Twelve
Jasper Kent
Pyr
446p., $17.00
I generally avoid new offerings in the vampire genre the way vampires avoid garlic. Not that I don’t like vampires. I kinda do. I just don’t like what Stephanie Meyers and her imitators have made of them. Call me a traditionalist, but I prefer my undead to be evil. They can be alluring to some of the characters because that adds to the danger and suspense in the tale, but as long term or safe romantic interests, no thanks.
I picked this book up on the basis of the cover. It’s eye catching, and the blurb about the story being set against Napoleon’s invasion of Russia piqued my interest. I was not disappointed. This is one of the best books I’ve read in a while, and one of the best vampire books I’ve read in years. The vampires are vile, evil, not to be trusted, and for the most part, not romantic. They don’t glitter in sunlight, they burst into flame, and they have no romantic appeal. Just the opposite, in fact. In other words, these are not your daughter’s vampires. These are the real thing. So to speak.
The story is told from the point of Alexsei Danilov, a captain in the Russian cavalry and a member of a quartet of officers who undertake a number of covert missions. The story opens late in the summer of 1812, when the Russian army is in full retreat before the invading French. In a desperate attempt to slow them down, one of the four, Dmitry has invited a group of men from Wallachia to work with them behind the French lines. Dmitry met these while fighting the Turks, although he is somewhat reticent to share any details.
The leader of the group is called Zmyeevich, which literally means “son of the serpent.” It’s also the name of a villain in a Russian folk tale, one carried on a bench by twelve men. Zmyeevich introduces the men with the names of the Twelve Apostles. Then he leaves for home. Of the men left, Iuda is the one with the most personality. The rest are rather withdrawn and taciturn. The four Russians nickname them the Oprichiniki, after Ivan the Terrible’s personal guards and enforcers.
The Russians each agree to take a group of three and slip behind the French lines to wreak what havoc they can. It doesn’t take long for Maks, the youngest of the group, and Alexsei to figure out something is wrong, very wrong. It also doesn’t take long for the Oprichniki to insist that they work alone. And at night.
I’ll not spoil all of the surprises, and there are plenty. Obviously the Oprichniki are vampires, come to feed at Dmitry’s invitation, protected by the general bloodshed and chaos of war. This is a rich, complex novel, with suprising depth and philosophy in it. Much is made of whether or not the end justifies the means, although Kent never has his characters state it in those terms. There is a good deal of action and bloodshed, but at its core, this is a thinking man’s vampire hunt. And the philosophy isn’t limited to just hunting and war. It also extends to Alexsei’s growing love for Dmonikiia, a prostitute he began frequenting because she was said to resemble Napoleon’s wife. Theirs is a complex relationship that deals with the fact that Alexsi has a wife and son in St. Petersburg that he still loves and doesn’t want to leave.
Also, I wrote in a previous post that I found books in which the author summarizes large blocks of time passing to be dull. There are portions of the novel in which the characters, and consequently the readers, have to wait for things to happen, whether it’s someone showing up for a meeting or wounds healing or whatever. Kent makes those passage interesting and gives the feel that things are happening, even when there isn’t much in the way of physical action taking place. I’ve got to go back and study how he does that. So should some writers I could (but won’t) name.
When we finally find out how Dmitry met the Oprichniki in Wallachia, I got the impression that Zmyeevich is really Dracula. The fictional character Dracula is believed to to have been based on the Historical Vlad III, often called Vlad the Impaler in reference to his favorite means of execution. It’s interesting that Zmyeevich (which is a Russian name) is said to mean “son of the serpent” because Dracula can either mean Son of the Dragon or Son of the Devil. The Devil is called both a serpent and a dragon in the Bible (Rev. 12:9).
Once Aleksei realizes that the Oprichniki are voordalaki, and that there is some truth to the stories his grandmother used to scare him with, things really get interesting. He and the Oprichniki, led by Iuda, begin a deadly game of cat and mouse in which each side tries to be the hunter rather than the prey. It’s at this point that a lesser writer would let the book degenerate into a stake-fest. Instead Kent pulls out all the stops in the area of creativity. Just because the voordalaki are undead doesn’t mean they can’t scheme. The scenes of vampire hunting, and being hunted by vampires, which often take place simultaneously, are some of the best I’ve ever read. They’re certainly some of the most clever.
All I will say about the ending is that there is more than one kind of victory (physical, moral, psychological), and just because you have one doesn’t mean your opponent doesn’t have one of the others. The sequel (Thirteen Years Later) is out, and I’ll be starting it as soon as I finish the novel I’m reading. (Both of which I’ll write about here.) If you haven’t read Twelve, you should.
Phaenomena
Aratus
Johns Hopkins University Press
72 p., Hardcover $50, paperback $25
This is a fascinating little volume that may be of interest to some of you, especially if you like astronomy or have an interest in ancient science or poetry. According to the cover copy, the Phaenomena was the most read poem in the ancient world after The Iliad and The Odyssey. The purpose of the poem is instructive, giving information about the constellations and how to predict the weather. In a more agrarian society, this type of information could at times be a matter of life and death. Aratus lived during the period following the breakup of Alexander the Great’s empire.
This is a thin volume. The actual poem itself only takes up 38 pages, a little over half the book. Extensive annotations form the bulk of the rest of the text in an appendix and are fascinating in and of themselves.
Fans of epic fantasy or historical adventure are well aware of the importance many ancient cultures placed on poetry, especially in societies in which writing and literacy were rare. Here’s a sample:
The nearest guide
To the north Fish is on the left-hand side
Of Andromeda, on her shoulder. Forever over
The shoulders of staunch Perseus, her lover
Her two feet circle. As he marches forth,
Taller than the figures in the north,
His gallant right hand gestures to the seat
Of his love’s mother. Staring at his feet,
He walks his father Zeus’ property. (p.10)
Some passages give detailed descriptions of certain constellations, especially those containing bright or prominent stars, and discuss the times those stars and constellations rise and set at different times of the year.
The price on this one is a little high, but that’s to be expected from an academic press. I got my copy last year when the publisher was sending out free copies to faculty as part of a promotion. I’ve enjoyed the poetry and learned a bit from the appendix. While I haven’t read it cover to cover, it’s been nice to dip into here and there. It’s one I’ll return to on a regular basis.
But this essay got me thinking. What’s wrong with the charm of the unfamiliar? And where are we to find it, if not in other cultures, epochs, music, etc. Now I realize that the key verb in Abraham’s sentence is “commodification” and that is sometimes in the eye of the beholder. That’s not a debate I want to get into at this point. Instead, my thoughts went down a different avenue.
I mentioned in my report on ConDFW a panel discussion about whether magic systems should be organized in some sort of way that resembled science. My comment from the audience was that maybe more people of reading fantasy than science fiction these days, and I can well remember when that wasn’t the case at all, because fantasy was providing that sense of wonder that science fiction once did.
There are a number of reasons why science fiction has been supplanted by fantasy, and a number of them come down to sense of wonder. Shelf space in the science fiction section of many books stores is being taken over by media tie-ins, many of them generic. Our citizens are increasing familiarity with scientific and technological achievements while their ignorance of scientific principles is (if anything) increasing. Science, and by extension science fiction, have failed to produce the promised wonders of the future (I want my flying car, dammit). To steal a quote whose source I can’t remember, we’ve reached the future and found it not to be Robert Heinlein or Isaac Asimov’s future, but Phillip K. Dick’s. Fantasy still provides that escape from the humdrum world, and that future. It provides an Other that, even at fantasy’s darkest, gives that sense of wonder. Horror on the other hand, gives just the opposite: a sense of fear and oppression. And that sense is part of much of science fiction. So much that last year, an anthology titled Shine had the theme of optimistic near futures.
Think about how many new fantasy series have been promoted in the last few years with an emphasis on the uniqueness of their magical systems. The magical system in any fantasy, including urban fantasy, is an extension of the author’s world building, and world building is one of the main things by which an author will rise or fall, be the world a fantasy world, a futuristic science fictional world, or a detailed historical era. It’s not the only thing that can make or break an author’s work, but in any setting that’s not contemporary, mainstream society, the world building can be as important as the characterization or plot.
Abraham says there’s something in his psychology that’s deeply attracted to the idea of an Other. He implies that this a basic human trait. I think it is. Call it exoticism, call it sense of wonder, call it a search for transcendence, call it what you like. There is something in all of us that wants, even needs, to experience the new, the exotic. That will be different things to different people.
As an example, when we were in Kazakhstan adopting out son, we took at trip one afternoon and evening to the city of Turkestan. I’ve written a little about it. One of our lawyers seemed disappointed when we didn’t find the trip to be exotic. We saw lots of flat plains with men on horses herding cattle. I’ve lived most of my life in Texas. There was nothing to me about seeing those things that I found exotic; instead, they were comfortingly familiar in land where even the food on my plate was exotic. The only difference was the cows in Kazakhstan looked both ways before they crossed the highway. (I’m not making that last bit up. They really did wait by the side of the highway to cross. Cows in Texas would have wandered out in front of on-coming vehicles without a thought. I’m not sure why that was the case, but it was.) Now someone who had lived all of his or her life in New York City would have probably found such sights very exotic.
Science fiction used to deliver that exotic sense of wonder, where humans ventured into the universe, with or without leaving the planet, and found all sorts of wonders waiting for them. Of course, these days science has lost some of its luster and exploration is no longer a priority. Case in point: the United States in in the process of ending its manned space program. And if you believe the government’s assurances that it’s only until the next generation of launch vehicle can be designed and built, then I have a bridge I can get you a good deal on. Thankfully, the private sector seems to be picking up the ball and running with it, at least somewhat.
But I digress. Fantasy is filling the role that science fiction, science, the space program, and human exploration in general once did on a larger scale. Magic never loses its sense of wonder or exoticism because it can never be explained. That’s why I think fantasy is now more popular than science fiction.
The Dark Griffin
K. J. Taylor
Ace, 369 pages, $7.99
I came across this book in Wal-Mart of all places. That’s not a store known for its book selection, never mind its fantasy and science fiction selection, but the one close to my house (there are 4 where I live) has a dedicated section of stuff worth reading. The cover caught my eye, with the Griffin in flight and the Eyrie in the background. The guy riding the Griffin is Arren, who is described in the book as tall, thin, and pale complected with dark hair. The guy on the cover doesn’t really fit that description. Instead he looks like he escaped from a romance cover. On second thought, considering what tends to be happening on romance covers, maybe he’s trying to get to one. Yeah. I bet that’s it.
Anyway, the cover art caught my eye, and the synopsis on the back cover sounded intriguing,. In leafing through the book, I noticed on the about-the-author page that Ms. Taylor wrote that she takes her inspiration from George R. R. Martin and Finnish metal. Now I’ve never been much into metal, Finnish or otherwise, but I’m familiar enough with it and with Martin’s works that I bought the book on the basis of that sentence.
I really wanted to like this book. And I do. Just not as much as I had hoped. Part of that was the fault of my expectations of the book and part the fault of the author. As far as my expectations, I was expecting something darker and more violent; I thought the book fell somewhat short of Martin in these areas. From what I’ve been able to determine, this is Taylor’s second book, and some of what I would consider to be her fault is simply she’s still learning her craft.
Arren is a northerner. In the land of Cymria, the northerners are considered barbarians, and captured northerners were once kept as slaved. Arren is the son of freed slaves, and the only northerner to become a griffiner. Sent on a fool’s mission intended to disgrace him, Arren captures a wild griffin, the titular dark griffin, but doing so costs the life of his griffin. The dark griffin is taken to the arena to fight (read kill) convicted criminals, while Arren is stripped of his post in disgrace. Of course Arren will end up in the arena himself fighting the griffin he captured. I don’t think I’m giving too much away by telling that, since it’s a logical event in the plot. There are other surprises that I wasn’t expecting.
All griffins have one magic power, and the book implies the power is related to the griffin’s color. The dark griffin’s power it turns out is unique and sends the plot in an unexpected direction, creating all kinds of complications for Arren. The griffins are also at least as vain, arrogant, greedy, foolish, and scheming as the humans, which made me wonder who is really in charge. It may not be who the humans think.
I had a couple of problems with the story. First, it drug in places. Some of that was due to the passage of time in which not much happened other than Arren going about his daily routine. I’ve always found those types of narrative to be tedious, almost without exception. In part the slow pacing was, I think, the due to the author’s attempt to develop character. And to be fair, with only a couple of exceptions, Ms. Taylor does a good job of developing most of her characters, better than most new writers do. Unfortunately it seemed to me that Arren had a terminal case of the stupids. He’s whiny, self-pitying, and wishy-washy. He’s also prone to some really bad lapses in judgment. In short, he’s not very heroic for the majority of the book, and I wanted to knock some sense into him several times. Even when he finally takes action against those who betrayed him, he came across to me as hesitant when he should have been aggressive. Again, in fairness, when the book ended, he was in a position where he was almost certainly going to have to be more assertive.
There were also some other things that bugged me. A great deal is made throughout the book of the prejudices against northerners, but until Arren returns from capturing the dark griffin, this really isn’t shown. In fact, until he leaves, he’s shown as being completely accepted and surrounded by friends from all levels of society. The leader of the council is a woman, and her brother, Lord Rannagon, is the principle villain. She disappears halfway through the book with no real explanation as to why, although it’s implied that she would soon be stepping down from age. It’s her plans, and how Arren fits into those plans, that set off the events leading to his disgrace. Lord Rannagon isn’t very consistent in how he’s portrayed, at times acting supportive of Arren and other times hostile. He doesn’t seem to have a problem with Arren’s romance with his daughter, either, something I found hard to buy considering some of his other actions against Arren. Also, Rannagon’s bastard son briefly appears in two scenes. In the first, he’s unbelievably arrogant; in the second, a concerned and caring brother. It was almost as though he were two different people. He’ll be back in the next book, so I’m sure he’ll be fleshed out more.
And if you think that last sentence implies I’m going to read the next book, you’re right. I intend to. In spite of the complaints I have about the book, the characters really are well developed. Arren does go through some major changes, as do some of the other characters, most notably the dark griffin. We only see a small piece of this world, and the northerners are a culture I want to learn more about. Arren’s fate takes an unexpected turn, and I’m curious to see how Ms. Taylor gets him out of the predicament he’s in. Or if she even does. Taylor is a new writer, and I’m prepared to cut her some slack on the issues I have with the pacing. I predict she will eventually be a major name.
The feeling I got when I finished the book was that this would have been a good first third to half of a much longer novel. That may be the case. The second (The Griffin’s Flight) and third (The Griffin’s War) volumes of the trilogy hit the shelves within weeks of The Dark Griffin. I don’t recall the last time a trilogy was published without at least a year’s wait between books.
The Dark Griffin might be a little slow and lacking in sufficient combat for some readers of this blog, but if you like griffins, give at least this volume a try.
When I wrote the review I expressed a desire to see more of this world. My wish has been granted. If I can figure out how I caused that to happen….well, never mind.
Now, Buckell has written a sequel which went up on the spring 2011 issue of Subterranean Magazine a day or so before I started my traveling. I tried to read it before I left, but I didn’t quite get to it. Last night, I finally managed to read it. It was worth the wait.
This particular installment concerns one young man by the name of Mynza, who happens to be a thief. The story opens with him climbing the wall of the keep of the Mayor of Alacan. He brushes against a spot of bramble growing in a crack in the wall and just manages to make it to a balcony before losing consciousness. Turns out this is the balcony of the Mayor’s daughter, who in a twist on classic fairy tales motifs, awakens him with a kiss. While there, Mynza takes several things, some freely given (the girl’s virtue) and some not so freely given (jewels and a signet ring). Because his burglary wasn’t sanctioned by the head of the family that adopted him as a young orphan, they end up parting ways.
At least for a few days. Bramble has encroached to the point that the town has to be abandoned. Instead of aiding the citizens in their escape, the Mayor and the merchants charge a toll to be taken out. Most of the population can’t pay the price, and bramble has spread to the point that even the only road out, controlled by the Mayor, is closing. Mynza has spent most of his coin from the jewels he fenced. It’s at this point that responsibility finds him, and although he’s fully grown physically, he finds himself forced to grow up.
I’ll not say more about the details of the plot or the other characters. This in many ways was the best of the three stories, although all of them are essentially stories of hope, despite their dark settings and events. My reasons for saying that have to do with the changes Mynza undergoes, as well as those of one of the other characters. To say more would be to spoil the story for you.
I’m beginning to see a theme in the tales of this world. A theme of how we, as people, as individuals, need each other. Of how strong love is, propelling us to greatness and bringing forgiveness and hope where none appears to be. I find these themes refreshing. If this series takes off, and I hope it will, I’m sure either Buckell or Bacigalupi or both (either separately or collaboratively – that’s a hint guys) will end up writing novels set in this world. While I will certainly rejoice over them and read them, I hope the authors never leave the novella form behind when writing in this world. It’s the personal stories of the ordinary people, people trying to make a difference, however small, in a world that’s getting darker that gives these tales their power. In this day of fat fantasy and never ending series, it’s nice to step back from the epic and focus on the personal.
There’s been a lot of blogging in the last month or so about whether fantasy is too dark. If you feel that way, then you need to read these works. They’re a breath of fresh air.