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nigellicus 's review for:
The Year of Our War
by Steph Swainston
I read the first two Fourlands when they came out, but they fell off my radar somehow, which is annoying, because I really liked them, and now I like them all the more after years of Grimdark fantasies all over the place. So it's great to revisit the Castle and the Circle and rediscover what made them so fresh and exciting. Set in a world under attack from hordes of giant insects, united by an emperor who grants immortality to fifty individuals chosen for excellence in a particular field or skill who devote themselves to the defence of the Fourlands when not being distracted by petty squabbles and love affairs and addictions. Jant is Comet, the Messenger, the only person in the world with the power of flight. he's also a junkie, addicted to a drug that sometimes lets him travel to another world he calls The Shift. While helping his mentor, Lightning, prosecute his latest love affair with a aristocratic musician who wants to become immortal through her own merits rather than through marriage, the war with the insects suffers a dramatic reversal as swarms of insects breach the front. It doesn't help that a king has died and been replaced by his more cowardly brother, or that open civil war is breaking out amongst the other immortals. The stresses and pressures send Jant more and more to the drug, which takes a physical and mental toll, particularly when he discovers that the current disaster may be all his fault.
Imposing a modernist style and sensibility on classic fantasy to invigorating effect, this feels like a take on the current moment in our world in the same way any given Discworld novel did. The Year Of Our War is witty, but not comic - it has moments of horror, bloody action, explicit sex, surrealism, and essentially office politics and celebrity culture built around a mythic pantheon in the making. It's written in marvelous polished crystalline prose that reminded me of Gwyneth Jones and is an incredibly assured and confident first novel.
Imposing a modernist style and sensibility on classic fantasy to invigorating effect, this feels like a take on the current moment in our world in the same way any given Discworld novel did. The Year Of Our War is witty, but not comic - it has moments of horror, bloody action, explicit sex, surrealism, and essentially office politics and celebrity culture built around a mythic pantheon in the making. It's written in marvelous polished crystalline prose that reminded me of Gwyneth Jones and is an incredibly assured and confident first novel.