Most Helpful Customer Reviews
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54 of 56 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Vampires, Angels, Assassins, Priests, and more..., 9 Jan 2007
Welcome to the world of Deepgate, a city suspended by chains over a vast and mysterious chasm. Only after you have lived your life and died will you find what lies underneath Deepgate at the bottom of the abyss. The religion of Deepgate tells its people that they will find peace when your body is thrown or `sent' to the bottom of the pit where the God Ulcis waits with the noble souls of the dead to greet you. But is this true...? Are the priests or `Presbyters' hiding something? In death do the people of Deepgate find peace when they are cast into the pit? Or for thousands of years has the religion of this chained city been based simply on a myth...? That is what, Rachael, an assassin - known to Deepgate citizens as a Spine - is going to find out whether she likes it or not. Rachael has sworn to protect Dill, a teenage angel descended from a holy bloodline and together driven by a quest to save the city, of Deepgate they must travel deep into the abyss and face Ulcis if they want to succeed in their task. Will the creatures that they have been told are their enemies truly be their adversaries, or will the men they have been taught to respect and admire be their greatest threat...?
Scar Night, is a first novel written by Alan Campbell and also the first volume in the Deepgate Codex and it is a terrific start to what promises to become a thrilling saga. However, you can tell that the author has been heavily influenced by other fantasy classics, such as Gormenghast. Like Gormenghast, if you don't stick with it, Scar Night can be a little bit hard to get into. At the beginning of the book, so many characters are introduced and their role in the city is described in such detail that some readers may get a bit confused or frustrated. However, just stick with it because this is the only criticism I would have of this novel. After you get past this minor hurdle and into the story, the book and characters come alive, and you will empathise with Deepgate's heroes and shudder at the malevolence of Deepgate's villains.
In sum, Scar Night is an excellent first book and will leave you, after a slightly slow start waiting with great anticipation for the next instalment of the saga. The book also has some brilliant one-liners as well, all of which will bring a smile to your face along your trek through a great adventure.
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28 of 32 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
5 at the beginning, 3 at the end, 11 Jul 2006
Two hundred pages into this novel, I glanced at the amount I still had to get through and wished it could be more, thinking I would be quite happy to live within its world for a whole month. A hundred pages from the end, I was just keen to get it over with.
It starts very well, sort of a Gormenghast with more action. In fact, Gormenghast must be the main (and rather transparent) influence on this book, at least on the first half. Even the characters' names are very Peakeian - Scrimlock, Mr Nettle, Fondelgrue the chief cook, though the names seem less perfectly suited to their owners than Peake's were. We're pluged into a strange gothic city suspended over a supposedly god-inhabited abyss on massive chains forged by archons (angels) in the distant past. The main protagonist, Dill, is a young battle-archon, last of his line, his wings effectively clipped by his temple's fears for his safety and by the city's new reliance on aerial warships, and too weak to wield his ancestor's sword. The other main character is his new protector and tutor, Rachel, a young female member of the temple's assassin branch, and the only one who hasn't yet undergone 'tempering', where her ability to feel is removed by torture to make her a more effective servant.
So far so good. Dill's stumblings through his new ceremonial duties were perhaps a little too reminiscent of Titus Groan's, but I engaged with him, and liked his ambivalent relationship with Rachel. The fact that he can't disguise his emotions because his irises change colour is rather sweet, though in the end nothing is really made of it. (Like everyone else in the city - apart from one lecherous beggar who makes a big deal of Rachel's leather clothes - he has no hint of a sex drive.) The city itself, Deepgate, is well-realised. Campbell plunges us straight into it without spoon-feeding us explanations and history: a little confusing at first but generating an effective sense of its reality. The city comes across as a very real place despite its unlikely nature, with each foundation chain having a name, and each district with its own character, all slipped very effectively into the story.
Sadly, from about halfway through, the subtleties of the story seem to be replaced by action, action, action. The nuances of character fade until everyone is offering the same kind of snappy wise-cracks in moments of danger. One of the things that makes Rachel initially interesting, the fact that she seems prepared to accept, even to wish for, such a horrible fate as 'tempering', is not adequately explored. Also, the history and metaphysics of the world turn out to be less interesting when brought into the glare of narrative than when they were hinted at in the beginning.
But there's enough good stuff here to make it worth the read. Mr Nettle's visit to the thaumaturge springs to mind, and the story of the Soft Men. Campbell has a fertile imagination. I think he might have written a more subtle and atmospheric story if he hadn't succumbed to a frequent curse of current SF/fantasy, which is the notion that there must be as much page-turning action as possible. Some stories benefit from being all fireworks, but you can get a lot from staring into the glowing embers of an old fire.
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15 of 19 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Great Book, 2 Aug 2006
This is a great book - I was hooked from the start. The descriptions are a bit like Mervyn Peake, but the pace of the book is WAY faster than Gormenghast. You get vampires, angels, mad Gods living in bottomless pits, insane chemists trying out biological weapons on convicts, loads of dead bodies and a city built entirely on a web of chains - what more do you want?! And this is his first novel - things can only get better!
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