Customer Reviews

The Etched City

5 star:		(21)
4 star:		(8)
3 star:		(10)
2 star:		(7)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

What a fine book this is! While the world between these pages has been --justly-- compared with M. John Harrison's Viriconium and China Mieville's New Crobuzon, the world of Ashamoil and its environs is uniquely Bishop's own. Bishop's world is every bit as fleshed out as either of the formers', and there's plenty of action and plot to move things along. Ashamoil is not a pretty place, and I found myself immersed in the decadence and savagery of the place.

The author doesn't take the easy path of painting her characters in manichean black-and-white. Gwynn and Raule --the antiheroes and main characters of the story-- are very human in that they are both bad and good, and thus neither completely likeable nor unlikeable. As their paths cross and diverge, and as they confront their respective moral dilemmas, we come to see something of ourselves. In this aspect, she outdoes both Harrison and Mieville.

Should mention that it's written such that you may read it quickly, or linger over it for maximum effect. I chose the latter.

I thoroughly enjoyed The Etched City and plan to return to Ashamoil again soon. Books like this keep me excited about "what's to come" in fiction.

I cannot recommend 'The Etched City' highly enough. This is an astonishingly good book. As I read it I found myself thinking of Dostoevsky's willingness to tackle spiritual and ethical issues; of Bulgakov's surreal whimsy; of the richness of imagery and fable to be found in books like 'The Dictionary of the Khazars'. They are not writers and works to be invoked lightly, but I believe K J Bishop has written a first novel worthy of the comparisons.

This is a book that resists easy classification. It is a story set in a surreal world with characters that are refreshingly free of easy sentimentality. There is action, violence, murder; passion, lust, love; there is confusion and clarity, magic and pragmatism.

Her main characters, like the book itself, do not fit any recognisable type, beyond the facile one of 'anti-heroes'. Gwynn is a fascinating creation. He is a man of great honesty which he applies to both himself and others, clear-eyed in a murky world. Yet for all his cunning and sharp observational powers, he is capable of being seduced by the intriguing woman who embodies ambiguity. He is paradoxical, amoral; a killer who nonetheless refuses to be callous; an executioner who refuses to be judge, and a realist who embraces the poignancy of love.

Raoule is equally paradoxical, a woman who acts compassionately but feels nothing, a callous caregiver. She searches for truth amongst the monstrous remains of the children she delivers, and her relationship with Gwynn is astringent, to say the least.

There are men who manipulate wars, reaping rewards and destruction in equal measure; there are zealots, lovestruck fools, women and a priest who fumbles towards heaven and Gwynn's soul even as he fumbles in their skirts.

I don't know if time will prove this to be a great book. It certainly has the seeds of greatness within it in its unforgettable scenes and the richness and poetry of its text. If you want to read something that delights, challenges, entertains and moves you, 'The Etched City' is for you.

Bishop is a master of creating strong characters who do not fit easily into normal roles. Gwynn, for instance, who is the main character of The Etched City, is vile and detestable, and commits harsh, cruel acts. Despite this, it is nearly impossible not to root for him at times.

Bishop's imagination soars. She presents vivid pictures of bizarre things and makes them tangible and real. Her descriptions are clear and detailed, allowing the reader to become engrossed in the world she has created.

My only criticism of the book is that its plot is so miniscule that it almost seems absent at times. There are long stretches where you almost feel like it is going nowhere at all, and it seems to meander around from one idea to another. Despite that, however, the characters and scenes are vivid enough to keep one's interest through to the end.

The Etched City, by K.J. Bishop, is an interesting case. It is startlingly well-written, filled to the brim with lush language from a seemingly bottomless reservoir of precise language. It is exceedingly verbose, yes, but not needlessly so: this is not the work of someone showing off. Every word is there because no other word would have sufficed. Miss Bishop is a careful writer who obviously loves language and the possibilities contained within it. Building off of this, she uses her literary skills to construct the despairing and fully-realized city of Ashamoil. Her portrait is sordid and entirely compelling. And, despite being classified as fantasy, this is a novel where the fantastic is in relatively spare supply and the promise of it, at the edge of experience, astonishes us (certainly, if you're expecting typical fantasy stuff with elves and dragons and the like, run far, far away from this book, because you won't find it here).

However, the novel also reads like a parody of the literary novel, with its mix of Marxist social preoccupations (Ashamoil, I imagine, is about as close to hell as any egalitarian could possibly imagine, and she expands on this throughout the novel) and a subtle, plotless narrative. And when I say plotless, I do mean plotless: the novel starts out fairly tight, but by the time the main characters reach Ashamoil the narrative collapses and the novel becomes almost episodic.

We start out following Raule, a doctor, and Gwynn, a gunslinger, two allies who had fought on the losing side of a vicious war and happened to run into one another at the very beginning of the novel, as they make their way through the post-apocalyptic ruins of the Copper Country and outrun something called the Army of Heroes. These first chapters read like a remarkably well-written spin-off of one of Stephen King's Gunslinger novels, mixing a fantasy background with Western mores, and promise a rich backstory for the two leads, which one would assume would be explored in some depth as the story goes forward.

Nuh-uh.

There is a lot of unusual stuff here which promises unique and bold content, but, unfortunately, the novel never evolves past elaborating extensively on the Perdido-Street-Station-Meets-The-Gunslinger world Bishop has created. Character development, the one possible way to save a plotless literary novel, is virtually nil. Gwynn and Raule are mere vehicles the author uses for exploring different situations. There are a lot of stock characters. A debased priest who befriends Gwynn potentially could have been compelling, but we never explore him in any depth. Ashamoil is the most compelling character in this novel (and I would argue that the city, as the central focus of the novel, is a character in its own right).

The problem, I think, is that while Bishop is excellent at creating places and situations to complement these places, she doesn't seem able to tell stories. Oh, sure, this novel is full of situations: Raule, whose medical career we follow as she tends to people in the slums, encounters all kinds of bizarre and hallucinatory things. Gwynn joins the local mob and runs around for the rest of the novel with an amoral tart. Raule saves lives, but sometimes fails. Gwynn takes lives, and makes plenty of enemies. There are battles and sex scenes and philosophical conversations about the nature of life, but none of these things amount to anything. It is like the author wrote down a bunch of disconnected scenes and then slapped on just enough narrative continuity to make the experience comprehensible. This novel has no pivot, no center, no justifying, unifying focus. Consequently, one feels no rush to read more to find out what will happen next. Things happen, but there is no significance to them. The novel succeeds as a technical exercise in good writing but fails as literature.

As a first novel, this gives me hope, but not anticipation, for whatever the author writes next: she has the definite potential to write something completely astounding, but I won't hold my breath for it. I will still follow her career, though, should she continue to write novels, because this is definitely very interesting. Not especially successful, but interesting nonetheless. I give it 3 stars for the writing and the uniqueness of the fantasy background, but it loses 2 stars for being pretentious, plotless, and pointless.

I can only think of two books that seems to me to be in The Etched City's weight-class, and that's Gormenghast and Paul Park's Soldiers of Paradise. The Etched City has that same quality of dreamy, otherworldly skill in using prose to suck the reader seamlessly into another mentality. It's the opposite of Tolkien-esque world-creation, and far less often accomplished or attempted. The Tolkien-type fantasy, even the very good ones, approaches world-creation as a matter of comprehensive scholarship and geek-friendly mastery of consistent detail. Bishop's Etched City is no less a masterful creation of a world, but it accomplishes this through simply beautiful, utterly original prose and equally memorable characterization. Reading it is like drawing deep in an opium den, a sort of delirum contract between reader and writer. Seen in the cold light of the morning after, there are weaknesses, in particular a plot that seems to be moving langurously towards the convergence or closure of two parallel tracks but ultimately spins out (in a rather life-like manner) into a whimper rather than a storytelling bang. But just as Gormenghast in the end doesn't really seem to be about that much, or Soldiers of Paradise is just a retelling of the French Revolution, the narrative weakness of The Etched City ultimately seems irrelevant. I can't recommend this book highly enough.

What a surreal world Bishop has created and what a breath of fresh air for fantasy writing! Unlike many offerings in the genre this story is driven by the characters and the environment rather than the tired "chosen one on a quest where it all comes out right in the end".

The extraordinary hides amongst the mundane then leaps out to tap you on the shoulder and remind you that yes, this is not Life as we Know it.

I devoured this book in a very short time, not wanting to miss the next tweak in the tale. A very subtle and enjoyable trip to a world a little like ours, but so very different...

I am somewhat at a loss of words to describe this book. It follows two characters, one a physician and another a rogue, through their joint travels through a desert land to their arrival in a populous city, reminiscent of a river city in India. The geography of this story is not set on Earth; there are unfamiliar countries, landmarks, and histories. In fact the entire book reminded of nothing so much as a complex and long dream one might have. I very much enjoyed this book even though I am struggling to adequately describe it. It reads as a steam-punk novel with technology of the gas-light era; trains, paddleboats and guns being common, yet swords and horses are still everyday items. The novel is also strongly of the magic-realism school too. In many ways I think it is as if Gabriel Garcia Marquez and Jack Vance sat down together and knocked out a highly enjoyable book together. The story-telling is compelling and pulls you along from page to page, the characterization is remarkable, the dialogue is superb (especially certain parts dealing with philosophy and religion), but overall the simple otherworldliness of the book will be the biggest draw for most readers. This is a complex and enjoyable novel, remarkable in that is a first effort.

K. J. Bishop, The Etched City (Prime, 2003)

Aussie author Bishop turns in her first novel, and what a first novel it is. The language in The Etched City demands to be savored, lingered over. It is beautiful to the point of astonishment. This is, basically, the fastest way to get a top review from me.

The problem being that when held up against such masterpieces of perfect prose as Walker's The Secret Service, Mieville's Perdido Street Station (to which The Etched City is oft-compared), or McCarthy's Blood Meridian, The Etched City suffers in one respect: pace. The first half of the book, give or take, is told at a leisurely pace, to be kind. (It took me over three months to make it to the last half of the book.) Bishop takes her protagonists, the gunslinger Gwynn (who bears a striking resemblance to a more cynical, lighter-hearted Elric of Melnibone) and the doctor Raule, through a few episodes in another land before getting to the city at the heart of the book, Ashamoil. Once in Ashamoil, Bishop takes her time setting up character, setting, and theme before actually getting down to plot. A few subplots are begun, a few episodes spun out (and The Etched City is very much an episodic novel, contributing somewhat to its overall sense of languor), but the biggest ball doesn't get rolling until almost two hundred pages in. If you love language, though, it is doubtful you will care; the book can be put down and picked up at various times allowing the reader to go on to more pressing matters and return at leisure.

Perhaps the oddest thing about the novel is that Raule, with whom the book begins, ends up being such a minor character in the general scheme of things. Once they get to Ashamoil, Gwynn quickly becomes the focus of the story, which cuts back to Raule now and again to ensure we remember she exists. Gwynn's main quests are involved in working for a tyrannical slaver, Elm, and trying to find (and considering what to do with) the artist of an etching Gwynn stumbles upon in the night market, an etching that contains him. When not hunting down sex or violence, he's usually involved in theological debate over dinner with a fallen priest, whose name we never know but who grows to be one of the book's most endearing characters.

Bishop's ability to draw characters, especially minor characters, puts her into the realm of such authors as McCarthy and Stephen King, much of whose reputations are based upon their ability to create memorable characters. Bishop can certainly be added to this list. The reader will be hard-pressed to forget most of Gwynn's band of cronies, especially Sharp Jasper and Elbows. Lovely folks the both of them. Really.

All in all, a good first novel that would have benefitted from better pacing at the beginning. Recommended for lovers of language and strong characters. *** ½

Two drifters: a battlefield physician and an introspective gunslinger, are pursued from the deserts of the Copper Country to Ashamoil, ancient city of freaks, art and crime. That's the first three chapters, after which the story begins to explore many different paths. In those first chapters Bishop assembles an oddly old-west atmosphere (her protagonists bear six-shooters and shotguns), a compelling feel soon replaced by the cityscape of Ashamoil. There is beautiful and ambiguous writing throughout, and a perpetual sense that everywhere is hidden deeper meaning. The city is rife with symbols and enigmatic denizens. The dark gunfighter Gwynn, who is the book's main subject, involves himself in a wide range of activities with a cast of diverse characters, including protracted discussions on the nature of Salvation, a love affair with a questionably human woman, and fulfilling his duties as crime-lord heavy. Though all interesting, the various plot lines seemed, at times, to clamor for center stage while suffering from lack of attention. Bishop is a powerful wordsmith, and I look forward to her next work.

KJ Bishop in her book "Etched City" has created a rare thing: a story that is on the one hand a fine work of dark fantasy and yet on the other a book that is a thouroughly original as it is entertaining. And with all due respect to the previous reviwer, I couldn't disagree more. While fans of Stephen King's "Dark Tower" series will find many similarities and concurrances with the landscape and society (the first part of "Etched City" will in particular remind the reader of King's arid deserts of "Gunslinger" and "Wizard and Glass" fame), I find that the Dark Tower series devolved into an orgy of overweening arrogance and self gratification long before the final book was penned. By contrast, "Etched City" has a fresh, new vibrancy to it which, combined with the lush penmanship and rich surrealist undertone makes of a genuinley enjoyable read. I have never read Mieville, and as such am not able to comment on any similarities between "Perdido Street Station" and this work.

Part of what makes "Etched City" fun to read is the novel's striking originality. While there can be no doubt that this is a work of fantasy (if anything), it does not conform to the generic fantasy mold. In an era of tired, post-Tolkein cliches, over-developed worlds and magic swords, KJ Bishop resets the tone. The land is that of a vaguely steampunkish, old-west meets old Europe world. There are guns and gas light and cowboy hats, but there are also tribes of wandering nomads, rich bazaars, decadent crimelords, and vaguely magical forces at work. Furthermore, while there are no magic swords or mysterious quests left to be fufilled, there are no heros to root for either. Gywnn, despite being an ultracool, suave, dangerous killer a la traditional old-west outlaw mold, as the novel progresses it becomes clear that there is virtually nothing appealing about him. He is a cruel, ruthless, remorseless killer under a veneer of education and wealth. Raule, while a good woman on her own, is not particularly heroic nor does she have any particularly generous or admirable qualities (other than those typically associated with the medical profession).

Nor do either have the typical anti-hero mystique that is designed to draw readers in even as the characters do morally questionable things. In short, Bishop has created a work of fantasy that is not only original in terms of setting and storyline, but also original in terms of characterizations: the reader is really left with noone to root for and as such must find a way to deal with the characters instead of simply rooting for them.

Of course, the novel is not perfect by any stretch of the imagination. While the descriptions of the unique world are lush and exciting, it is quite apparent that this was not originally intended as a work for publication. There seems to be a general lack of any real overarching narrative and while there are many little mini-plots powering the story from chapter to chapter, the first part of the book consists of Gwynn and Raule making their way to Ashamoil, and the latter part of the book revolving around their day to day lives in the city. There are no mysteries to solve, no missions to accomplish: only the mundane details of living in a fantastic world.

Lastly, my final criticism is that the book has a tendancy to become a little too surreal for its own good. WHile the whole point of surrealism is of course to bend the confines of reality and the imagination, sometimes the book becomes a little too strange for the casual reader's taste.

All in all, an excellent start by Bishop. While this book is not perfect, it does make a great read for those who liked the "Gunslinger" and that sort of world, but wanted something more than King's ranting on and on about doors, towers, and the Crimson King. 4.5 which in this case rounds up to 5.