Customer Reviews

The Year of Our War (Fourlands)

5 star:		(6)
4 star:		(6)
3 star:		(7)
2 star:		(6)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

"I wanted to ask the Emperor how life was, back when god walked the earth. What did it really look like? Sound like? What did it mean to live when everybody knew everything? While San wrote, the pen scratching, I tried to imagine existence with god nearby, enjoying its creation, when there was no Insects, no Castle - this two-thousand-year-old stone, just lush grass. The Fourlands does not really belong to us - it is god's playground; god gave us responsibility for its creation, which we have failed to defend.

As ever, San read my mind. Almost imperceptibly, he said, 'Once there was peace.'"

The Year of Our War is a book that, at first, looks just about as generic as fantasy can get. We've got a (literally) faceless, inhuman enemy; we've got an immortal protagonist who can fly and, due to his ability to access the Shift, may be instrumental in the war against the Insects; we've got a series of squabbling, immortal lords, generally far more interested in increasing their own fortunes than in banding together and actually accomplishing something; and, to cap it all off, we've got a semi-divine Emperor ruling over the whole thing. And yet, The Year of Our War is anything but a traditional fantasy. The novel is set apart both by the excellent characterization and first person prose of its main character, Jant, and by its interesting take on immortality.

Now, I've seen some people say that Jant is a poor character because of his weak personality. This is absolutely baffling to me. It's true that Jant is not the driving force behind most of the events of the book, but since when does a character not being a traditional hero invalidate their depth? Jant's very much the junior among the immortals of the Emperor's Circle, and he is constantly dragged into the schemes of the older, more powerful, and more forceful immortals. Since before his time in the Circle, he has used the hallucinogenic scolopendium. His drug use is one of the few things that sets him apart amongst the immortals, and his habit has, if anything, worsened. It hasn't, however, given him a degree of control over his own life; instead, he's just added yet another master yanking him in yet another direction. One of the only times he's ever taken direct control of something in his life was to commit a terrible crime that he now regrets. He's conflicted, intelligent, and immensely self centered. He is absolutely oblivious to the feelings of those around him, something never more obvious than the scenes with his wife, Tern. All of that points to a deep, realistic character to me, even if he's not the easiest to always cheer along with.

Jant isn't always the most honest, nor knowledgeable of narrators. When one of his ideas backfires, he rarely admits guilt. Any events that took place without him present might as well not have happened, as far as his recollections are concerned. This gives the book a meandering feel at times, because sub plots are dropped and resumed almost at random. This can be annoying, yes, but it also gives the book a more lifelike feel, one that timelier pacing would be unable to provide. Paradoxically, the focused nature of the narrative is what lends The Year of Our War its sense of scale. When Jant returns to an area unmentioned for a hundred pages, only to find it burned to the ground, it's apparent that the war with the Insects is bigger than any one person can comprehend.

The thematic crux of The Year of Our War is the immortality of the Circle. Though at first it seems to be handled in a comic book sense, where immortality and blessing are simply means to kill monsters better, it soon becomes apparent that the longevity of the Fourlands' rulers dictates every aspect of their culture. This is explored in what is by far the book's most interesting sub plot, Swallow's quest for immortality on the basis of her musical skills. When she goes up to the emperor, he says:

"'Do you think music requires an immortal guardian, as Lightening controls the skill of archery? Would it better if music was left to change and develop as future people wish?'"

Since its policy makers are immortal, the Fourlands have essentially stagnated. This isn't a Warhammer-esque stagnation, where progress is lost forever, but, as long as the immortals reign over their disciplines, true progress cannot take place. How could a musketeer outperform the god of archery, and, if he could not, how could the invention ever take hold in such a society? The immortals, however, only control the arts of war, and the rest of the society can progress at a standard pace. This leads to the interesting (though occasionally hard to swallow) existence of a society where people wear T-shirts and kill each other with swords.

This stagnation extends to characterization as well as to setting. One of the major complaints that I've seen about The Year of Our War is that the supporting characterizations are shallow. I don't completely agree in all cases, but I'll admit they have a point - I just think the one dimensionality of certain characters is intentional (though, as I've said on here before, interesting thematic decisions don't always translate well to enjoyable reading). When a character becomes immortal, they're frozen at whatever age they happen to be at, arresting their own development:

"'How old have you been for two hundred years, Comet?'

'Twenty-three. But I've grown wiser!'

'Have You? I think it would be a shame to deny the Fourlands the music she would make if she were to grow more mature. When she gains more experience, her music will be so improved that the rest of the world will learn from it.'"

Of course, the members of the Circle don't think that they've been treading water for thousands of years:

"Many [immortals] are jaded and love innovation; some of us, like myself, invent to make our lives easier and to prove we are the best specialists in our various professions. The more confident immortals embrace novelty and would welcome Swallow's continual creation."

While at first convincing, Jant's words soon ring hollow. First of all, the end of the first sentence is very telling: to prove we are the best specialists in our various professions. So, while Jant may pass his time by inventing gliders, you're not going to see Lightening rendering himself obsolete by inventing (or even endorsing) handguns. The older immortals are all trapped in their own pasts. Lightening still squabbles with Mist over territorial disputes forgotten before any living mortal was born; Mist is unwilling to acknowledge Ata's innovations, because something that daring would be unthinkable in the more traditional time that he's a product of.

The Insects, a faceless enemy that endlessly encroaches on the borders of the Fourlands, drive almost every event in the novel, but they're probably the least interesting part of it. They're suitably terrifying off screen, of course, but the Circle's prowess defangs them a tad in direct confrontation. Really, the main problem facing the human armies seems to be a lack of arrows, and, as such, I have a simple plan for victory: all T-shirt factories have hereby been taken over by the state, and they will produce either A. arrows, or B. quivers to hold said arrows. If every archer brings, say, fifteen quivers, instead of the customary four arrows, I'm confident the Insects would cease to be such a big deal.

And then there's the Shift, an altogether different realm in which the rules of reality are totally different, accessed by overdosing on scolopendium. I don't understand how there are so few Fourlanders there, if an overdose is really all that's needed, and if scolopendium is as often abused as Jant's flashbacks would have us believe, but that's a miniscule point. The Shift is a breeding ground for the bizarre, and it would be easy to let it grow whimsical to the point of irrelevance, but creatures like the unsettling Vermiform insure that there're some teeth in the whole affair, and I'm looking forward to learning more about what the hell it is in future volumes.

The Year of Our War is an excellent debut. I've seen a whole host of reviews that have called it a Miéville clone, and I just don't really get that. It's about a self centered character who flies, so alright, I guess that's a superficial similarity to Perdido Street Station. They're both New Weird, but I don't think genre's enough to acquire rip off status. They're both concerned with questions of immortality and an eternal war...oh, wait, no; they're not. Maybe I'm being silly, but I don't know how a book can be a pastiche while exploring wholly different themes. The Year of Our War has got some flaws, some of which are easily excusable and some of which are not, but it makes up for all of them with its tight focus and interesting ideas. If you're interested in New Weird, this is something you need to check out.

This book tries to take too many directions. The characters and situations are compelling but, just when it's about to hook you, The Year of Our War goes off on another sub-plot.
I would really like to see a more focused look at the world that Steph Swainston has created here. The Year of Our War only gives a teaser of this world.

After a while, one grows tired of elves and orcs and barbarians and the typical fantasy stories. Steph Swainston has invented a new and unique world with none of the normal suspects in it, with great imagination that still leaves a lot to the readers to ponder.

She creates a world with mortals and immortals, where the immortals must earn their place by being the best at what they can do: the best swordsman, the best sailor, the best archer. Immortality is betowed upon them by the Emperor San...where he got the ability to do this is one of the mysteries of the series.

Jant Comet is one of the immortals, called the Messenger because of his unique ability to fly. Because he is the Emperor's Messenger, we get to see the politics of the realm, and even see Jant change a few things.

The Emperor's realm is at war with the Insects, who look like bugs many times the size of humans and who build paper nests out of counqueorer lands. Where the Insects have come from is yet another of the mysteries in the book and series.

Jant is an addict to a substance called Cat. Ms. Swainston's portrayl of Jant's addiction, in this book and the next, is dead on...she must have known or studied addicts quite closely.

Jant's addiction gives him entrance into a parallel world, a world he and we the readers are not sure is real until we explore it further. Then it becomes tied in with the Emperor's world and the Insects.

Ms. Swainston mixes political intrigue (immortals battling each other for position; non-immortals vs. the Emperor; mortals vying to become immortals), war (vividly imagines human vs. insect fighting scenes, shades of Stormship Troopers!), addiction and Jant's journey of self-discovery into an excellent fantasy novel. As an author, what I most admire about the writing is her ability to not tell the reader what is going on (at least for the big stuff) but to let us figure it out. The novel held me in suspense till the end, made we eager for the next (which is equally good).

Highly recommended.

The Year of Our War is the first book in the Castle Omnibus trilogy, set in an empire guarded by fifty immortals who earn their long lives by being the best in the world at their respective fields (and who are promptly replaced if someone better comes along). The empire is at war with giant insects known as Insects (I love that names in this book display so much common sense - no sarcasm intended), and the immortals must find a way to stop them before the whole world is destroyed.

One very unusual thing about this book is that the main character - Jant, a winged immortal messenger - is a drug addict. I thought this was an absolutely fantastic idea, and his character is definitely one of the book's strengths. The story is told through his eyes in first person, so the reader learns very quickly about his denial of the effects his addiction has on everyone around him, while simultaneously being aware of his faults. However, it does make him difficult to sympathise with. Sometimes Jant spent a lot of being sulking by himself and being antisocial (again, doesn't seem right because apparently he loves to socialise and attend parties), when I just wanted the book to get on with the plot.

Something I also found unusual was that while the story at first seems to be set in a very typical world for a fantasy book - namely mediaeval and low technology, there were lots of little things coming through that were very modern. Newspaper articles (including a reference to UK-style Page 3 girls!), T-shirts, syringes (I wonder what they are made of, if they don't have plastic?), and even implied references to hamburgers and tomato sauce! A lot of the metaphors used were also quite modern, which sounded quite jarring to me. I usually love books that mash up different eras and settings like this, but in this case I just found it confusing, because it's so clearly meant to be a purely mediaeval world. Were the modern inclusions accidental slipups? Or were they intentional? At any rate, it's just a minor concern.

My MAJOR concern is that the plot just doesn't really hold together. There are so many really good ideas in this book, but I thought that none of them were taken even close to far enough. I had so many questions about the Insects, for instance, but (aside from them being ravenous monsters) we hardly found out anything about them! What was this "paper" they left behind? Was anyone going to clean it up? Did nobody, in fact, think to investigate where they came from? (Aside from the Emperor, and even he just sat back and seemed to think: "Oh well, that's that then.") There's this incredible mystery right in front of them, but nobody seems to care about anything deeper than a basic "they kill us, we kill them" philosophy. You'd think that at least one person in this mediaeval world would consider investigating. Also regarding the Insects, I found some of the military strategies very poor - for instance, if anyone described to me a habitat made of paper, and that the creatures living in it all wanted to destroy the world, the very first thing I would think of is: "Paper! Flammable! Let's burn it all down!" - and whether that would actually work or not is debatable, but nobody even discusses any strategies other than hacking at things with swords - and these people have had many centuries to come up with ideas! Another idea I'd have would be to wall in the Insects (or human/Awian cities, either way) with massive walls the apparently flightless Insects couldn't cross. But nobody seems to be able to come up with anything this basic and logical. It just seems so underdeveloped.

Likewise, another fascinating concept introduced in this book is a parallel world only accessible via the drugs that Jant takes. There's an entirely new, wonderful, surreal universe introduced, and yet the author didn't let the audience in on any of its secrets. When Jant visits this world, he wanders around in a seemingly bored state (when he isn't running for his life from the evil Tines, who apparently just want to kill everyone on sight), and does really mundane things like catching up with old acquaintances for no particular reason (and which has nothing to do with the rest of the plot). I felt there was so much potential here that was utterly wasted. With his knowledge of the other world, he also does absolutely nothing, and refuses to even discuss it with anyone, despite the fact that numerous acquaintances of his also know it exists. Just... such... a... waste!

Yet another example of how ideas weren't taken far enough is of the immortals themselves. We find out quickly that there are fifty of them, but we are only ever introduced to a mere handful - Jant, Lightning, Tornado, Mist, and their respective love interests (who don't count as part of the fifty). Four out of fifty is pretty dismal, in my opinion. The others presumably also have very important roles to play in the war, but they aren't even discussed at any point. It's as if they don't exist, and the immortal Circle is really only made up or four or five people, despite the rumours. This in particular was a real let-down for me. I often felt like the author had created a huge, epic world, only to populate it with about fifteen or so characters. Again, lots of potential wasted.

Because of all this lost potential, I only found the story average. I kept reading, hoping for more (and this includes the sequels as well), but it never came. This world could have been so rich and full of secrets waiting to be discovered, but it seemed that the author just glossed over it all superficially instead.

This is a book which has been much hyped in the SF news literature, and some critics have given it extremely generous praise. I am sorry to say that much of this praise has been far too generous.

It is true that this novel is based on several fascinating conceits: a world being invaded by alien beings who are slowly but inexorably expanding their domain despite all attempts to stop them; the invasion is fought by a group of near gods raised to immortality by an emperor. The novel is told, in first person view, from one of those near-gods; a very flawed and addicted Mercury-like individual.

However, the fantasy land in which these conceits are set is totally unrealized, which means that readers have little investment in what happens to it. Moreover, the vast majority of characters in the novel are little more than names on the page; only two characters are fully realized, and neither one is particularly attractive. Moreover, the novel has in it a strange parallel universe world that is not well explained or fully fit into the setting. It is at best distracting.

I wanted to like this novel quite a bit, but in the end, I found that it lacked what a fantasy novel needs above all else: a verisimilitude of setting and characters that will anchor you to the created world and cause you to care about what happens within it.

OK, I enjoyed the book thoroughly. Now that's out of the way.

Swainston's created a truly immersive experience. She's constructed a fantasy world that doesn't owe much to anything anyone else has built.

A lot of the criticism of the book that I've seen has to do with the lack of a sympathetic character. Seems to me that the lack is intentional.

Jant, the narrator is an unpleasant guy. None of his fellow immortals is much better. Ata, who arranges her husband's death in order to take his place in the circle of immortals is far worse.

Corruption is a major part of the book. The insect invasion adds to the picture.

The Shift is a highly original construct. Some of the names like "whorse" for a common beast of burden are on the cutesy side. The thing that stands out is that many of the inhabitants of the Shift clearly have a non-human psychology that is refreshing compared to fantasies populated by humans in different costumes. Jack Vance's "Madouc" is the only book I can think of that has a place comparable to the Shift.

I'm commenting from the perspective of having read the other two books in the series. A lot of the unanswered questions readers complained about are resolved there. Even so, after three books there are a lot of interesting questions that need answers.

As the title suggests, I like the book for things that other reviewers cited as weaknesses. Aside from that Swainston is a gifted writer. She comes up with interesting turns of phrase without sounding precious or making the book about her writing skill.

If you want a "literary" fantasy where neither good nor evil triumphs and it's hard to tell who the good guys are you might like this one. I've read it twice and probably will read it at least twice more.

This book certainly breaks out of the standard fantasy memes.

- Jant, the narrator, is a drug-addicted immortal with a shady past, so-so fighting skills, lots of self-pity and dubious morals.
- The world is in the throes of an implacable war with alien insects.
- There is an immortal emperor who bestows the gift of immortality upon his chosen champions, who are classified by archetypes.

Let's start out with Jant. Some reviewers dislike him because... he is so easily dislikable. For me, Jant is the best thing in the book. Elric of Melnibone was worse in his vices, if not his whining and it worked very well there. The _idea_ of Jant is a masterfully daring stroke, especially for a first novel. The actual development of Jant's character is weaker but still quite acceptable. Ata and Mist are also refreshingly flawed and complex. This is fiction after all - it is perfectly ok to be an evil jerk and get away with it.

The world and the insect war. Supposedly, that's what the whole book is about. Why then does it feel so contrived? Static trench warfare for centuries, without either party collapsing??? And the human nations are sometimes "not too motivated to fight"? (this is at the start of the book, before Staniel's paranoia btw). Like they really have a choice if their species' survival is at stake?

By the middle of the book, almost all the human territories (but not the castles) have been overrun and destroyed, but somehow they still keep fighting. Excuse me - supply problems, famine, population collapse? What do the insects eat in their lands? Even in the middle ages you needed some kind of economic base to wage wars. Doesn't help that the book's map looks like it was drawn by a fourth grader. Heck, if it had been left out, I wouldn't quite have picked up on the extent of the humans' territorial losses.

The immortal court and their bickering? The author could have done much, much more with the imperial court but got mostly side-tracked in the Lightning/Ata/Mist intrigues. Still, that intrigue, along with Jant, is the best part of this book.

One thing I found especially irritating at the beginning of the book was the almost perverse need to tease the reader with intriguing tidbits of info, without elaborating on them right away. A _bit_ of teasing can work wonders. But there was so much of it that it felt like the author worried that readers would abandon the book without her gimmicks. Indeed some concepts (the source of immortality for example) are not explained at all, presumably to motivate folks for the sequel. Mind you, there is no real conclusion/ending either which feels like sequelitis to me as well.

There can be pitfalls in coming to a book that has already received considerable notice. So it was for me with Steph Swainston's The Year of Our War, which has been received with extreme enthusiasm upon its 2004 UK publication. Now the book has a US edition. Had I come to the book without preconceptions, I suspect I would have been impressed by it as a promising first novel. But in the face of the praise it has received my first reaction is "Is that all?" In sum, The Year of Our War is an interesting book, with some fascinating ideas and images, but it is also a book that doesn't really work. The prose is acceptable but not outstanding, occasionally a bit clunky. The plot is rather a mess, with a terribly disappointing ending. (I wonder if the rest of the story that seems necessary is being held back as a sequel.) And the worldbuilding is a mix of some really neat stuff with some slapdash and unfinished-seeming aspects. None of this is surprising in a first novelist, and the weaknesses are just those things that I suspect will be much improved in subsequent outings.

The story is narrated in the first person by Comet Jant Shira, one of a Circle of Immortals in the Fourlands. The Immortals, or Eszai, are so created by the Emperor, and their duty is to help the Mortals (Zacsai) in the absence of God, who is taking time off. The Eszai have existed for about 2000 years, and Comet is the youngest. Each Eszai is deemed to be the best in the world at a certain vital talent. Comet is the Messenger. He is very fast, for two reasons: his half-Rhydanne ancestry, and his ability to fly. (There appear to be three interfertile species in the Fourlands: humans, the winged but non-flying Awians, and the near-feral Rhydanne. Comet is half-Awian/half-Rhydanne, and apparently the combination allows him to fly.)

All this is quite interesting on the face of it. Add to this the encroaching Insects, who have already occupied much former human or Awian territory, and who continue to advance. The War of the title is against the Insects. The novel opens with the Awian King, Dunlin Rachiswater, leading a suicide charge against the Insects. This leaves his throne in the hands of his very weak brother. His brother's disastrous mistakes lead to further Insect advances, which also lead to dissension in the ranks of the Eszai, particularly among two women who each wish to become Immortal in their own right, rather than by marriage.

The story also concerns Jant Shira's addiction to a drug called Cat. Much of this is a reasonably standard addiction story (with flashbacks to his pre-immortal life, his troubled upbringing as a [...]halfbreed, his love for his Awian wife and his lust for a Rhydanne girl). But the drug has a unique affect on him: it sends him to the Shift, apparently a parallel world, where he meets some already dead friends, including Dunlin Rachiswater. The sections in the Shift are gloriously fascinating, linguistically inventive and thoroughly weird in the best way. But they are a brief part of the book, and not really used very well. Other aspects of the plot are dribbled away -- the musician Swallow's quest for membership in the Circle is key for a while then more or less dropped, while the sailor Ata's feud with her Immortal husband takes over the end of the book. All these aspects promise to be interesting, but the book's structure doesn't really properly resolve any of them.

What we end up with, then, is a book that is rather less than the sum of its often fascinating parts. As presented, it drags for much of its length, and (for this reader at least) The Year of Our War was excessively confusing. And as I said the end is flat and inconclusive. That said, Swainston shows a really intriguing imagination, and there is every reason to hope that her imagination coupled with improvement in her craft will result in some first-rate work in the future.

Fans of China Mieville's "New Crobuzon/Bas-Log" series of novels may find in "The Year Of Our War" an interesting literary diversion. New British fantasy writer Steph Swainston has clearly adopted much of his ornate literary style, replete with the same offbeat humor. Unfortunately, none of her characters, with the exception of the main protagonist Jant Comet are fully-realized characters. Here she offers a fascinating premise of a fantasy world inhabited by three humanoid races threatened with extinction by a horde of flesh-eating insects who have turned their conquered territories into the wasted realms known as the Paperlands. Swainston excels in describing some riveting battles, but frankly I got lost in both the imagined alternative world of Jant Comet as well as in some of the endless banter between himself and several other characters. However, I think Swainston may be a writer of some promise once she creates characters that are as memorable as the fantasy realms she's fashioned.

A very enjoyable read from start to finish with so many original ideas. Jant is a very engaging character, one of those rogues that you can't help but liking even when they do one stupid thing after another. Steph Swainston has definitely got real skill with words- it was almost like reading poetry in places (albeit very modern poetry!)- aswell as being a compelling storyteller. The only problem was it ended just as things got really exciting! I look forward to more!