Narrated by Simon Vance
From the Ridiculous to the Sublime
Richard Morgan has a way with words and a great sense of
pacing. His depiction of action sequences, especially hand-to-hand combat, is
unsurpassed. His characters are well fleshed out; you will get to know them as
the story unfolds—get to know them perhaps a little too intimately for your
comfort level. You may cringe every time they have a scene, but they will not
bore you.
As I alluded to above, this book fits nicely into the
category of Modern Fantasy. Gone are the world-saving quests of Middle Earth.
There is no Elven magic ™ here; no grand struggle between good and evil. What
you will find here is a story set in an un-kinder un-gentler world; a world
where the heroes are unlikely and oft times unlikable, but, for that reason,
all the more believable. Richard Morgan has a real sense of the inherent
depravity of man which he employs in character creation that makes everything
he writes essential listening—this is proved by his mastery of first Science
Fiction, in his earlier books, and now Fantasy.
And now for something completely different: a bit of awkward
philosophical introspection. I first read this novel in print after reading the
amazing Takeshi Kovacs series. Fantasy is not my usual thing but Morgan is so
good that I thought it was necessary to read. On that first pass, I was
revolted by the explicit depiction of the deviant sexuality of the main
character, Ringil. I examined my outrage
and discovered that it was founded on my sense of morality, a sense that should
have elicited the same level of disgust when reading depictions of fornication
and adultery, which is prominent in much modern fiction. Take for example two very popular fictional
characters: Ian Fleming’s womanizing spy, James Bond or Donald Westlake’s
murdering thief, Parker. If morality is
the basis for outrage then these need to be considered offensive as well. So my
self-righteous outrage was misplaced. It was based on my personal proclivities
on such matters. Now that I have dabbled in other modern fantasy novels I find
this level of sex to be a common feature in the genre. Joe Abercrombie’s First
Law series comes to mind as another example. The thing is, these novels are not
about sex, the author uses it as a device to provoke a gut response in the
reader — once you realize that, you can see it for what it is and try to enjoy
the story. Morgan has chosen to populate this book with characters that are rude
and crude and worldly. If they did not engage in despicable acts they would
lose their credibility as ruffians and blackguards. Without crossing the line of
decorum let me try to give another observation. A tabulation of the hetero acts
that are explicitly depicted in this novel will reveal only those “positions”
that can be performed by homo practitioners as well. This indicates to me that
Morgan is tweaking the audience. Yes he has an agenda of promoting tolerance
based on his anti-Christian worldview. No it not done gratuitously. Morgan is
systematic in his agenda, deliberately forcing us to examine our own hypocrisy
in having selective outrage. I am still not comfortable with the scenes in
question, but my second pass through this novel has made me realize that they
are effective in evoking an emotional response from the listener; no mean feat
for a seemingly simple Sword and Sorcery tale. .
Simon Vance has the air of a proper English gentleman. His
vocalizations help smooth out the rough patches and make them less irritating.
When a particularly harrowing, or particularly explicit, scene is being read by
Mr. Vance (or is it Sir Vance?) I cannot help but think of Monty Python who
could make the ridiculous seem sublime.
