THE STEEL REMAINS: A Land Fit for Heroes, Book 1 by Richard Morgan

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.