I Don't Like Personifications of Death
Written: Nov 22 '06 (Updated Nov 22 '06)
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Product Rating:
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Pros: Great core ideas and some nice prose.
Cons: Some implausibility in the resolution, and a lot of quibbles.
The Bottom Line: The end of a trilogy that's problematic but well worth reading.
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| panguitch's Full Review: Sean Russell - The Shadow Roads |
In a previous review I described volume one of The Swans' War, The One Kingdom, as perfectly apportioned. The unity and balance of its diverse parts struck me like a tuning fork. Volume two, The Isle of Battle, abruptly muffled that harmonic resonance. Volume three, The Shadow Roads, is a big step back in the right direction, but its elements still don't gel as satisfyingly as the first book's.
The Shadow Roads opens with the characters all having been flushed down the drain of a fetid swamp, the Stillwater, and deposited in random locations. Their free-for-all melee thus interrupted, they set off in new directions. The blackguard Hafydd/Caibre makes a bargain with a power even more evil than himself, and sets off to bring about the end of the world. Elise/Sianon gives chase, desperately hoping to stop him. Alaan/Sainth thinks he knows Hafydd's plan, and tries to head him off by traveling the shadow roads in search of some dusty mysteries from the past. Each of them drags along a string of companions like cans tied to a newlywed's bumper: Valemen and Renné cousins, innocents and sorcerer-touched. Meanwhile, the Renné and Wills armies continue to maneuver, unaware that their war is about to grow much larger.
Sean Russell is doing something interesting with his narrative. As the plot progresses, stage by stage, the focus moves not to the future, but farther back in the past. In The One Kingdom the children of the sorcerer Wyrr return to trouble the world with their feud. In The Isle of Battle they learn that the even more ancient feud between Wyrr and his brother is still affecting events, blurring the lines between the land between the mountains and the shadow lands. In The Shadow Roads an even earlier generation, the most primordial feud, reaches out to shake the world and perhaps unleash Death himself from his prison.
The effect of peeling back layers, onion-like, to reveal deeper, older mysteries is brilliantly conceived. Unfortunately, not every layer becomes fully substantiated or resolved, and when the characters do uncover what's really at the bottom of it all we're faced with something strange and almost out of place. Nevertheless, the intertwining generations of one seriously dysfunctional sorcerous family are a treat to wrap your mind around.
Not every aspect of The Shadow Roads fits into this grand architecture so premeditatedly. At times it feels as if Russell is indulging in tropes, as if he promised himself this was the one "epic" fantasy series he would write before going back to less traditional modes, so he needed to squeeze in all the fantasy elements he might ever want to use. So we have Alaan's long excursion into a land of giants where he fights against demonic creatures of magic. The gypsy-like Faél gradually begin to feel more like the elves of Lothlórien. And I must say that as a rule in fiction I find personifications of Death dead boring.
Many of the characters also begin to feel like mere appendages to the narrative. I like the concept of a storyfinder, but Cynddl never clicked with me the way the Valemen did. Prince Michael and Carl are too much alike. My favorite, Dease, fades into the background, only partly compensated for by a more interesting Beldor. The relationship between Tam and Elise makes a jarring transition from cold, Rusalka-like seduction to genuine love. And Carral and Lynn's love at first "sight" is expected to be taken for granted, to say nothing of their improbable inheritance.
At the same time, many of the characters remained superbly real, much more so than in most fantasies. The Valemen and Elise receive scars from this adventure, and there's no immortal land in the west they can sail to for healing. Russell may have indulged himself in his motifs, but he gave no quarter to his characters.
On one count the bleakness does go farther than I think Russell intended. The teleology of his world is profoundly dismal. While the idea of a hell is healthy in the characters' minds, and they fear crossing the river into Death's domain, there is no concept of heaven, per se. Only the prospect of being extinguished as the crest of a wave. Scylla and Charybdis, if you ask me.
But book three of the The Swans' War trilogy isn't all darkness and characters being lost in a fractured epic narrative. It's buoyed by consistently lean and effective prose. There are some merry Robin Hood-like chases and more bow and arrow shootouts than you can shake a quiver at. Overall, there's just enough in The Shadow Roads to recall the promise of book one, The One Kingdom. It's a hope that's never fully fulfilled, but even in falling short there is much value in The Swans' War.
– Panguitch
Sean Russell's The Swans' War
• The One Kingdom: Solid as a Stone in a Running Stream (http://www.epinions.com/content_251712147076)
• The Isle of Battle: The River of Story Slows to a Swamp (http://www.epinions.com/content_254777265796)
• The Shadow Roads: I Don't Like Personifications of Death
Recommended:
Yes
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panguitch
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