Background Information
As I’m sure you can deduce from the cover, this is a pulp paperback fantasy. My edition was 613 pages of story, plus another 17 pages of glossary. (This is one of those fantasy novels with a lot of worldbuilding, so a glossary is provided in the back to help the reader keep track of all the names and places. Although I’ve got to say, while I was reading this book, I only ended up flipping back to the glossary once or twice. Things are explained clearly enough in the narrative that you don’t really need the glossary.)
This book was originally published in 1995, and is the first book of a 6 book series. (Because of course it is. It’s impossible to find a mass-market paperback fantasy book that isn’t part of a longer series.)
The author, Sara Douglas, is Australian, and from what I can gleam from Wikipedia, it looks like this book was first published in Australia, and then based off of its success in Australia, republished on the global market. In Australia and the UK, this book was published as Battleaxe (W), but in the US it is The Wayfarer Redemption.
Why I Read this Book
I have a soft spot for pulp fantasy. It’s one of my guilty pleasures.
I doubt this confession will surprise regular readers of this blog. (I suspect it is very obvious from the contents of this blog that I’m a huge geek, and what could be more geeky than pulp fantasy?)
Plus, whenever I dabble in writing fiction myself, it’s almost always in - a - fantasy - setting.
And yet, looking back over my reading list, I realize that I’ve read very few fantasy books over the years. I’ve read a handful, sure, but not a lot.
I’ve been doing some thinking recently to try to figure out what the disconnect is between my love of the genre and my paltry reading record. The short version (and I am trying to keep these things short) is that I’m a very slow reader, and I only get through a handful of books every year, and within that small handful of books I’m also - distracted - by - a - lot - of - other - interests.
(My pace with this particular novel is a case in point. It took me 7 - months to finish it. Other reviewers claim to have whipped through this book in a couple of days.)
That, plus I’ve been living abroad for the past - 20 - years, and the lack of access to English books out here makes it very difficult to read a whole series. I’ll occasionally stumble across a fantasy book in a second hand bookshop out here, but then I’ll realize that it’s only one book in a series, and it seems pointless to start the book when I know I’ll never be able to finish the series.
Also, it does sometimes seem a waste of time to read trashy fantasy novels when there are so many classic books I haven’t read.
Actually, what I want is to be is an omnivorous reader--someone who finds time to read plenty of great classic novels, and also plenty of trash (much like the great Steve Donoghue). I’m not that. (I read much too slowly). But sometimes, when I go into a bookstore and look at all the options there, I have a tendency to forget what a slow reader I am. And I’ll get this idea that I have time to read both my quota of trashy pulp and my quota of great classics. And then I’ll be quite tempted to pick something like this up.
Such was the case several months ago, when I was perusing the selection of books on Bookstreet here in Saigon, and I stumbled upon a rather battered copy of this book in one of the used book stalls.
The edges of the pages were already discolored and spotted. (The tropical climate here in Vietnam isn’t always kind to old books.) But to a certain extent, that all seemed to add to the atmosphere of the thing--if you’re going to get a trashy fantasy novel, it helps if it looks a bit trashy as well.
I noticed, of course, that this book was the first part of a longer series, and I knew that I wouldn’t be able to find the other books in the series out here in Vietnam. So if I started this, I would never get closure. And yet, I thought it might be fun nonetheless to just dip my toes into this series--just get a little bit of a taste of the worldbuilding and the imagination, even if I couldn’t see it through to the end.
And so, on a whim, I bought it.
I decided to start reading this book in May. I already had several books I was busy reading at the time, but I needed a new portable book--something to take with me to read when I travelled around the city, or needed something to read at work during lunch breaks. (None of - the - other - books I was then reading were very portable).
My Reading Journey
I started this book in May 2022, and have been using it as my “lunch break” book ever since.
With a couple exceptions. When we went travelling to visit my wife’s hometown back in June, I swapped out this book for The Iliad as my travel read. (Just because I was in a classical mood). And because I only got halfway through The Iliad when I was traveling, after returning I then spent a couple weeks finishing up The Iliad during my lunch breaks.
Plus, one day I forgot to bring this book with me to work. And so I went to the school library and got Diary of a Wimpy Kid instead. And then I forgot to bring this book with me again, and so I got Animorphs out from the school library, and read that for a couple days.
But, aside from those brief distractions, I’ve been carrying this book around with me at work for the past 7 months.
One of the disadvantages of carrying books around at work is that it puts on full display what a low reader you are. “You’re still reading that?” people would say when they saw me at lunch. “You’ve been reading that book for months now.”
The Story
I’ve already established that this book is fantasy, but it occurs to me that there are really two different types of fantasy.
There’s fantasy that makes use of already established mythic or folkloric elements (e.g. dwarfs, elves, goblins, fairies, dragons, etc).
And then there’s fantasy that completely does it’s own thing, and makes up entirely new fantastic creatures.
This book is the latter. It’s got a recognizably medieval setting (swords, arrows, kings, castles, etc). But it exists in a completely original world with completely original creatures. There are, for instance, the Icarii, a type of birdman type creature. And there are the Avor, a type of horned people. And then there are the Skraelings, a type of carnivorous ghosts.
In the beginning of the book, I was getting strong Game of Thrones vibes. Just like in Game of Thrones, this story takes place in a kingdom which has a northern border with a snowy ice-land, and just like in Game of Thrones, this story opens up by hinting that a mystical ancient evil has awakened in the snowy north. Down in the capital city, the characters are only hearing rumors of this ancient evil, but they are becoming aware that the wild men in the snowy wilderness are being forced to flee south because something even more savage than them has appeared.
And, just like in Games of Thrones, while this threat is looming in the North, the kingdom to the South appears to be on the brink of a succession crisis and civil war.
“Borneheld is the child of Priam’s only sister, Rivkah, who married Borneheld’s father Searlas, the previous Duke,” Devera explained.
Faraday paused in her contemplation of Borneheld to glance back at Devera. For a moment she thought that there was some hesitation, or some darker shadow, behind Devera’s words, but she couldn’t quite put her finger on it. “So, if Priam has no children, Borneheld will become king.”
Devera shrugged and took another sip of wine. “Probably, unless the other Earls and Barons decided to fight him for the privilege.”
“But that would mean civil war! Are you suggesting that our fathers would be so disloyal?” Faraday valued loyalty above most other virtues.
“Well, the prize would be worth it, wouldn’t it,” Devera snapped, the wine she had drunk making her tongue dangerously loose. (p.30-31)
I’d be tempted to accuse Sara Douglass of ripping off Game of Thrones, except that this book was published back in 1995, way before The Game of Thrones TV show, and ****quickly checks Wikipedia**** even one year before the first Game of Thrones novel.
And while I’m comparing this book to other science fiction franchises, there is also a strong Avatar vibe going on in this story.
As with Avatar, this story involves the main characters having their worldview completely changed during the course of the story. They start out believing that they are the forces of civilization defending the world against the savage creatures of the wilderness, but then along the way they discover that everything they’ve grown up believing is wrong, and that they are the bad guys and it is actually their civilization which has been responsible for brutalizing the other creatures.
Oh, and you remember that sacred Hometree in Avatar? There’s a similar sacred tree in this book. And just like in Avatar, there’s a key scene in which the sacred tree is attacked. The outcome is different in this book--the sacred tree isn’t destroyed. But nonetheless, reading this book I felt very strongly reminded of Avatar.
I’d be tempted to accuse this book of ripping Avatar off, except that (again) this book came out all the way back in 1995, and Avatar didn’t come out until 2009.
But then again, as I pointed out in my 2010 review of Avatar, Avatar itself was a combination of previously existing tropes from different franchises. So perhaps Sara Douglass and Avatar share a common inspiration?
--The ancient prophecy
--The chosen one
--The forces of good versus the forces of evil
--a good brother fighting against an evil brother
--The “I am your father” moment
etc.
(After finishing this book, I read a few different reviews online, and every other single reviewer also seemed to pick up on the fact that this book was loaded with cliches and tropes. But then again, it’s genre fiction, so I guess you come to expect the tropes of the genre.)
The Reading Experience / Evaluation
The good news is, the prose is very readable. This book flows.
This is something almost every reviewer of this book seems to agree on.
Now, I personally took 7 months to get through this book, but that’s not really saying anything. I’m a slow reader, and I’m easily distracted.
What I did notice is that whenever I picked this book up, I had no trouble getting back into it. Even when I was coming back after a break of a few weeks, I had absolutely no trouble getting back into the flow of the narrative.
Considering how much world building is going on in this book, Sara Douglass is doing an impressive task to do it all in very readable prose. (When I was reading Lord of the Rings, I complained that I often couldn’t understand Tolkien’s landscape descriptions. But I had no such problem with Sara Douglass. She takes the reader to many different exotic locations, but she always describes the locations in perfectly readable prose.)
The big problem, however, is that the characters are flat.
There are characters, like Gilbert and Borneheld, who start out as unlikable. At the very beginning of the book, I was initially expecting they might have a character arc where they learn to grow more compassionate, and eventually redeem themselves. But no. It quickly becomes apparent that their only purpose in the narrative is to be as unsympathetic as possible so that the reader can enjoy hating them, and then take satisfaction when they get their eventual come-uppance.
The good characters, on the other hand, are simply portrayed as good and pure-hearted.
This is not one of those books that embraces the infinite complexity of human nature. Instead, good guys are good, and bad guys are bad.
Again, it's a fantasy genre, and this is one of the tropes of fantasy, so I guess I shouldn’t complain about this too much. But such characters can be a bit boring to spend 613 pages with.
But on the other hand, the plot beats for this novel work. Although this book has the “chosen one” trope several times over, (not just one character, but actually several characters, are revealed to be special chosen ones of various sorts during the narrative), I still found the various revelations and plot twists to have the desired emotional effects.
I read some other online reviewers who complained that they found this book incredibly predictable--that they could see every revelation coming a mile away. I didn’t really have this problem though. I suppose I might have been guilty of turning my brain off while I read this book (in retrospect, I guess I should have seen a number of these plot twists coming, but I didn’t). It’s also possible that these plot twists are more obvious to people who read much more fantasy than I do.
But regardless of whether or not the plot is predictable, at least the pacing is good. All the plot beats come at the right places to keep the momentum of the story going, and hold your interest as you read.
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