In the Eye of Heaven [Mass Market Paperback]

David Keck (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: March 6, 2007

From a strong new voice in epic fantasy comes the tale of Durand, a good squire trying to become a good knight in a harsh and unforgiving world.

Set to inherit the lordship of a small village in his father's duchy because the knight of that village has been bereaved of his own son, Durand must leave when the son unexpectedly turns up alive.

First he falls in with a band of knights working for a vicious son of a duke and ends up participating in the murder of the duke's adulterous wife. Fleeing, he comes into the service of a disgraced second son of a duke, Lamoric, who is executing a long subterfuge to try to restore his honor in the eyes of his father, family, and king. By entering tournaments anonymously as "The Red Knight," Durand will demonstrate his heroism and prowess and be drafted into the honors of the king. 

But conspiracies are afoot--dark plots that could break the oaths which bind the kingdom and the duchies together and keep the banished monsters at bay. It may fall to Durand to save the world of Man…

Authentic and spellbinding, In the Eye of Heaven weaves together the gritty authenticity of a Glen Cook with the high-medieval flair epitomized by Gene Wolfe's The Knight, to begin an epic multi-volume tale that will take the fantasy world by storm.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Starred Review. At the start of Keck's winning debut, a gritty medieval fantasy full of enchantment, young squire Durand is on his way home to ask his father for the wherewithal to purchase the fine linen he needs for his knighting ceremony. Durand has prospects in the form of a small holding or fiefdom of his own, Gravenholm. But in a flash his luck changes. Durand loses Gravenholm and becomes a landless shield-bearer whose only option is to become a knight-errant—in effect a mercenary who owes allegiance to anyone who chooses to pay his wages. Desperate for food and troubled by strange magical omens, he accepts a position that proves disastrous. Durand is a convincingly human character who isn't preternaturally skilled or supersmart like so many fantasy heroes, yet he manages to rise to the various challenges he faces. Though this deftly told tale isn't billed as the first of a series, one hopes there'll be further adventures of the memorable Durand. (Apr.)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

From Booklist

Young Durand has a problem. He was all set to inherit the lordship of his home village, on account of the knight who is its overlord, judge, protector, and general government having lost his son. He has endured a lot of training to replace the missing heir. Then Sonny shows up, resumes his place, and Durand has to take it on the lam. While his lordly skills give him a better chance of surviving, the people he meets on the road require everything he can muster up to be dealt with. They constitute a sort of lowlife version of the Canterbury Tales pilgrims and represent the grungier side of medieval societies very well. Durand finds them invaluable allies, however, when he must confront a resurgence of evil magic. Said magic isn't as well realized as other aspects of the book, but Keck in his first book performs substantially better than many a fantasy hand, encouraging hopes for better magic in successors to this yarn whose readers may hope will follow soon. Roland Green
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Mass Market Paperback: 464 pages
• Publisher: Tor Fantasy (March 6, 2007)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0765351692
• ISBN-13: 978-0765351692
• Product Dimensions: 6.8 x 4.2 x 1.2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 6.4 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 3.3 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (20 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,311,565 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

David grew up in Winnipeg, Canada. During his twenties he collected degrees in education, English literature, and creative writing. He has studied in rural England, taught in prairie Canada and recently joined his wife in her hometown: New York City.

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

25 of 28 people found the following review helpful

2.0 out of 5 stars Good for a first draft May 6, 2007

By Red Moose

Format:Mass Market Paperback

This story has potential, but unfortunately the writing drags it down considerably. It really needed to be polished. At the moment it reads almost like a first draft, without anything properly fleshed out.

The first problem is that scenes are poorly described, when they are described at all. I felt almost blind as I was reading, because the author gives you nearly no idea of the places or people that the characters find themselves around. When he does describe a place it is with only the barest hint of what is there, or it's in terms that don't have any descriptive value, terms that the author has developed to describe his own world, but have no real meaning to anyone who can't see into his thoughts. For instance, two main characters are called 'Rooks'. They aren't really described much beyond that. I have no idea what they look like or sound like--other than that they dress in black--for the entire book. The characters spend a majority of their time travelling across the landscape; however it's never really described beyond the ground underneath their feet. We are told is they are walking on grass up a hill, for example, but that's it.

When he does describe anything, it's in fits and starts. You'll get a tiny bit of information and then, half a page later, you'll get a little more. So, you've already started to imagine what's going on, filling in the yawning gaps left by the author with your own imagination, and then you have to change it all to fit in some new information. In fact, sometimes this information doesn't just come a page later: it isn't until you read through about 90% of the book that you're told that Durand has black wavy hair. Durand is the main character, by the way.

When things are described they are written in a confusing manner. I know, I've already told you that, but it's not just that the details are few and far between, they sometimes seem to be conflicting. Here's an example:

"During the night he had looked closely at his sword . . . the Eye [sun] shone in a pale, crisp heaven . . . they rode through a night as black as a midnight mine . . . sometime before first twilight . . . "

The gaps mostly contain some brief descriptions about the men in the area. Basically this is all the same scene. Is it day? Is it night? How many days have passed? At first it seems obvious that it was night, then day, then night again, but if you actually read the entire thing in context--which is more than I want to quote here--you'll see that it's only one night and one day. But it doesn't add up.

Another problem. I have with the writing. Is that the sentences. Are structured. Awkwardly. (You get the idea, I'm sure.)

Another thing that I found difficult to digest was--well, let me give an example first, then I'll explain it a bit:

"Table, wall, bench, and food were all scabbed over. A half-finished leg of goose had sunk in on itself, putrid with mold. Maggots teemed . . . a similar broad fan of mildew had bloomed over the plaster. Insects scrabbled down the table. [A] black functionary plucked one of the running things--cat quick--and popped it in his mouth."

Pretty gross, eh? This is at a large group gathering and yet none of the characters really react. Is it real? Is it imagined? Does everyone see it? What the heck is going on? The events in the book are entirely like a hazy dream where everything is indistinct and yet a looming caricature of reality at the same time.

Finally, I hate, hate, hate how the author writes women. Not that you get much of them in this book. In fact there really are only two that get more than a paragraph's mention at all. They are fairly sterotypically described, physically, for women in fantasy books and also they are horrible, weak characters. The main woman is actually quite a selfish person and yet the author brushes off her disasterous actions with sympathy for her and no sense of responsibility at all. I can't say any more without revealing too much of the plot, but suffice it to say that this point alone would reduce this book's review to two starts from me. The only reason I haven't given it one star is because I think that as a whole the story isn't too bad. It's just extremely rough. I'd never have bought it, or even started to read it, had I known what I was in for. However, it's not the worst novel I've read at all. At least I finished it, though I did skim the last several chapters just to get it over with.

Ah well. Maybe the next book by David Keck will be worth reading. This one, for me at least, was not.

19 of 21 people found the following review helpful

4.0 out of 5 stars Worth the Effort August 7, 2006

By Richard Millard

Format:Hardcover

Most of the reviews suggest that the book was insufficiently clear, hard to follow, undefined, etc. Maybe so, but for me this was a big part of the attraction. We aren't spoon-fed any information - we have to land on our feet and learn as things unfold.

There's a lot still unexplained by the end of the book, and that clearly bothers some folks, but I'm looking forward to learning more as this continues. If it ends here then I'd agree that, as a stand-alone book, it's a failure, but as the first book of a series I suspect it will end up working out well.

Some have compared the style to Steven Erikson, and I can see that, but I think a better comparison may be to Gene Wolfe's "The Knight." [High praise, indeed]. As in The Knight, there's much about the history, cosmology and even plot that remains foggy at the end of the book, but somehow that only adds to the otherworldly sense of wonder that the book produces.

Give it a shot.

15 of 21 people found the following review helpful

3.0 out of 5 stars Like a movie zoomed in too far July 6, 2006

By Christopher R. Magee

Format:Hardcover

As almost every reviewer has mentioned, the main problem with this book is that some parts just don't make sense. Part of this is the casual treament of supernatural events - a magical undead creature will make an appearance and there's no explanation - like this is something that just happens every day. Another reason it gets confusing is that many of the scenes are like a movie where the camera is zoomed in way too far - you can tell that there's action going on, but you can't tell what's happening because you can't see the overall picture. I think the author is trying to give you a first person perspective of the trials and travails of the hero, but he needs to zoom out and explain the bigger picture once in awhile. I kept thinking while I was reading it that it reminded me of the really old knight tales, like Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, because it's a tale of a knight who basically wanders around and just about everywhere he goes some strange monster or occult situation arises for him to deal with. In addition, the main character is always the only person who is aware of what's going on around him. I don't know how many times it mentions that he sees something important and no one else is looking, but then he never tells anyone. Half the time it seems like he's sleepwalking through the adventure.

If it was just the confusion to deal with, the book probably could have still worked - as someone else said, it is kind of similar to Steven Erikson's books, where the reader also often has no idea what's going on. But those work because they have a goal. This book is mostly a series of tournaments and journeys between tournaments. Yes, there is a larger issue of the king possibly being overthrown hanging over it all, but it never really seems like a pressing issue. It's never really clear what stands to be gained in this quest. For example, in the Lord of the Rings, the heroes want to destroy the ring and save the world from Sauron. In this book, what are they trying to do? It's never really clear. The reader needs some reason to care about what happens.