mouth, the other the ears, the other the heart, etc.  The most unlikely characters always fill the particular roles–but always for good reason.  They fight to defend the innocent and pure, but more than that, they always have some great destiny to perform–a destiny that invariably pits them against the forces of Chaos in some great, decisive battle.  In that battle, all of them invariably die, except for the weakest among them, who goes out to found the next order of the Thirty.

I don’t know about you, but this kind of stuff, just makes me want to jump up and down.  This is fantasy at its best–good versus evil, warriors facing death, and the most unlikely heroes rising to the level of greatness that war and honor demand of them.  Throw in a little magic, a brotherhood of evil sorcerers bent on crushing all that is good in the world, and terrible monsters the likes of which exist only in nightmares, and I am so there, man–I am so there.

In short, this book was nothing less than awesome.  If you love any book by David Gemmell, I think you’ll enjoy this one.  It’s got everything you could possibly expect from heroic fantasy, and more.

Merchanter’s Luck by C. J. Cherryh

He was a down and out merchanter, the captain, crew, and sole proprietor of a run-down bucket of bolts spacecraft.  She was a daughter of one of the finest starfaring clans, with seven hundred cousins standing between her and the one thing she wanted more than anything else: command of a starship.

They met at Pell during the height of the Company War–the key strategic point on the border between Union and Earth.  Their fateful meeting would affect not only the outcome of the war, but the course of their own lives–for the starship Lucy of Wyatt’s Combine was not at all what she seemed to be.

Before I review this book, I need to issue a disclaimer: you probably aren’t going to enjoy it very much unless you’ve already read Downbelow Station.  Cherryh isn’t the best at easing her readers into her worlds, and without the background on Union, Alliance, and the Company War, you’ll probably be hopelessly lost.

That said, I absolutely loved this book.

The premise is so awesome.  Space adventure hardcore, with a beautiful love story set amidst an epic interstellar war, where alliances are constantly broken and no one can be trusted…oh man, I LOVED this book!

While the premise seems pretty standard, C. J. Cherryh transcends the well-worn tropes and cliches of her genre by intimately developing her characters and working their motivations into the story until they are the ones driving the plot, and not the other way around.

Every character is unique, and though they act in ways that may seem strange to our modern sensibilities, there are always reasons for everything they do, cultural or otherwise.  As windows into their far-future spacefaring culture, they give the reader a wonderful view of Cherryh’s unique and marvelously constructed universe.

The thing that surprised me the most, however, was the sharp contrast between this book and Downbelow Station. While Downbelow Station traces the epic arc of the Company War through the viewpoints of a large cast of characters, much like Tolkien or Dune, Merchanter’s Luck focuses more on the characters themselves, in much the same way as David Gemmell or Ursula K. Le Guin.  In other words, while Downbelow Station is comparable to “high” or epic fantasy, Merchanter’s Luck would fall closer to “low” fantasy or sword & sorcery.

The interesting self-realization I took from the book was that I’m much more interested in the intimately personal stories than the sweeping epic tale of the Rise and Fall of cultures and civilizations.  I suppose that’s why I’m more of a David Gemmell nut than a Tolkien fanatic, and perhaps why I’m more into space opera and military sf than epic fantasy.  In all of my novels, the focus is always on the individual characters and their personal conflicts, and whenever I get sidetracked and focus too much on the overworld story, it always falls apart. 

Merchanter’s Luck definitely doesn’t get sidetracked, and that’s why I loved it so much.  I fell in love with the characters almost from the very first page–from the blurb on the back cover, even.  And most of all, I fell hopelessly in love with the starship Lucy:

You know you’re doing science fiction right when your readers bemoan the fact that they weren’t born in the 26th century, when they could command their own spaceship.  C. J. Cherryh is an amazing writer, and if I had the chance, I would teleport into her Union-Alliance universe in a heartbeat.

If you love well-crafted far-future worlds and stories about the people that live in them, check out Downbelow Station (or really, just the first chapter–that’s all you need for a solid grounding) and read this book!

In the Realm of the Wolf by David Gemmell

Never leave home without a weapon, Dakyras taught his adopted daughter Miriel.  Though they live a quiet life alone in the mountains, death is never far from the man known as Waylander.

When the Assassin’s Guild puts out a high price on Waylander’s head, both Waylander and Miriel find themselves on the run.  With them come two ill-fated gladiators from Drenai: the loyal and steady Angel, and the arrogant and reckless Senta.  Both men vie for Miriel’s hand–and both are honor bound to kill each other.

But in the face of the evil hunting Waylander, Angel and Senta must lay aside their vendetta and take up arms against the Gothir army hunting the Wolf clan, tribe of the prophesied chieftain that will one day unite the Nadir.  For deep in the realm of the Wolf lies a castle more ancient than the three empires–a castle whose dark secrets threaten to upset the global order forever.

This book was awesome.  I loved every moment of it.  With each page, the story just got better and better, right up to the climactic finish.  If you’re looking for a rousing adventure, you can’t go wrong with David Gemmell.

One of the things I loved the most about this story was the love triangle between Miriel, Angel, and Senta.  At first, I thought I knew who was good, who was bad, and which one she’d end up with, but then things changed and I wasn’t too sure.  Even though I hated Senta at first, I spent most of the book vacillating with my feelings on him.  And the way things ended–I wasn’t disappointed.  Not one bit.

Even though the overall story conflict was much, much larger than life, Gemmell’s characters always felt very real.  Perhaps it has to do with the way their true nature always seems to come out in battle–and Gemmell gives them plenty of opportunity to show their true nature.

It also has to do with the things they’re fighting for, though–the stakes are always clear for each character, and when they’re confused what they’re fighting for, that’s made clear too.  Though the conflict itself is larger than life, the stakes for each individual character never are.

The ending really took the cake for me, though.  When I finished the book, I couldn’t help but smile.  Gemmell is a master at writing endings that make you want to stand up and cheer.

As awesome as this book was, though, the last book in the trilogy, Hero in the Shadows, is so much better.  The last scene of that book stands out so much more to me, now that I know everything about Waylander’s past.  So.  Freaking.  Epic.

But do yourself a favor: don’t read the last book first, like I did.  Start with Waylander, which is a good book–not great, but good–and read through the trilogy.  If you love stories about true heroes and epic adventures, you won’t be disappointed.

Waylander by David Gemmell

The Drenai lands have been overrun, and the Vagrian conquerors, led by Kaem and the Dark Brotherhood, are laying waste to all that lies before them.  Only the stronghold at Purdol withstands them, but unless the Drenai can rally a counterattack, all will be lost.

In these trying times, a strange old man visits the assassin Waylander and urges him to go to the sacred Nadir mountain of Raboas and retrieve the legendary Armor of Bronze.  With this armor, the Drenai commander Egel can rally the army that will save the kingdom.

But Waylander is a hunted man–a man of dark secrets and many enemies.  Kaem wants him dead for killing his son.  The Nadir want him dead for violating their lands.  And the Drenai want him dead for assassinating their king.

I love David Gemmell.  When you pick up one of his novels, you know exactly what you’re going to get: gritty, complex characters, bloody battles, ruthless villains, and difficult moral decisions that transform even the most depraved individuals into true heroes, if only for a few moments before they die.  Waylander is no exception.

Perhaps the most interesting part of the book is the story behind the founding of the Thirty.  When the young Source priest named Dardalion forsakes the pacifism in order to save the lives of his fellow countrymen, twenty nine fellow priests join him to form the band of legendary warrior monks.  This religious order goes on to play a pivotal role in some of Gemmell’s best works.

Waylander himself is also an interesting, memorable character.  During the events of Waylander, he’s basically hit rock bottom, but as he learns again what it means to love and fight for what he loves, he climbs out of that dark place.

I really enjoyed this book.  My only complaint is that the ending felt a little rushed.  All the plots and subplots get tied up, but some of them so abruptly that there’s little room to savor the emotional impact.  Still, the novel was quite satisfying overall.  I look forward to reading the next book in the Waylander saga.