{"id":4094,"date":"2011-02-03T23:31:42","date_gmt":"2011-02-04T06:31:42","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.onelowerlight.com\/writing\/?p=4094"},"modified":"2011-02-06T23:18:45","modified_gmt":"2011-02-07T06:18:45","slug":"the-king-beyond-the-gate-by-david-gemmell","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.onelowerlight.com\/writing\/the-king-beyond-the-gate-by-david-gemmell\/","title":{"rendered":"The King Beyond the Gate by David Gemmell"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Tenaka Khan was a child of two nations and an outsider to both.\u00a0 Half Nadir, half Drenai, the only home he ever knew was in the ranks of the Dragon, the elite fighting forces of the Drenai.\u00a0 But now, a mad dictator rules the land, and the Dragon has been destroyed.<\/em><\/p>\n

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.\u00a0 Along the way, however, he makes a number of friends, all of whom seek the same thing, but all for different reasons.\u00a0 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.<\/em><\/p>\n

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.\u00a0 Only the Nadir can save them–but the Nadir want nothing more than to ravage the Drenai.<\/em><\/p>\n

If\u00a0 you’ve read my review of David Gemmell’s Legend<\/em><\/a>, you know why I love his books.\u00a0 This one was no less incredible.\u00a0 Parts of it were just as poignant as anything in Legend<\/em>, and the ending, while bittersweet, was no less satisfying.<\/p>\n

It’s really fascinating to me, because Gemmell’s books are not particularly flowery or well written.\u00a0 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.\u00a0 But in terms of raw storytelling, his books are unequaled by anything else I’ve ever read.<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

My favorite part of any David Gemmell book has got to be the order of warrior priests known as the Thirty.\u00a0 They don’t show up in every book, but they show up in many of them, and they always share the same characteristics.\u00a0 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.<\/p>\n

The way the order is run is absolutely fascinating.\u00a0 One person is the mouth, the other the ears, the other the heart, etc.\u00a0 The most unlikely characters always fill the particular roles–but always for good reason.\u00a0 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.\u00a0 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.<\/p>\n

I don’t know about you, but this kind of stuff, just makes me want to jump up and down.\u00a0 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.\u00a0 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<\/em> there.<\/p>\n

In short, this book was nothing less than awesome.\u00a0 If you love any book by David Gemmell, I think you’ll enjoy this one.\u00a0 It’s got everything you could possibly expect from heroic fantasy, and more.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Tenaka Khan was a child of two nations and an outsider to both.\u00a0 Half Nadir, half Drenai, the only home he ever knew was in the ranks of the Dragon, the elite fighting forces of the Drenai.\u00a0 But now, a mad dictator rules the land, and the Dragon has been destroyed. With all his friends… Continue reading The King Beyond the Gate by David Gemmell<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[1],"tags":[112,113,403,458,1005,87,435,165,424,510,86],"class_list":["post-4094","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-character","tag-david-gemmell","tag-death","tag-good-and-evil","tag-heroic-fantasy","tag-heroism","tag-honor","tag-magic","tag-monsters","tag-the-thirty","tag-war","entry"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p7iXK-142","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.onelowerlight.com\/writing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4094","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.onelowerlight.com\/writing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.onelowerlight.com\/writing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.onelowerlight.com\/writing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.onelowerlight.com\/writing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4094"}],"version-history":[{"count":28,"href":"https:\/\/www.onelowerlight.com\/writing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4094\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4122,"href":"https:\/\/www.onelowerlight.com\/writing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4094\/revisions\/4122"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.onelowerlight.com\/writing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4094"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.onelowerlight.com\/writing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4094"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.onelowerlight.com\/writing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4094"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}