Customer Reviews

The Folding Knife

5 star:		(6)
4 star:		(3)
3 star:		(3)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

Like Parker's other recent books (The Company, the Devices and Desires trilogy), The Folding Knife is well written, sports a compelling main character, and a brisk, entertaining plot...at least until the last 30 pages. Unfortunately, as The Folding Knife reaches its climax, its characters become inconsistent (contradicting themselves and making wildly out of character choices, for reasons that are never really justified, and seem motivated purely by the desire to move the plot along), the tightly wound narrative falls apart, and you're left with a story that's not only unsatisfying, but frustratingly hollow.

Parker has proven herself an author who can write a great beginning, and a compelling middle, but she still hasn't figured out how to pull off a satisfying, or even consistent, ending.

Bassianus Severus - known to the people as Basso - is the First Citizen of the Vesani Republic. He is politically savvy, financially creative, ruthlessly ambitious and very lucky. As his power and prestige grows, so does the rift between him and his sister, and the battle for the loyalty of her son.

The Folding Knife is the eleventh novel by the enigmatic K.J. Parker, a stand-alone book which is not part of any series. Fourteen years ago I picked up Parker's debut novel, Colours in the Steel, and later its two sequels and enjoyed them enormously. I've missed out on her books since then, which is something I'll have to rectify. The Folding Knife is outstanding.

This is the story of a man's life, or rather a twenty-year slice of it, but mostly focusing on the three years after he becomes First Citizen of the Republic. Basso grows up learning the family trade of banking, and through canny deals and excellent advice he soon becomes one of the richest men in the city. He then moves into politics, using his common touch with the people and his skills of persuasion and blackmail with the nobility to become the ruler of the Republic. He even has a long-term plan for the entire nation: to strengthen its borders and increase its resources against the threat of competing kingdoms jealous of Vesani's growing military and economic might.

Basso plays the Republic like an instrument, working out how to make the people and politicians jump to his tune. However, as the story unfolds Basso's inability to mend the feud with his sister or make foreign powers likewise obey the rules he sets out both become dangerous, leading to more desperate gambles. There's a strong economic spine to the book, with Parker successfully showing how expensive it is to run a large kingdom even without trying to fund major wars. In fact, I'm wondering if the economic storyline is a commentary on the current financial crisis, with Basso's self-justifications and ability to conjure money out of nowhere to keep things going just a bit longer being more than slightly reminiscent of recent news stories on the banks and national governments almost going bankrupt.

Basing the story on economics could be deathly dull, but Parker's well-paced writing, solid characterisation and dry sense of humour keeps things ticking along nicely. Basso is a well-written protagonist, monstrously flawed but also sympathetic, with his genius at handling money and politics contrasted against his disastrous relationships and his empty personal life. Basso's story is something of a tragedy then, but one with more than its fair share of humour and ingenuity. Also, by Parker's standards it's not that dark or disturbing (there's no Belly of the Bow 'moment' of unexpected ultraviolence here), though her twisted sense of humour remains intact. She also reigns in her tendency to interrupt the story for a three-page digression on the best way to build trebuchets (though there is one detailed explanation of how to use a scorpion - a piece of field artillery - as a stealthy assassination weapon, but this is quite funny so fair enough).

This is a strong novel with only a few brief but well-described moments of action, with the focus being on political and economic intrigue. Intriguingly, whilst set in an (unmapped) secondary world, there is no magic or mysticism in the novel at all, but this lack is barely felt.

As for criticisms, the tight focus on Basso means we don't get much of a sense of the Republic or the wider world beyond his own views on it, but that's the point of the story, I suppose. The ending is also perhaps a little underwhelming (and whilst it's not the first in a series, the ending is open enough to allow for a later sequel, if necessary). The reasons for Basso's sister's hatred of him are also under-explored, since we don't have any POV chapters from her. Finally, there are moments when things go as clockwork and Basso finds things going all his way that feels a little too clinical and not allowing for the unpredictability of human actions, but the latter part of the novel repays that in spades, so that's not too much of a problem.

The Folding Knife (****½) is an engrossing, page-turning economic and political thriller, executed with finesse by one of our best (but possibly most underrated) fantasists. The novel is available now in the UK and USA.

For the record, I'm pretty sure my glowing opinion of KJ Parker is well-documented in other reviews. The Folding Knife isn't new territory for this talented & enigmatic author: an ambitious, Machiavellian man has plans for the world, but must overcome human weakness to achieve them. The setting is a "generic" medieval/fantasy world, populated with vague analogues of Roman and Byzantine cultures.

As a single volume, The Folding Knife just doesn't have all the room it needs - there's an epic story in here, but it is told very quickly. Brilliant, but feels like the Reader's Digest version of the (even more brilliant) Engineer Trilogy. I greedily wish, like with The Company, Parker would've explored slightly newer ground.

Still highly recommended: my main (and only) criticism is that I like Parker's other work even more.

It would be easy to mistake The Folding Knife for an epic. It seems to have all the usual trademarks: the detailed secondary world, the wars and affairs of state, the positions of leadership. And yet, to call The Folding Knife an epic would be a grievous mistake. This is the story of one man, a man both great and terrible, at once an idealist and a nihilist, somewhere between benevolent leader and tyrant.

The Folding Knife is the tale of Basso's life and term as First Citizen of the Republic of Vesani. Every word of this book is biased, the entire narrative shaped by Basso in the same way that he shaped the world. Even when Basso is offstage, this is unequivocally his story, and that is reflected in every aspect of the book down to its diction. Basso's mother and Basso's father are referred to only by their relationship to him, their tags being "Basso's mother" (p. 5) and "the boy's father" (p. 11) respectively. In the same manner, Basso's opponents are simply referred, save in exceptional cases, as either "the Opposition" or "the Optimates" (p. 250).

The books scenes have a slippery quality, sometimes advancing with a meticulous attention to detail and sometimes leaping forward by years. This is the story of a man's life, and, as such, it is a messy affair with strands that meander and seeming dead ends everywhere. There is no approved guide to Basso's life, no single authorially proposed path or meaning. Events that seem pivotal fade and recede, while minutia often steps to the fore of Basso's mind and existence.

It is established from the opening pages of the novel that this is a tragedy. We open with Basso after his fall, looking back on the mistake that he believes led to every one of his failures, and so we know that he cannot succeed. But he does, again and again. The Folding Knife is the story of a great man, and his every success is all the more powerful because we know that the odds are stacked against him, that one day he is plans will all implode, that his creations will fall, no matter how sound their foundations now seem to us. Basso says to his wife: "Destiny is the enemy," (p. 203) and that characterizes the entire outlook of The Folding Knife. The reader is gripped by every one of his schemes, knowing that one has to fail and yet so enraptured in the legacy of the man that believing that one will is impossible.

Towards the beginning of the book, Basso gets married. It is the first time that expectations, appearances, and actions fail to match up with reality. Basso gets married, yet everything remains hollow: "This wasn't love. He was prepared to accept that, in extreme cases, it was marriage, but only after half a century of egregious incompatibility." (p. 33-34) It is still early for Basso, however, and he convinces himself that things will change with time.

Such a thing, however, is not to be, for the turning point of Basso's life, the "one mistake" of the back cover, comes shortly after his wedding. Basso walks in on his wife and his sister's husband together. This moment - like most of the moments in The Folding Knife that, by all respects, should have been visceral - is instead marked first by confusion and then by a terrible, dreamlike decisiveness. Attacked by his sister's lover, Basso kills for the first time with his folding knife. Then, stepping forward in a moment devoid of emotion, he kills his wife.

Basso's killing determines everything that comes afterwards. The murders are the cementing of that hollowness that plagued his marriage, forever marking the separation between action and intent, reality and perception. Outwardly, Basso is the same man afterwards. Inwardly, however, Basso's ability to empathize withers away. In his life, Basso is only to love two people, and both of those relationships are a direct result of his actions toward them, his need to redeem himself in the eyes of his sister and her son stemming directly from the murder of their father/husband. As for every facet of Basso's life that does not revolve around this one moment, it fade entirely in his estimation, leaving him as a man of untold successes that he cares nothing of and a single failure that haunts every aspect of his being:

"And it occurred to him that in his life he'd done many things that other people considered admirable, brilliant, wonderful; all of which he placed little value on, just as the conjuror knows he hasn't really performed magic, no matter what the audience may think. There was just one admirable thing he'd done - one honest things - and the only other person who'd ever know about it hated him enough to want to see him dead . And therein, it pleased him to think, lies the true magnificence of Basso the Magnifying; his one honest thing, his only failure, the one thing he wanted and told himself he couldn't have." (p. 363)

The dichotomy of perception and reality is exemplified when a plague strikes the Republic. Emergency measures are enacted, but are, of course, unhelpful. Desperate, Basso and his advisors try and figure out what is causing the plague. Their first guess is that it's airborne, and they evacuate huge sections of the city. Their second guess is that it's carried in the water of the city, so they divert as much water they can from a nearby river into the city's cisterns. Eventually, however, it turns out that the plague was caused by tainted beef. All of Basso's actions were in vain, and the only reason the entirety of the Republic didn't perish was luck. And yet, the people love Basso. The citizenry's relief at his decisive action was so great that not even the pointlessness of said action could shrink their gratitude.

The majority of Basso's actions are the opposite, though. Time after time, Basso does something incredible for the people of the Republic for the sole reason that it benefits him. As a result, the core of The Folding Knife is the question of whether good can come from greed, of whether the intention matters: "'A hundred of my predecessors tried to make the world a better place...They tried so hard, we've had poverty, economic collapse, and so many wars I lose count. My approach is, I try and make money for myself in a way that benefits the Republic.'" (p. 192) Basso is, without a doubt, a selfish man. He crushes his political opponents without remorse, and he manipulates the very state that he represents in order to escalate his own profits to absurd heights.

Still, the good that he does while in office is almost immeasurable. His second wife accuses him of only caring about morality, about great deeds like ending poverty and starvation, as a "fringe benefit," (p. 193), but, no matter whether it was the primary intention, doesn't the act still count? Can the good of increasing the purity of Vesani gold, bringing a veritable flood of foreign money to the city, be negated by the fact that Basso prospered more than anyone else? Can the Enfranchisement Act, a measure that finally grants citizenship to the various immigrants that make up so much of Vesani life, be really diminished because its primary aims were to allow Basso to marry who he wanted and to insure a massive influx of newly enfranchised voters that would never be loyal to anyone but him?

The Folding Knife isn't devoid of the occasional blemish. The thematic continuity that runs from Basso's murder to his downfall is powerful, but, as the novel reaches its climax, Parker tries to make Basso's moral failing his material failing as well. Unfortunately, this attempt is not only unnecessary but actually detrimental to what came before. In her need to tie everything together so tightly, things that were once triumphs or disasters of chance or Basso's own doing become a part of a hackneyed revenge plot that requires logic and established character to bend over backwards for its accommodation.

Furthermore, the immense presence of Basso shoves everything that he's not interested in into obscurity. The Opposition is never developed, never really given a face, never anything more than a bumbling foe for Basso to run rings around. More importantly, the very sister that is the crux of Basso's story is so spiteful that she becomes hard to take seriously as a threat. Yes, Parker tries to humanize her with our sympathy, but Basso's picture of his sister is so egregiously off that the reader never confuses it with the reality, and we're left with an antagonist both one dimensional and obvious.

Still, it takes a talented author to tell you exactly what she means to do, to then do exactly that, and to have it be every bit as affecting as you could've dreamed. Yes, Parker does overplay her hand in the end, but the emotional impact of Basso's life and disgrace, and the intellectual impact of the questions and paradoxes that Parker raises, render The Folding Knife an excellent read.

Most of the criticism here seems to stem from expectations of a book that might be, rather than the book this is. The conclusion is fairly short, but - though the byline's for book sell it like a Lost-style mystery to be unraveled - is a wonderful ending. The book starts at the end, after all, and dragging out the concluding events would serve no further purpose to the characters or the story. I think many reviewers here seem to also be mistaking Basso's 'one mistake' (as blurbed on the back cover) for the final sequence of events, when that is genuinely a misinterpretation of the story. The 'mistake' is purely psychological, happens early, is key to the novel's title, and plays out over the course of the work. This is a recurring structure for Parker - the day-to-day events and mechanics are largely dressing to complement the protagonist's mental state, the larger world simply a stage for their inner workings to play out; here that's using commodities and creating value to counter-balance seemingly-devastating losses. Viewing this work as a simple linear narrative is severely underestimating the depth of characterization, and, woefully, missing the true core of Basso's mistake: human empathy is beyond value, and no amount exchanged can make up for it's loss.

Like many of the other reviewers I enjoyed the book tremendously but felt the ending problematic. This book shares some themes with the Engineer trilogy, the only other Parker I have read -- the constant consideration of "acceptable losses", of doing what one must because one has no choice, and indeed the meaning of choice itself. It also shares Parker's already-apparent incredible gift for irony. The Engineer trilogy builds and builds with relentless momentum towards a climax that feels like a kick in the groin... because the entire story revolves around one man's grand plan to get what he wants, what he values above everything else, and the fatal flaw that turns it all to ash, a flaw that was there from the beginning. The Engineer trilogy is thus entitled to its ending.

It seems like the main thrusts of "The Folding Knife" are, as one character states, "there's no such thing as luck -- things just happen", and the idea that a single act of appalling stupidity and inconsideration can destroy everything that has been built up for decades. (Leave aside that, in some sense, these two ideas contradict one another.) As fighters say, the punch that does the most damage is the one you don't see coming, and that happens pretty decisively in the last pages of this book. The problem is that "The Folding Knife" just doesn't set this up well enough. The risks that Basso takes to get the Republic into the state it has to be in for the ending to work are too quick and too contrived. The relationship between Basso and his sister is almost entirely dropped, denied much resolution (apart from the irony that his sister's demand led ultimately to the tragic ending). The behavior of Basso's wife is just implausible -- we're not treated to earlier episodes of very smart people behaving very stupidly in that particular way in the story, so it almost feels internally inconsistent.

I still recommend the book, particularly for the dialogue, the fast-moving events and plot, and the characterization. Basso is a character for the ages. And I don't wish for a different ending -- I just wish the one we got had felt less pasted on.

Best K.J. Parker I've read! This is another stand-alone novel with good pacing, believable characters, and a beautifully framed story.

Parker has a big story to tell and likes telling it quickly; for example, the first forty years are covered in three chapters. Then it's during the events following the author's engaging set-up that we can finally begin to unfold the motivations and back story. You have to be patient, because despite the story's quick pace, Parker seems to enjoy telling the important bits out of order, so you won't often understand the 'why' until later. As you read it's hard to say exactly where the story is headed, as it dashes this way and that, or takes the occasional turn. (Basso himself would approve of this method, since he takes great pride in the bait-and-switch tactics he uses on his political and business rivals.)

However, readers will be fine with swiftly moving from scene to scene because Basso is such an interesting character. It's easy to be caught up in the details surrounding his relationships and the choices he makes. He's a likable mixture of self-interest and soft-heartedness who will do what's ugly for sake of what's right, and is unapologetically aware of the kind of person he is. The people around him are as interesting as he is, such as the clever General Aelius and Basso's earnest nephew Bassano.

Parker's writing is fluid, fun, and fast-paced, the dialogue between the characters engaging and hilariously candid. The use of modern lingo, however, is oddly incongruous with the novel's era of carriages and swords, and it took me a couple of chapters to sync with the prose's flow. But once I did, the story flew by.

Easily the best part of the book is Parker's droll sense of humor, occasionally bordering on the downright silly. Basso and company see situations for how ridiculous they really are, which makes what could have been a too-serious story instead easy reading because of the way they poke fun at themselves and the world around them.

The majority of the novel takes place in the city of the Vesani Republic, but we also learn about the surrounding nations, their customs, and the eccentricities of their peoples. The author attempts to build a world of complexity, but overreaches so the world-building lacks focus. And while humor is great for dialogue, the frequently quirky descriptions of other nations makes it hard to give them significance when the author is inconsistent about whether we should take them seriously or not.

Parker spends 400 pages setting us up for...something. I'm not really sure what. As the novel progresses, it gets bogged down in the business, political, and wartime maneuverings. Where the climax should be are events we don't get to witness directly except through Bassano's idiosyncratic correspondence. After spending so long in the day-to-day goings on surrounding Basso, this jumbled summary of the culmination of events doesn't match the rest of the novel and takes the reader painfully out of the story. By the end, the plot completely disintegrates, with characters doing the inexplicable, Parker's attempts at being philosphical falling flat, and the story resolves into a wandering meaninglessness.

Is THE FOLDING KNIFE worth reading? Sure, on a Sunday afternoon when you're in the mood to enjoy fun to read prose and likable characters...but at the same time don't want to think too hard about the point of the story.

Reading the other reviews for this book, I'm struck by how the reviewers seem to expect the thing to meet certain criteria because they see it as fantasy. That won't work. The story takes place in a world that is not this one, but magic is not part of it -- this is a story of human success and failure, not magic, heroes and villains. You're told right up front it won't work out well, with the first scene actually the last scene of the story. Parker leads you to believe that this is a tale of a clever and devious man who succeeds where others haven't, but instead it's a story of a man who bets on success too many times. Although most of the way through it seems like a relatively cheerful narrative of the creation of a better world, it's actually a warning that not everything goes the way you want it, and sometimes when something goes wrong, everything comes apart. You're left realizing that the better world isn't going to happen, as much because of the stupidity and greed of others as because of the short-fall in the skills of the protagonist by just a tiny bit.

This is much more along the lines (in underlying philosophy and flavor -- actually, style as well -- hmmm...) of Glenn Cook's Shadow series. Not a perky afternoon at a feel-good movie, friends. I loved being forced to accept that no matter how skilled someone is, blind bloody-mindedness can bring them down.

After I finished this book and looking back I really couldn't remember what happened or what kept me reading this book. I did want to keep reading, though I think it was more because I was waiting for something to happen. I only gave this book three stars because I actually finished it (I've started five of Parker's books and only finished one other).
Grant it the book had an interesting setting, a city based on Rome, but I felt the narrative was long and a little boring. At the end the characters and plot sort of exploded, for lack of a better phrase. The ending is unsatisfying as well.
Overall, though the characters (mostly) were interesting and the story is well written and leads you on at first, it then starts to drag. Don't get drawn in, like I did, by the product description for personally I don't think the book or the character live up to it.