Trying to find the most logical way into Iain M. Banks‘ sprawling Culture series, but been turned off by the abstracted Use of Weapons, the obfuscated Inversions, or even his somewhat flawed first Culture novel Consider Phlebas? Look no further. The Player of Games is probably the best book for you.

One of Banks’ tightest Culture novels, The Player of Games represents the British author writing science fiction at his most accessible. As with the other books in the series, one of the book’s main functions is to display the vivid complexity and richness of human ideas that The Culture itself represents. In many ways, Banks’ Culture novels are a guiding post to what humanity could become; an urbane future, galactic society with powerful ethics, powerful technology, and an even more powerful love for all things pleasurable.

But where many of Banks’ other Culture novels feature several complex post-human protagonists and jump between their vastly differing points of view, The Player of Games features just one. This structure — and the fact that that protagonist eschews much of The Culture’s more exotic mores, and is thus much closer in outlook to today’s reader — makes the book much more highly accessible and a tightly woven read.

That protagonist is Jernau Morat Gurgeh. Gurgeh is typical of many Culture citizens; he lives on one of its massive, constructed ring-planets (dubbed Orbitals), he has its post-human genetics, with an ability to internally create and digest any known drug, and he also has the Culture’s penchant for enjoying every pleasure known to the galaxy, with gusto.

With one difference.

Gurgeh is one of the Culture’s most famous and skilled game players. That is, he excels at any game of diversion that involves intellectual stimulation. Modern examples might be chess or checkers — but in the Culture, games have evolved to somewhat of an art form, with some taking days to complete. And Gurgeh is an acknowledged master of them all.

As many artists at the pinnacle of their profession do, however, Gurgeh has gotten bored. He can easily beat all but the most skilled professional opponents. There are still challenges to accept, but few give him any sense of real competition. And it’s this dissatisfaction with his main occupation that appears to be poisoning everything else the master game player participates in.

Thus, when a set of unusual events occurs that leads him into contact with an unstable drone (the Culture’s extremely intelligent and quirky brand of robots) and eventually, into a jaunt to an alien space empire with the Culture’s Special Circumstances branch — its complex combination of espionage and early stage intervention forces — it doesn’t appear that Gurgeh’s too unhappy to sign on for a tour of duty.

Especially when the Culture needs him to participate in what may be the most complex game ever invented by a humanoid life form; a game which shapes its entire society and has life or death outcomes.

From here on out The Players of Games is vintage Culture. Banks uses the lens of an alien civilisation to display his primary vision of humanity to great effect; its decadence, its tolerance, its advanced systems of ethics and thought and its technology in action.

But the book is also much more than that.

It’s the story of an artist who has been protected for his entire life; allowed to pursue his passion without compromise; sheltered from all forms of violence and able to reach fulfilment, suddenly thrust into a world which is much more brutal, emotional, turbulent, and even vicious.

And it’s about how all of that impacts on him.

The striking thing about the subject matter of the book is how Gurgeh reacts to events. The Culture’s view on violence, even sexualised violence, and the less civilised galactic civilisations that allow it as an everyday event, is complex, and this shows in Gurgeh’s reaction to it. Many would turn away from it; deny its existence to themselves, reject it. The Culture’s approach is different, in that it understands and faces the darker sides of humanity.

This does not mean that it condones, or even in many cases, allows violence to take place. But it does mean that it doesn’t look away from violence. And it acknowledges that sometimes violence is necessary — as when an entire benign civilisation comes under unprovoked attack from without.

The Player of Games is the second Culture novel, and textually, it shows. In my review of the first book in the series, Consider Phlebas, I noted that the book “sprawls”. I wrote:

“In any other popular science fiction writer’s arsenal, the novel would no doubt be seen as their masterpiece; its engrossing narration, the consideration to which its author gave the world he built in it and the characters he portrays would combine to make the book one of the greats.

However, read in the context of Banks’ other Culture novels, it is clear that when the author published Consider Phlebas, he was struggling with both the form of the novel itself, as well as the need to tell a finite story in the world of infinite complexity and interest that he imagined in the Culture.”

When writing The Player of Games, Banks was clearly much less ambitious than when he was putting Consider Phlebas together; and it shows. Although the book covers much less ground, it does it so much more successfully; its more limited scope allows it to shine clearly. Banks learnt much from Consider Phlebas.

The Player of Games’ messages are clearer, its limited set of characters more defined and its plotline more tightly woven. Hints are strewn throughout the book as to the ultimate motives and actions behind the set of events at the forefront of the narrative, but they are not obvious, and Banks does a great job of gradually revealing his story, without going too fast or too slowly.

Ultimately, because of its diminished scope, The Player of Games is not a masterpiece of science fiction; not even a flawed masterpiece like Consider Phlebas. But what it is is an absolute classic of the genre that every sci-fi literature fan should pick up. It’s a triumph; it marks Banks’ coming of age as a science fiction master. It’s a solid gold nugget of enjoyable goodness which will remain in your memory for years to come.

And also — critically, given the complexity of the narrative of some of the other Culture books — it represents an ideal introduction into this ambitious vision of the future of humanity. Read this (or perhaps the later novel Look to Windward) first, before you experience the rest of the Culture series. It’s a fantastic set-up for the bigger Culture universe out there. And it’s a thought-provoking window into humanity’s future soul.

This review is by Suzanne Tindal/Wohlthat, an Australian journalist and writer who can be found on Twitter as @engochick.

Under Heaven is a fantasy using the Chinese Tang Dynasty as a framework. Author Guy Gavriel Kay does not, therefore, have to create a world as such, but conduct research into the one which had once existed.

He took his inspiration to write about this period of Chinese history from famed poets, so it’s not so strange that the mood he sets from the very beginning in this book is pensive and philosophic. The main character Tai is introspective, given to doing the opposite of what many of the other, stereotypically materialistic, inhabitants of his world are wont to do.

Tai, the second son of a celebrated general, decides to use a mourning period for his father to bury the dead at a battlefield which his father fought at forty years earlier. Because of the many angry and sorrowing ghosts inhabiting the field, which men can actually hear, he is thought of as crazy. But he spends two years digging graves, and is rewarded with a lavish gift from the princess of the people across the border – a careless gift which men would kill for and which will endanger his life.

The gift takes him away from the battlefield as he decides to deliver it to the imperial court before someone kills him over it. However, having been so long away from the court, he’s lost the subtlety necessary to survive in the political currents, resulting in games which Kay portrays in detail.

Unfortunately, the closed nature of these political games has not aided Kay in his characterisation. I did not become attached to Tai, who I felt was a walking stereotype of the “different” man who acts according to his heart. It was also difficult to get a glimpse into the other characters’ motives or emotions because we as the reader were only able to see the glimpses which their court poker faces allowed us. Only two characters gained my approval, one being a drunken poet, and another being an emperor’s concubine, who I think Kay drew well.

In general, I’m not sure where Kay was aiming this novel. I don’t feel that the story had enough intricacies to draw in those who love highly political Chinese-themed fantasy, and at the same time didn’t have enough sword fighting for those who love Chinese martial arts tales. For those who like romances, Kay has not tread the traditional route with his protagonists, leaving me (as one who enjoys a good love story) not satisfied. He has some supernatural elements in the novel, however, they’re not a main feature, which left me wondering why they were there at all.

In conclusion, he tried to pack too many elements into a story without doing a good job on any of them. The book was, however, written in a poetic manner and those looking for a bit of diversion may enjoy it.

Rating: 2.5/5

Ever since Patrick Rothfuss published The Name of the Wind in 2007, much of the fantasy-loving book world has been living in a state of suspense, wondering whether the US author could follow such a strong debut up with a worthwhile sequel. Well, it looks like we can rest easy — early reviews of that sequel — The Wise Man’s Fear — are in, and they are nothing if not positive.

Writes Pat at Pat’s Fantasy Hotlist:

“So was it, in the end, worth the four years it took to be published? Let me set your mind at ease. For those who enjoyed The Name of the Wind, you can safely go ahead and pre-order The Wise Man’s Fear. It’s everything its predecessor was, and then some!”

Pat adds that if you didn’t like the first book (and, let me say, I understand that not everybody enjoys the sort of deep introspective and slightly tortured fantasy fiction that The Name of the Wind represents), you might as well not get Rothfuss’ second effort. However, what is fantasy without a bit of walking on the dark side? ;)

Jo Walton, writing on Tor.com, appears to agree with Pat:

“The Wise Man’s Fear was worth waiting for. It’s about as good as this kind of fantasy can possibly get … I thoroughly enjoyed the experience of immersing myself completely in the world and the events. It’s such a great world, and the people are like real people, and what happens is endlessly entertaining. The only caveat I have is that there’s likely to be another long wait for the third one. But … it’s worth it.”

I have to say, personally, The Wise Man’s Fear is one of the fantasy books I am most looking forward to in 2011. Bring on the continuation of Kvothe’s tale :)

Like so many hyped novels brought out by this millennium’s generation of first-time science fiction and fantasy authors, Peter V. Brett’s The Painted Man (also known as The Warded Man) is a mediocre novel with only skin-deep characterisation and an entirely predictable plot line that leaves the reader wanting.

I simply cannot understand why this book has made so many bestseller lists and why top-level reviewers such as Pat from Pat’s Fantasy Hotlist have labeled this “a quality” debut. Any seasoned reader of fantasy novels will find little to satiate their interest here.

Nor can I understand why publishers continue to send these kind of books blithely off to the printer’s to be produced, without so much as considering the negative effect they have upon the entire genre. Sometimes, it’s not enough to simply accept that if something is marketed well, that it will sell well. In 2010, after all the lessons that have come before, we must also have an expectation that our books are written well.

The Painted Man is set in a world which is notionally post-apocalyptic, and which is possibly Earth. A wave of demons, at some point in the past, arose from its center in the depths of night and tore the planet’s civilisation asunder, leaving behind what might best be described as a medieval world of isolated towns and small cities.

And the demon threat – Brett calls them ‘corelings’ – has not abated. Every evening as night falls, demons in varying shapes and sizes shimmer into existence and start to attack and devour whatever humans or other animals they find around them.

Human civilisation survives because of a sort of magic called ‘wards’. The human population paints and draws these wards on all their structures, to ensure that their energy will stop the demons from passing their boundaries every night. But the wards that once allowed humans to actually attack demons and drive them back have been tragically lost.

Into this world, Brett injects several characters. The first and main character is a young man named Arlen, who has grown up in a small village and is accustomed to watching the demons from behind his houses’ flimsy wards every night. Other major characters include Leesha, a young woman from a different village, and Rojer, another young man whose family owns an inn in yet a third village.

As the book’s plot gradually progresses, each character is forced to face their own trials. Arlen loses his family and sets out to find a future in a big city; Leesha struggles with the sex-focused men of her village and her own calling as a healer, and Rojer takes to the road as a musician and entertainer.

As you might guess, by the end of the book the three major characters’ fates start to become entwined.

However, it’s likely that Brett will lose many readers – particularly those who prefer books with complex themes and characters – before that point.

The problem is two-fold. Firstly, the characters in The Painted Man are extremely simple stereotypes that don’t stand up to closer scrutiny. Arlen might as well be the avatar of veangeance and change, Rojer the downtrodden waif who suddenly discovers his musical talent in a blaze of glory.

And Leesha? Well, she has big breasts, but sex isn’t everything to her; she also wants intellectual validation as a person.

For most of the book, I could stand reading about Arlen’s driven quest to battle the demons. And there was a strange kind of pathos in Rojer’s sufferings that most writers and musicians – artists of any kind, actually — will be able to identify with. Although the way that both of these characters are created is stilted, at least you could say that Brett is more or less competent.

However, Brett’s characterisation of Leesha is nothing short of appalling.

One gets the feeling from the sections of the book that deal with Leesha that Brett isn’t just trying to portray a woman’s stereotypical struggle against a society that doesn’t quite understand that the female side of our species are human beings too. It’s as if he himself doesn’t quite understand that women are much more than just breeding animals.

In his book, Brett talks just a little too much about sex, about Leesha’s breasts, about the instincts of men who want to mate with her. Frankly, it’s a bit creepy, and at times it made me feel uncomfortable reading it.

In trying to portray a female character struggling against the stereotype of her gender, Brett might have just actually reinforced that stereotype in The Painted Man – and that’s a terrible thing. And that stereotype pulls both ways: By creating Leesha in this mould, Brett also creates stereotypes out of the men who are attracted to her.

So Brett starts off with frustratingly stereotypical characters. And then – to add insult to injury – they develop in predictable ways. Arlen starts to question the idea that people can’t fight back against demons. Rojer starts to stand up for himself and learn a little about he world.

And, of course Leesha gradually learns that women aren’t just made for breeding – that they’re humans with brains and abilities too. Wow, what an insight!

The second problem that Brett has in the Painted Man is the setting.

Although the demons emerge every night, and the major characters face them regularly, the author never fleshes them out – throughout the book they remain a mindless, shapeless nightmare horde, without feelings beyond the bestial, without intelligence beyond a desire to devour.

It’s incredibly obvious that nameless, faceless evil beings just don’t work well in fantasy novels. To be interesting to a reader, evil must have a personality, motivations and character development as all other characters do. To forget this is to shortchange readers and to assume they don’t have rational minds capable of understanding complexity.

Even video game creators understand this in 2010 — I cannot understand why Brett appears not to.

The world which The Painted Man is set in is similarly devoid of colour. For a post-apocalyptic civilization it seems pretty bland. We don’t see dramatic ruined cityscapes or even, really, roads – all we get is featureless wilderness and the stereotypical walled fortresses and occasional towns of a world at a similar level of technology as that found in The Lord of the Rings.

Most novelists will tell you that if you create a character, with a history and set of character traits and desires, and then situate that character in a world with enough detail and other players, the plot will gradually start to tell itself – it’s inevitable.

Brett’s problem would appear to be that he created bland characters in a bland world … and then – surprise, surprise – got a bland plot. Go figure. Who could have predicted that?

Now, I wouldn’t harp on about this topic so much if there hadn’t been so many novels like The Painted Man around recently – the book shelves are filled with them. Another recent example is Paul Hoffman’s The Left Hand of God.

The most offensive thing about these books is not that they have been written or that they are terrible – because they’re not. They’re just mediocre. And yet, they are being marketed on bookshelves alongside amazing modern titles such as Brandon Sanderson’s The Way of Kings and Patrick Rothfuss’ The Name of the Wind. And that’s a tragedy, because there are in a completely different class.

Do yourself a favour. Don’t buy Peter V. Brett’s The Painted Man. There are better things to do in life than read mediocre science fiction and fantasy – because there are great books out there that are infinitely more worth your time.

Spoiler warning: This review contains some mild background on Robin Hobb’s Realm of the Elderlings series, although it does not contain spoilers for Dragon Haven. If you haven’t read Hobb’s previous works in this series, you probably shouldn’t be reading Dragon Haven or this review.

With Dragon Haven, fantasy master Robin Hobb has begun to rekindle some of the magic that had left her most recent works, particularly the Soldier Son trilogy. The book represents a satisfying conclusion to the two book series –The Rain Wild Chronicles — Hobb has penned as a follow-up to her extended nine book saga The Realm of the Elderlings, while still leaving room for future works in that world.

What a seasoned Hobb fan will most note about Dragon Haven is that it contains a great deal of the subtle plot and character creation and gradual world revelation that Hobb had perfected in her Elderlings saga. There is a wonderful undercurrent of ideas and emotions swirling through Hobb’s prose that constantly leaves the reader both guessing and angsty that her characters don’t know the full picture and haven’t worked through their internal turmoil.

But the book doesn’t have the same kind of drawn-out pacing that plagued the Soldier Son trilogy. Instead, I found it a pleasure to read.

I came down pretty hard on Hobb after I finished The Dragon Keeper, the first book in The Rain Wild Chronicles. And now I have to admit Hobb has taken any criticism from myself and others she read on board, and created a book in Dragon Haven that her fans will simply love.

Like The Dragon Keeper, the plot of Dragon Haven takes place in the Rain Wilds, the exotic area located upstream of Bingtown, the city where much of the action in The Liveship Traders is set, at a time shortly after the concluding events at the end of The Tawny Man trilogy.

In The Dragon Keeper, dragons had returned to the world, but in a stunted and degraded form — they could no fly, and some appeared witless and bestial. In short, they were far from the magical and all-powerful beings of legend.

With the dragons becoming a danger to the humans who tend them and live nearby, the logical next step was to move them upriver to a more appropriate setting; a glorious ancient city the dragons themselves dream of: the fabled Kelsingra. Half of this journey was completed in the first book.

Dragon Haven is in many ways a story of being on the road. Like many novelists, Hobb uses the plot device of her characters travelling through various hardships as a method to force them to grow and develop.

In both the dragons’ and the humans’ cases, the journey is both physical, in the sense that as the book wears on, they endure various hardships and traverse much terrain, and internal, in that these external trials serve as mirrors which force the characters to look into themselves and find who they really are.

For the dragons, this means both becoming physically larger and stronger, while also re-learning and remembering much of their power and their glory. For the humans, the struggle is often tied up in their sexuality. For Rain Wilder Thymara, it’s getting past the idea that her physical defects don’t mean she can’t have a relationship or potentially even bear children. For Bingtown wife and dragon scholar Alise, it means dealing with the reality of her marriage and potential future happiness.

And for poor Sedric, it means coming to a dreadful understanding of what his own relationship with Alise’s husband has truly been about.

Like other ‘road’ books, the eventual fate of Hobb’s individual characters, and indeed the entire expedition, is unclear. Kelsingra was abandoned long ago and may not even exist any more. When you add the constant grinding labour involved in even surviving the Rain Wilds, let alone travelling through them, to internal plots within the expedition and even the dangers of sharing the journey with a bunch of unpredictable dragons, it’s hard throughout Dragon Haven to know where the characters and the book will end up.

But I will say this — the eventual ending of the book is satisfying and worth reaching. Although it leaves room for a continuation of the story — particularly with relation to the potential future revelation of more details about Hobb’s world — it does not leave too much hanging.

All of Hobb’s strengths as a fantasy writer are found in Dragon Haven. Complex, realistic, multi-faceted characters who change and grow. A plot that deceives you into thinking you can foretell its changes in direction — and then twists things around on you. Subtle writing that leaves barely traceable hints of information that you really want to know.

And most of all, lurking beneath the surface of everything Hobb does in Dragon Haven, is the gradual, almost scientific revelation of the secrets of the dragons, their magic, and what it all could mean for the future of the whole world.

If you were disappointed by the Soldier Son trilogy and even by somewhat lacklustre first book in the Rain Wild Chronicles series, The Dragon Keeper, don’t lose your faith in their author just yet.

Robin Hobb is back in form. And with Dragon Haven she’s cutting up the fantasy scene once again. I can’t wait to see what she’s got in store for us next.

Joe Haldeman‘s Marsbound can best be compared to the pop music of an idol like Britney Spears. It’s an easy and comfortable journey, but ultimately leaves the reader feeling unsatisfied due to its lack of deeper substance, real human emotion and complex ideas.

The book represents an unrealistic coming of age tale set in the context of a trite first contact experience with human-like aliens found on Mars. Its genderless main character and the holes found within its entirely predictable plot will leave many science fiction fans wondering what happened to the great science fiction author who penned The Forever War thirty years ago.

The main character of Marsbound is Carmen Dula, a 19-year-old who gets dragged along as her scientist parents join one of the first groups to make the still-risky trip to the great red planet for several years of habitation and research based in a semi-permanent facility humans have managed to erect there. First port of call for the Dula family is the Galapagos Islands, where Dula, her parents, and her annoying little brother Card are scheduled to ride a space elevator up to an orbiting space station.

Much of the information Dula relates from the first person perspective allocated to her by Haldeman are mundane, yet ultimately the sort of details that people will be fascinated with when emigration to space and other planets starts to become a reality.

For example, what sort of food do the travellers have available to them (generally it’s poor stuff, and all water is recycled; Dula ruminates to herself that all of the water has passed through her annoying brother Card several times), what sort of entertainment do they have (virtual reality technology is quite advanced), and what are the shower facilities like (bad)?

Dula also puts a high level of importance on the relationships of the various men and women around her; she has the late-teenager interest in sex and evaluates the young men in her life in terms of potential partnerships with them. With a 19-year-old female protagonist from the United States, it’s no surprise that she will eventually find love interests, engage in what we humanoids refer to as “sex” and so on.

But of course, as the book’s blurb aludes to, the humans who are taking the first, oxygen-hoarding steps in colonising Mars are shortly to discover they are not alone on the planet. An excursion beyond humanity’s facility leads to an accident, and the young Dula is rescued by an angel: “An angel with too many arms and legs, a head that looks like a potato gone bad — and a message for the newly arrived inhabitants of Mars: We were here first.”

Sound like an interesting read so far? You could assume so. The intricacies of Dula’s life as a relatively normal young adult thrust into humanity’s race to conquer Mars are fascinating, and Haldeman has clearly thought through many of the logistical problems humans will eventually face when we inevitably attempt to do so. His style of writing is comfortable and you’ll find yourself relatively absorbed while you’re turning pages and wondering … what exactly is it like to have sex in lower gravity?

However, that’s about all Marsbound has going for it. Haldeman fails abundantly in his attempts to either meaningfully develop Dula’s character or to provide an exciting plot for her to operate in.

Young adults grow, develop and change at an extremely rapid pace; especially as they are exposed to more older peers and role models, and they develop the sexual side of their lives and a sophisticated world view. They are not static, reasonable people, able to calmly and rationally accept every challenge thrown at them. And the different sexes, of course, have entirely different challenges and approaches to meeting them.

Joe Haldeman, credit: Mikko Aarnio

Yet this is how the mid-60′s Haldeman portrays the 19-year-old Dula. And for all the insight that is given into her female nature, she might as well have been male. Worse, most of the other characters are simply forgettable cardboard cut-outs.

Haldeman pairs this lack of character development with an entirely predictable first contact plot that contains all the elements of the traditional first contact science fiction tale; but without any of the excitement and alien-ness that is so fundamental to this type of story.

Remember Heinlein‘s Stranger from a Strange Land? Remember how you felt after the final climactic, mind-bending scene, how the book make you question what ways of thinking were essentially human, and which could be moulded, changed, developed, under the influence of an alien intelligence? Or what about the slowly developing and completely alien world contained in Arthur C. Clarke‘s Rendezvous with Rama, that you didn’t really understand even by the end of the book?

Yup. None of that grandeur here. Marsbound‘s “aliens” are as rational, reasonable and ultimately as boring as Dula herself.

Now it would be easy to say that Haldeman’s getting old — he’s been writing for more than 30 years. However it’s important to remember that the author won both the Nebula and Hugo awards back for his 1997 novel Forever Peace, and he appears to have been pumping out books regularly since then; about one a year, according to Wikipedia.

No, my theory is that Haldeman has actually underestimated the complexity of the first contact genre he undertook in Marsbound, given that much of his previous best work has been focused on the military science fiction sub-genre, informed very much by his own experiences in the Vietnam War. Then too, you could make an argument that his approach to the 19-year-old Dula didn’t ring right due to the age factor.

The cover of the paperback copy of Marsbound that I reviewed contains a quote from Stephen King. “If there was a Fort Knox for the science fiction writers who really matter, we’d have to lock Haldeman up there,” says King. Personally, I hope Haldeman can break his writing out of the chains he appears to have imposed on it and challenge himself and the readers once more for his next effort.

Dragonmount‘s Jason Denzel has just posted the first review of The Gathering Storm, the next book in Robert Jordan’s The Wheel of Time series, and he says it’s a great read and true to the deceased author’s memory.

The Gathering Storm, one of three books still to be published in Jordan’s epic, was written by American fantasy author Brandon Sanderson, using Jordan’s notes and plan for the rest of the series. In this first review, Denzel gushes about the book.

“I would rank it up there in the top 4 in the series along with The Shadow Rising, The Fires of Heaven, and The Great Hunt,” he said.

Denzel had this to say about what he acknowledges is a “burning question” on the part of Jordan’s massive fan base (the series has sold over 44 million books worldwide) as to whether or not the book “feels” like a Robert Jordan novel:

“Well, truthfully, I thought the prose stayed very true to previous novels … There were only a few times where I suspected the scene I was reading was entirely from Brandon’s imagination. We may never learn which specific sequences he had to invent entirely, but in the end, you probably won’t notice or even care. It’s pretty seamless in that regard.”

The result, Denzel wrote, is that the book is a novel which belongs in the Wheel of Time series.

And the plot? Without spoiling it, Denzel says the story brings focus back to the characters that need it, notably the Dragon Reborn himself, Rand Al’Thor. ‘If you thought Rand was hard before, you haven’t seen anything yet,” he says.

The news today came as Sanderson had recently revealed he would take a brief break from working on the conclusion to Jordan’s masterpiece, after he handed in The Gathering Storm manuscript in preparation for publishing.

The author citied the need to recharge and work on his own books for a while.

The Gathering Storm is due to hit retailers on November 3.

Commentary
Denzel’s praise for The Gathering Storm will highly reassure Jordanites (including myself) that Sanderson can properly finish Jordan’s legacy.

As Denzel notes himself, he’s hardly divorced and independent from The Wheel of Time books. He runs the main fan site for them, a site that itself hosted Jordan’s own blog before he passed away.

And, he is friends with both Jordan’s widow Harriet McDougal and Sanderson, and has a relationship with Jordan publisher Tor. So if there was anyone who was going to be disappointed if The Gathering Storm was bad, it would be Denzel. The fans trust him. His site has done so much for them over the years.

Personally, his endorsement of Sanderson’s book has made me tremendously excited about its release in November; I’ll be lining up at midnight if necessary to get my copy, and I would encourage any Jordan fan to do the same. Let’s see this masterpiece completed and head to Tarmon Gai’don — in style.

Spoiler warning: This review contains some mild background on Robin Hobb’s Realm of the Elderling series, although it does not contain spoilers for The Dragon Keeper. If you haven’t read Hobb’s previous works in this series, you probably shouldn’t be reading The Dragon Keeper or this review.

The Dragon Keeper, the long-awaited continuation of the events set in Robin Hobb‘s Realm of the Elderlings series, represents a solid accomplishment that that the revered author’s steadfast fans will enjoy as much as a hearty meal.

However, the book is ultimately a disappointment due to its lack of challenging ideas. The experienced reader will be easily able to predict the plot and much of the character development ahead of time, due to the abundant clues Hobb leaves littered throughout her text. The sense of deep mystery and Hobb’s glorious ability to gradually reveal the true workings of her complex world are somewhat lacking in her latest effort.

The Dragon Keeper is not a direct continuation of the story of perhaps Hobb’s most iconic character, FitzChivalry Farseer, and his companion The Fool. Instead, it can perhaps best be seen more as a sequel to The Liveship Traders trilogy: the middle, and I feel the best, trilogy in the nine book Realm of the Elderlings saga.

The book takes place in the Rain Wilds, the exotic area located upstream of Bingtown, the city where much of the action in The Liveship Traders is set, at a time shortly after the concluding events at the end of The Tawny Man trilogy.

The gradually revealed grand theme of the Realm of the Elderlings saga was the restoration of dragons, and the associated magic and marvels that their presence brings, to a world which had almost forgotten them. The focus of The Dragon Keeper, then, is the triumphant emergence of the dragons from the cocoons they entered in the Rain Wilds. The creatures entered the cocoons as serpents; they leave them as dragons.

But, as long-time Hobb fans will perhaps have expected due to her penchant for introducing difficulties her characters are forced to resolve and live with, that re-birth is not quite as expected.

As the book’s blurb notes:

“The creatures which emerge from the cocoons are a travesty of the dragons of old. Stunted and deformed, they cannot fly; some appear witless and bestial.”

With the dragons becoming a danger to the humans who tend them and live nearby, the logical next step is to move them to a more appropriate setting; a glorious ancient city the dragons themselves dream of: the fabled Kelsingra.

Hobb primarily tells her story through the viewpoint of several key characters: Sintara, a stunted but arrogant queen dragon who cannot fly; Thymara, a young and somewhat mutated Rain Wilder who faces the pangs of growing up, and Alise Kincarron, a homely Bingtown trader’s daughter obsessed with studying the dragons and their attendant Elderings. Then there’s Leftrin, owner and captain of an old-style liveship.

The author describes the lives of her subjects with pinache. As with her previous books, I found myself fascinated by the details of their daily lives; their sufferings, joys, and ultimately their pursuit of their dreams. I can’t fault Hobb’s characterisation and ability to get her readers to identify with the characters she creates.

However by the end of the book I couldn’t help feel that Hobb did not give those actors a large and dramatic enough stage to play out their parts on.

Within the larger plot arch of the book there are several smaller ones; the strained relationship between Alise and her husband by arranged marriage; the struggle of Thymara with the hostility of her mother towards her malformed and societally ostracised daughter; and the mysterious actions of the rascal Leftrin.

The direction these plots take within the overarching theme of the dragons’ enfranchisement is entirely predictable, and the gradual revelations Hobb leads the reader to can be anticipated well in advance.

In this light, the book is a far cry from Hobb’s Liveship Traders and Farseer Trilogies, and more in the vein of her Soldier Son trilogy, which in many ways also demonstrated a level of plot predictability that leaves the reader with a lack of satisfaction.

Of course, readers wouldn’t be left with this feeling if we hadn’t experienced a much higher quality of writing from Hobb, particularly in the Liveship Traders trilogy, where the clues as to the dramatic revelations ahead are scattered few and far between.

Speaking with my friends, their most memorable moments in Hobb’s previous books came when she finally lets the reader in on a grand secret that had been haunting them through the pages. “Do you remember when you found out about the true nature of The Fool?”, they’ll exclaim. “Or when you found out what the liveships truly are, and why the Paragon is the way he is?”

Ultimately, if you’ve enjoyed Hobb’s previous books, you are pretty much going to pick up a copy of The Dragon Keeper. When I saw it in a Dymocks window during lunch one day, I barely remember paying for it, that’s how fast I handed over the money and started reading! But don’t expect the book to be the beginning of another grand masterwork from one of fantasy’s greats.