Scar Night, Alan Campbell
I picked this up while Susan was in the hospital, breaking my “no hardcover” rule as it looked interesting. Finished reading it on the same night we watched Pan’s Labyrinth, which meant double helpings of dark fantasy in one evening.
I’ve been meaning to read more gothic/dark fantasy, and Scar Night fits the bill well. The setting here is Deepgate, a literally crumbling city suspended by giant chains over a gaping abyss in which lurks a fallen god, demanding the city’s dead in order to create an army to wage war against a heaven which has barred its gates to him and to the rest of humanity. (I should hasten to add that this book isn’t based at all on Judaeo-Christian beliefs.) Deepgate is a very grim sort of place: poisoned by Dickensian industry, haunted by a supernatural serial killer, generally preoccupied with the afterlife, and having property values dependant on the likelihood of falling into a giant hole. Airships connect the city to its surroundings, itself occupied by warring heathens and mysterious otherworld technology. The author doesn’t make the mistake that China Miéville does in Perdido Street Station (another recently read novel with a similar ambiance): Alan Campbell doesn’t come across as hating his setting, whereas Miéville seems to throughly detest New Crobazon’s “glutinous” surroundings and indeed most of its inhabitants. Deepgate is refreshingly unique, but doesn’t go out of its way to be gross just for the sake of being gross.
The church devoted to the abyssal god features prominently in the book: two of the protagonists are Dill, a teenaged angel, last in a line of battle archons once devoted to protecting the faith; and Rachel, the church assassin sent to supervise his training. Meanwhile, the leader of the church and city, Presbyter Sypes, also ostensibly Dill’s mentor, sets events in motion for his own mysterious ends; while Mr. Nettle, one of the city’s more downtrodden inhabitants, seeks answers for his daughter’s murder. Dill and Rachel’s characterizations, and in particular their relationship, are the weakest part of the book: it’s not completely clear what propels Rachel to bond with Dill, her uneasy relationship with her own family notwithstanding. Fortunately, Alan Campbell’s writing is very good: while his dialogue doesn’t get us fully into the head of the characters, the rest of his prose has no trouble evoking the unique atmosphere of Deepgate. The description of a airborne battle sequence at the climax of the book is particularly impressive.
This book is the first in a planned trilogy (“The Deepgate Codex”). I’m looking forward to reading the rest of the series – guess I’ll be monitoring Alan Campbell’s blog for updates.
Eldest, Christopher Paolini
This is book two of Christopher Paolini’s “Inheritance” trilogy, book one being Eragon. I breezed through the first volume a while ago, and as per my rule decided to wait until Eldest came out in paperback – which it did as of last week or so. I’m glad I didn’t spend the money on the hardcover, because while I thought the first was derivative, the second takes it to a whole new plateau of pointy-eared elfdom. There are a few clumsy attempts at distinguishing the setting from the standard Dungeons and Dragons fare (Elves are strong! Dwarves like the outdoors as well as caves!) but they’re pretty thin. The invented language and names are so close to Tolkien’s as to be jarring: Tolkien’s evil godlike Morgoth versus Paolini’s Morgothal, god of fire; Tolkien’s human Beren versus Paolini’s “ill-marked Berundal/Born .. /To mortal woman”, both sung about by elves in their respective works; even the random diacritical marks sprinkled throughout seem to mirror the dialects in Lord of the Rings. Even when the names don’t match, the ideas do: Tolkien’s race of Orcs and überOrc Uruks are mirrored by Paolini’s Urgals and überUrgal Kulls. Other names and ideas are straight out of Viking mythology: Helgrind appears to be the gates of Hell both to the elves on Alagaësia, and to the Norse on planet Earth. Worst of all, (spoiler alert!) at the climax of the book there’s a revelation straight out of the fourth movie in a very popular sci-fi movie series of six.
The trilogy centers on Eragon, a boy who finds a dragon egg and eventually becomes a dragon rider ultimately seeking to defeat the evil king of the Empire (who happens to be a dragon rider himself). Being a dragon rider bestows upon Eragon magic abilities as well. Therein lies the biggest problem with Eldest: Eragon is far too powerful to be a convincing hero. Eragon starts out the first book as a callow teenager and upgrades his powers pretty significantly by the end of it, learning some magic along the way; but he’s still human, and the main enemy in book one is clearly superhuman, so there’s still some suspense to be had. In Eldest, Eragon levels up in fairly preposterous fashion, to the point where he’s basically a superhuman juggernaut of destruction. Paolini’s way of dealing with this is to pit him single handedly against huge armies – barely touching on ethical dilemmas of fighting against conscripted fellow countrymen – and when that battle concludes in a pitched single combat, the power of Eragon’s enemy is simply increased correspondingly. I could almost see the AL: CE, LVL 25, DEX 25 hidden in the text. Unfortunately Eragon’s munchkin qualities are magnified by the subplot involving his all-too-human cousin Roran and his attempts to resist the Empire: Roran is much more sympathetic, and actually regrets the deaths he causes along the way. I’ve noticed some reviews of Scar Night remarking on Campbell’s past life as a game designer and programmer on Grand Theft Auto, as if that somehow mattered in coming to grips with that novel’s graphic content. If anything, Eldest feels much more like a role playing video game: linear plot, exponential progression of enemy strength, hordes of faceless enemies followed by a single boss character, weapon and equipment upgrades, w00t! Paolini was a teenager when he finished Eragon, which has earned him critical praise; I hate to say it, but it shows in his writing negatively.
Paolini throws in a strained and unconvincing romance between Eragon and Arya the Elf (leaving Eragon coming off as a petulant, hormonal teenager); a few jarring observations about religion and atheism; and sprinklings of vocabulary relating to medieval pieces of armor understandable to Creative Anachronists and very few others. Perhaps I’m being unduly harsh on this book given that I felt compelled to finish it in two sittings, but in the end it just left me wanting to reread Lord of the Rings. I’ll skip buying the third book.
