Microreview [book]: A Different Kingdom, by Paul Kearney

Kearney, Paul. A Different Kingdom. Solaris Books: 2014.

 

Or, What is Love?

 The Meat

 You know what's creepy? Male adolescent desire, that's what, and who it targets. Of course, one could argue that it's pretty indiscriminate, or rather un-discriminating, by its very nature, but surely even for oversexed teenaged boys there are people who should be off-limits.

   Enter Michael Fey, the aptly named wild boy of Ireland/the Wood, whose first experience of desire—for someone who, I would have thought, would be off-limits—triggers the strange, haunting journey of his life. Or at least, the half of his life that is interesting, namely the portion he spends outside of time in the eponymous 'different kingdom' of the Wood, a wild land full of wolves, goblins and fairy-folk (as well as human bands of hardened wanderers) aplenty, as well as the crusading Catholic priests and their knight protectors. This part of Kearney's tale is riveting, for the most part—we read in amazement of each new development or challenge facing Michael and his beloved Cat, and cheer them on when they set out on their impossible quest.

   Yet this brief synopsis has already hit upon the two main problems I had with Kearney's well-written and engaging book. Firstly, the story is told non-sequentially, jumping around in time and between the worlds but basically alternating between Michael in the 'real' world and the fairy-land—but I had no issue with this somewhat unconventional structure, only with the content of the portions about the real world. Michael is uninteresting, or rather, is interesting only in the strange world of the other side, where he is a great warrior in his prime, not an awkward boy of thirteen or, even worse, an awkward 'middle-aged' 28 year old. 

Problem number one: Michael turning from this...

...into this.

More importantly, he is accompanied by his great love, Cat, in the fairy world, and Cat is plenty interesting.

   

   And here we have problem number two: Cat and Michael are deeply in love, soul-mates really, and yet Cat is not the 'first love' to which I refer above for Michael, despite which fact she agrees to accompany him on his quest to find that other girl. My willing suspension of disbelief took a major hit at that point, and Cat ceased to be a fiery character with a genuine identity and became, instead, only a simulacra of what Michael wanted—a wild girl with the appearance of true spirit but one who secretly would follow him anywhere, even to rescue his other lost love! The story does eventually develop in such a way as perhaps to explain why she turned out to have less depth than the reader might have expected, but that too is a disappointing revelation given our certainty that the two are truly in love.

   What IS love (baby don't hurt me)? When we say something like 'unconditional love', do we really mean "Yes, I'll help you replace me with someone else that you love better?" My answer is "No", not because it's inconceivable a person could be this selfless but because Michael's very identity is bound up in this forbidden love story with the other girl, and why would a person with any depth find herself falling in love with a weirdo like him anyway? This is a million times more true in the real world, when he's apparently destined to be nothing but a big overweight smoking alcoholic loser. Even his decision to leave the wild wood and return 'home' seems odd, since it was such a fundamental part of his very nature to seek his first love; why would he ever give up, as (no spoiler here, really) we swiftly learn he must have given the sections devoted to his prematurely middle-aged twenty-eight year old self in our world?

   Parts of the story are extremely well-written, lyrical in their beauty, and despite being rather too long overall (in my opinion), I would still recommend this book, but with major reservations, as outlined above. You might want to skim over the 'real world' sections from the middle of the book on (the early ones are more interesting in that the separation between 'real' and 'fairy' is much more permeable when Michael is a boy), at least until the end, where the two worlds again seem to collide in a haunting, wistful conclusion. Call me a sucker poisoned by years of Hollywood romances, but I was really hoping less for wistfulness than for a genuine, worlds-can't-keep-us-apart love affair between Michael and Cat!

The Math

Baseline assessment: 7/10

Bonuses: +1 for the mesmerizing weirdness of the fairy-world

Penalties: -1 for the dismal drudgery of (Michael in) the real world, -1 for failing to develop Cat into a genuine alternative to the object of his forbidden love quest

Nerd coefficient: 6/10 "Still enjoyable, but the flaws are hard to ignore."

[Actually, a 6/10 ain't bad in our book!]

Brought to you by Zhaoyun, sf/f book and movie aficionado and main cast member of Nerds of a Feather since early 2013. 

Microreview [book]: The Ten Thousand by Paul Kearney

Kearney, Paul. The Ten Thousand [Solaris, 2008]

The Meat

As a historian by training, I am always excited to see fantasies loosely based on accounts of historical events. Spending time in historical archives always makes me appreciate just how full the human experience is... some people's stories are so compelling, so dramatic, and so adventurous that if they did not happen they would have to be made up. In fact, the best stories generally tend to occur in real life, not on the page of the novel. So I was happy to realize that Paul Kearney's fantasy, The Ten Thousand, was based off off of one such historical precedent. The Ten Thousand is a dramatic and fanciful (but somewhat loose) retelling of the Anabasis, the tale of ten thousand Greek mercenaries who accompanied Cyrus the Younger in his attempt to seize the throne of Persia. For those of you who know the Anabasis, unfortunately you are aware of how the story ends. Cyrus met his end in a battle near Babylon, and the Greek mercenaries found themselves stranded deep within enemy territory. But the true joy of The Ten Thousand is the journey, not the destination. It is a well-told military fantasy that takes the reader deep into the physical and emotional battles of long campaigns. 

Kearney rightly retells this story through the dark, melancholic, and gritty lens of the (grim-)darker turn in modern fantasy. The world, which is ancient Greece re-imagined, features soldiers of the Macht, a mountainous area composed of independent city-states that are always at war with each other. This has led toward important developments in military technology: the phalanx formation, a massed infantry formation that marches forward and fights as a single (almost mechanical) entity, crushing its opponents. The phalanx formation and its use in the internecine warfare of the age have given the Macht a legendary prowess on the battlefield, a prowess that makes Macht highly sought after as a mercenary force. And the battles they fight, and methods used, are eminently believable:

There was no extravagance to the fighting; no glory... These men were doing their job. They were at work. They did not raise battle-cries, or scream curses. They pushed with their comrades, they looked for openings, and they stabbed out with a swift, economic energy, like herons seeking minnows.

The main protagonist of the story is a young man named Rictus, one of the few survivors of the sacking of his home city of Isca. Cityless and alone, Rictus takes his considerable martial skills to join a mercenary force and to make a name for himself. Only through war will he have a chance at glory and, more importantly, citizenship in one of the great Macht city-states. But upon joining the mercenary force, Rictus soon finds himself swept up in events beyond his control. He joins a force of ten thousand Macht mercenaries, which were employed to travel across the seas to the land of the Kufr, to aid in a struggle for rulership over the Asurian Empire. In the process, the epic Macht quest for glory and gold degenerated into an extended battle, a base struggle merely to survive. 

The Ten Thousand is pure and unadulterated battle porn. Of course, it is extremely well-written battle porn, featuring crisp and engaging prose, a colorful supporting cast, and a rich and textured world building that never fails to pull the reader in. And Kearney does not exalt battles as a tool to gain glory. He continually refuses to romanticize or glorify war. As Jason, one of the Macht commanders, says:

Do not wish to see war. It is the worst of all things, and once seen, it can never be forgotten. 

At the same time, The Ten Thousand makes it clear in a number of poignant passages that although the worst of things, war is a natural part of human order: 

The army marches, there is a slaughter, and a form of words is made to make the world change. But the world does not change; the water still flows, the seeds still sprout, and those who work the soil continue to work it, a little poorer, a little thinner and sadder than before. The storm moves on, and in its wake the world goes once more about its business. This is war, this passing storm on the land. This stink on the air, this dustcloud which hems the sky. These creatures marching in their thousands, changing everything and changing nothing with their passage. This is war.   

This novel does have a bit of an awkward tendency to Orientalize the Kufr in the same way that Frank Miller/Zac Snyder Orientalize the Persians in 300. But it counterbalances this by also demonizing the Macht. Far from being good men yearning for "freedom," most warriors (on both sides) are violent killers who blow off steam by committing atrocity, murder, and rape. In such a violent world, only a sucker could hope for a happy ending. This book is not for the faint of heart. 

At its best, The Ten Thousand reminds me at times of Steven Erikson's Malaz novel Deadhouse Gates, though the journey of the ten thousand Macht never reaches the emotional heights or power of Coltaine's Chain of Dogs. But the book falters at times because it is too dark: this is where Kearney fails to match the best writers in the genre. Erikson punctuates the darkness and grit of Coltaine's Chain of Dogs with the fantastic comic relief of Iskaral Pust. Joe Abercrombie keeps the all-out hilarity of Nicomo Cosca on stage left to lighten the mood of his darker novels. Kearney's failure to provide something... anything... similar to break up the gloom constitutes the biggest weakness in what was otherwise a very good read.

A final note: I also wish the author would have paid more attention to believability, especially in regard to the consequences of rape. Now I would be the first to admit that the constant references to rape in the novel are understandable. Soldiers in enemy territory sometimes "go wild," for lack of a better term, and commit acts of depravity that would shame them on the home front. But to have one of the main Kufr characters repeatedly raped, only to turn around suddenly and fall in love (with perhaps the one person who had no designs on her) and want to make 10,000 babies with a Macht soldier... well, that strikes me as lazy writing.  

Please take these criticisms with a grain of salt, though. I recommend The Ten Thousand. It is an enjoyable read that will appeal to lovers of grimdark and military fantasy.  

The Math

Baseline Assessment: 7/10

Bonuses: +1 for the phalanx, +1 capturing the spirit of battles

Penalties: -1 lazy writing, -1 for no comic relief

Nerd Coefficient: 7/10 "a mostly enjoyable experience"

See why a 7/10 at NoaF ain't so bad here.

POSTED BY: Jemmy, a SF/F fanatic, a failed wall gazer, and a Nerds of a Feather contributor since 2012.