Dawnthief: Chronicles of the Raven 1 [Paperback]

I picked this up at the library because it had got on my radar somehow, but from the opening passages it was clear this wasn't going to survive comparison to some of the other names writing similar books--Gemmell, Abercrombie, Erikson. There is some interesting stuff here, but too much that is generic, bland or just badly written. To be fair, it might have seemed fresh in 1999, but since then we've seen much better. For a clue to what I mean, just look at the map...

......after many years of reading sci-fi & fantasy, I abruptly tired of the "purple rain falling on the orange grass" or "I can't be the heir to the Sword of Garglebad, I'm just a stable-boy" and stopped looking at these genres for many years (Iain M Banks excepted).

I decided to give escapism another go recently, and after a completely false start with the execrable "Orcs" book (if ever a good idea went to waste...), I, purely by accident (first trip to a library for years), stumbled across these - sad to say, decided by not much more than "interesting cover!?".

I write this review now having read all 6 and although as many reviewers have said, they get better (characterisation, plot, pacing, etc) book by book, the fact of the matter is, I wouldn't have even read book 2 if this was poor.

What I loved about this book (series) :
- you're dropped straight in (figure out man! no screeds of exposition)
- the goodies ain't invincible (does Barclay get kicked out of the club for this - innocents & major characters die!!!)
- ooh-ya, ah-ya battles expertly described, putting you into the maelstrom (think start of saving private ryan, er, with swords)
- excellent humour (reminiscent of IM Banks IMHO)
- the people are real (they wind each other up, get upset, tired, have hopes etc)
- elves are in it, but forget the namby-pamby poetry and chiffon - these guys are psycho ninja killing machines! (later book to be fair)

Really - buy, beg, borrow, steal these - they are rip-roaring reads - but there is an intellectual & emotional maturity that is very satisfying indeed.

.......and no purple rain.

I like to read books that I think will change my life. At the end of the day, they're just books, so I generally return to normal quite quickly, except maybe with an increased desire to use 'whom' in the right context and semi-colons in the right place. But in that fashion I churn through Murakami and Orwell and Mervyn Peake, and hey, I love them- pretentious as my motives may be- and it's led me to all sorts of books that I wouldn't have picked up had I not been so, and I in turn loved them too- Ian M Banks, Raymond Carver, Bill Waterson. I think of myself as reasonably widely read. What leaves me at a loose end is fantasy. I mean, out-and-out pure fantasy- there's loads of it, but what's the point? Fantasy never overtly tries for relevancy (except with the obvious satires of Pratchett) settling instead for reccounting historic fables of a past we never had in some parralell universe, or whatever. I guess I was embarassed to approach a genre so determined to have no impact on the world, and more importantly, on me. I didn't feel like the effort was there. Fantasy is so formulaic- Demon Lord/ Dragon/two Demon Lords threaten humanity or some self-conciously multi-cultural society ('you can't have humans to captain ships, you must have a completely separate race of boat people!' Good one. [Disclaimer- this may never have happened in a fantasy novel, but it seems like it would]) and a group of people, possibly with some sort of Messiah-type killjoy in tow being all confused about his 'calling', have to save everything by doing stuff. And so I avoid the fantasy sections, save for a couple of sagas I've been lent by friends (and, true, enjoyed quite a bit, like the first few Wheel of Time books and Lord Of The Rings (LOTR, for the record: quite poo (WOT: sprawlingly arrogant, but quite cool in Shadar Logoth and stuff (brackets all the time: fantastic, and a sure sign of an intelligent reviewer, 'specially as he knows its called 'ellipses')))), but another potential pit-fall of the genre is that authors seem to want to justify the fact that they've spent a year coughing up hackneyed sword play by being *detailed* about it. And so we have economies and made up languages and local bi-elections. Y'know, I was really quite disparaged.
Anyways, to the point: another weakness of mine, aside from translated Japanese novels that want to change my entire outlook on the world are books with cool two-tone colours, i.e., black and something primary. Possibly with an author sharing my own forname. That's where the Chronicles of the Raven come in. They're formulaic, yeah, I'm not even going to try to deny that, but in the same way that Columbo is formulaic, no, bad example... in the same way that The Hives are formulaic, these books are also fantastically cool. Ignore the fact that they insist on using spells called 'FlameOrb' and 'IceWind,' this is rock'n'roll fantasy. So we get kick-ass mercenaries (with a leader called 'The Unknown Warrior,' which threw me a little at the start, but it becomes less and less of a problem) that are each genuinely different characters with quirks and mannerisms that are interesting to see develop. They have fall-outs and moments of camaraderie and everything within their group is so small scale and human that it's almost by accident that along the way they fill the role of 'saviour'-that Rand or Frodo ham up in those other books- without any of the mopeyness but instead sarcastic quips and one liners. I don't know what point I'm trying to make here. I should hate the Raven books (they're hard core fantasy, oi), but when the next fantasy main-stay lurches along I'm eager instead for the really cool way that James Barclay is going to kill it (tapping entire oceans onto the heads of the approaching enemy, anyone? Armies of dead-pan soldiers operating by remote control from where their souls are kept in stasis by little blue buggers, anyone?). Sorry. I think that's fantastic. . I'm not saying these are brainless, the studies of character within are flawless, and there's no flabby excess, just the satisfying feeling that you're reading something that fulfills exactly what the author set out to do, and I think anyone can enjoy that. These books radiate Barclay's love of spinning a yarn- not to the point of the forty novel sequences that R. Jordan likes to weave, or spew- but for the sake of diverting you, the reader, into a world free of consequence, but none the worse for that, just a bit more funAm I 'getting' fantasy? Maybe. The Raven books are desperate not to change my life. Instead, they're a snappily written companion for a little bit of the way. I'm disarmed by their easy-going manner and they've snuck under the radar. I've rambled for a while, and dammit, looking back, I'm an opinionated oik but to clarify: books that change your life= good. Books that seek not to, but are damn well written, well characterised and tightly plotted= also good. I can't exactly justify reading them in the face of the fact that there's more literature in the world than anyone could read in thirty life times, but I still think I'll read them again one day. The Raven books are an excellent author enjoying himself. And it rubs off. I'm converted. And the coloured spines looks so pretty on my book shelf.