Greg Keyes, The Infernal City (Del Rey, 2009)
How on Earth did it not occur to me when I first read the description for this a couple of months ago that "the first of two exhilarating novels" meant this was the first in a series? I try to wait until most, if not all, of a series is out before reading it these days (George R. R. Martin has taught me well). Not that I would probably have listened to my own advice in this case had I read that correctly. Elder Scrolls novels? I'm going to hop on that train from day one. Which I did, actually; I almost never pre-order novels, but the second I had book money, I tossed an order in for this (about a month before its release). So, yeah, there's been "waiting" all around where this sucker is concerned. Including the month between my finishing the book and my typing this. (I lost the first draft of my review for this book in a power outage and have been truculent about recreating the review ever since.) None of this, of course, has anything whatsoever to do with The Infernal City. I'm not usually big on novels adapted from games, but the Elder Scrolls world is something well beyond most game worlds, and I figured if any game world was detailed enough to make its novels worth reading, Tamriel would be it. While Keyes doesn't often stray outside the conventions that annoy me about most game-world books, he's still a good enough writer to make this worth reading, and the second book (whenever it appears) worth waiting for.
The book centers mostly on Annaig and Mere-Glim, a human and Argonian, respectively, from the Black Marsh. (If you don't know what an Argonian is, I cannot encourage you enough to run out and get yourself a copy of Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind or Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion as fast as you can. Most computers produced in the last ten years should be able to handle Morrowind, but you'll need a much beefier box for Oblivion.) Annaig is something of a mage-in-training, though with the destruction of the Mages Guild (and when did THAT happen? Note that the book takes place forty years after the end of TES: Oblivion) she's got little to go and and is mostly teaching herself. Mere-Glim, who's something of a rogue, is a friend of Annaig's (and sometime unwilling guinea pig). The two of them, after hearing rumors of a huge floating city heading for the Black Marsh, decide to investigate, but events on the ground push them into it a lot faster than they would have moved otherwise. In any case, when they get there, they find that even the oddest things they know about their own world are nothing in comparison to this. Meanwhile, an Imperial City prince, also heading off to investigate the floating city, goes missing, and one of the last remaining Imperial mages is on his trail.
While the jacket copy makes it seem as if these four characters will eventually meet up and form a typical adventuring party, if that's going to happen, it'll happen in Book Two; by the end of The Infernal City, they're still separate. Juxtaposing the actual book text with the jacket copy reveals this to be a book of pure setup. That's not necessarily a bad thing; Steven Erikson, for example, is capable of writing exquisite books of setup (Midnight Tides is one of the best of the Malazan novels, for example). Keyes is not quite as accomplished a writer as Erikson, but this is still a fun book. Many other reviewers have complained that it's far too short, and I'm inclined to agree; if your entire party isn't even together by the end of book one, there's no way you're going to reach a satisfying conclusion by the end of book two. But there's more than enough going on here to keep the Elder Scrolls fans happy. And if you're not already an Elder Scrolls fan, why in the world not? *** ˝
