LAST GREAT READS FOR MAY, 2017
Red Sister, by Mark Lawrence
Now, Mr Lawrence introduces us to the Red Sister, the
first book in The Ancestor trilogy. Once
again he has created a character as huge in spirit and soul as she is small and
malnourished, for Nona, called Grey for the part of the narrow land from which
she was sold to a Child-Taker, has unique powers, powers she is too young to
understand or harness. All she knows is a world that is gradually being
consumed by mile-high walls of encroaching ice, for the sun has died and all
humankind has now to nurture life on the planet is an artificially developed
Focus Moon. Every night it casts its
square (yes, square!) red warmth over the landscape and melts what the ice has
claimed.
There are still towns and cities, rich and poor, and Nona
is dirt-scrabble poor. She cannot
understand why her mother and the head man of the village sold her – no, GAVE
HER AWAY, so that she eventually ends up being sold to a Fight Master, who
fattens her up with a view to training her to fight for money. Her life is tolerable – the food is more than
she has ever seen in her life! – and Nona actually makes a friend, a little
girl called Saida: perhaps she will
survive after all. Until an act of sadism
towards her only friend causes Nona to wreak a terrible vengeance against the guilty
one, the eldest son of one of the richest aristocratic families: she and Saida are thrown into prison, ready
to be hanged.
It goes without saying that poor little Saida is
sacrificed to the rope (and the plot);
Nona’s rescuer in the nick of time is Abbess Glass of Sweet Mercy convent: by fair means (and foul) she manages to bring
Nona within the shelter of her convent’s fortress walls, there to harness and
train for good the propensity to violence and murder that rage can provoke
within Nona’s skinny frame – and to discover eventually that Nona has no need
of weapons with which to kill: her hands
and her anger are the only weapons she needs to vanquish whole armies, if need
be. WOW!!
And again, Mr Lawrence teases us with his rocket science
theories (well, he knows what he’s talking about) by intimating, despite the
settings of medieval pomp and pageantry - not to mention squalor – that the
world being overtaken by an inexorable Ice Age is not the original planet that
existed; rather, it was the destination
of everyone’s forebears who travelled through the heavens in great ships,
looking for a world that still had a bright sun.
As always, Mr Lawrence leaves us all shouting for more –
he simply cannot produce the sequel fast enough: I want to start it NOW! FIVE STARS
Prince of Thorns, by Mark Lawrence
You
read it here first: What an
adventure! Mark Lawrence’s debut novel
has all the requisite ingredients for the ideal fantasy – a wronged and
vengeful hero, warring kingdoms, ghosts, necromancers, murders most foul, and a
complete lack of honour, except amongst thieves.
At
the tender age of nine, Prince Honorous Jorg Ancrath was forced to witness the
slaughter of his mother and younger brother William by Count Renar of the
Highlands and his troops. If he expected
his father the king to avenge their dreadful murders, he is sorely disappointed; instead, the king negotiates compensation in
the shape of land and horses for his loss.
Seeds of hatred and revenge are sown in the fertile ground of Jorg’s
grief and heartbreak: he takes to the
road and joins a band of mercenaries and outlaws, and because he no longer
cares if he lives or dies, he becomes their leader through sheer recklessness
and a bravado that is fearless and suicidal – oh, Jorg has problems, alright –
he has already lived five lifetimes and he’s only fourteen!
Mark
Lawrence has created a rip-roaring, no-holds-barred, heart-in-the-mouth
pageturner in this first book, and in spite of the reader knowing they
shouldn’t believe a word of it, they are totally sucked in, swept along with
the clever plot and more action than a body should rightly have to endure – oh,
it’s great stuff, and this is just the first book of a Trilogy. ‘King of Thorns’ is next, and a fascinating
question for the reader is to figure out exactly the timeline in which Mr
Lawrence has set his stories: a vastly
altered central Europe might be the setting, but who can be sure? Everyone fights in armour with medieval
weapons, but Jorg wears a wrist-watch!
(which doesn’t make an appearance till book two) – and he lets loose what
seems suspiciously like a nuclear explosion halfway through book one. I have come to the conclusion (I’m ashamed to
say it took me a while) that Jorg’s story is set far into the future: it’s possible that the world we knew has been
destroyed for whatever terrible reason, and the regenerating human race hasn’t
progressed beyond another Medieval Age in its attempts to survive.
Which all adds to this
trilogy’s great appeal. ‘ Prince of
Thorns’ was a gripping read, but book two, ‘King of Thorns’ is even
better. Roll out book three! Mark Lawrence isn’t just a good storyteller –
he’s a great one. Whatever I read next,
this will be a hard act to follow. FIVE STARS
Prince
of Fools, by Mark Lawrence
Jalan
Kendeth is a prince of Red March, a southern kingdom blessed with bountiful
harvests and buxom wenches. He is young,
handsome and filled with boundless energy – but not for anything
constructive. He freely admits to being
irresponsible, (he is hugely in debt to a sadistic moneylender) feckless, (no
woman is safe from his doubtful charms) and famously disinterested in the
affairs and business of ruling his country – which is fortunate; he is tenth in line to his grandmother the
Red Queen’s throne and as such would never be considered for the crown. Also, he is considered the runt of the litter
of his family of older brothers, for despite his fine height and good build he
is ‘The Little One’. They dwarf him,
every one.
Well,
who cares? Not him: he’s quite happy to remain one step ahead of
the moneylender (and he’s a damn fine runner!), and to worry about consequences
for any of his actions after he has
acted – until he becomes involved with a huge Norseman, a captive of his
grandmother who has been freed because he gave her vital information about a
huge and frightening army preparing to attack from the frozen Northern wastes
of the Bitter Ice. Through a dreadful
twist of fate – and a ghastly spell concocted by a witch (truly!) – they are
bound together by the good and bad strands of the spell and compelled to
journey North to try to stop the advance of the Dead King and his ghastly army
of corpses. Snorri ver Snagason, the
Norseman, is happy to begin the journey:
his wife and children are captives in the North and he means to rescue
them. Jalan, needless to say, feels
exactly the opposite. Heading purposely
towards certain death is not on his agenda, but such is the power of the spell
that he has no choice and begins the journey with a quaking heart and loud
protestations.
And,
regardless of his fears, he and Snorri travel inexorably northwards, most of
the time with little food and no money, and depending more than once on ‘the
kindness of strangers’, until they reach Ancrath, home of Jorg, Prince of
Thorns, who is back in favour – however temporarily - with his father, King Olidan. Jalan makes much of his princely status while
he can, until Olidan’s Queen tries to bribe him to kill Jorg, but Jalan has no
stomach for such a task, especially when he sees the Prince of Thorns and is
victim of his thousand yard stare. No: it’s time he and the Norseman resumed their
journey – fast!
Once
again, we are off on a marvellous adventure through Mark Lawrence’s great
fantasy of Europe after The Big Bang, the Explosion of a Thousand Suns, the setting of his superb ‘Prince of Thorns’ trilogy.
Jalan Kendeth’s story runs
parallel to the action in the first trilogy so he is bound to cross paths again
with the deadly Honorous Jorg Ancrath;
it will be fascinating to see if his and Norri’s travails have given him
an injection of the courage he honestly acknowledges he lacks, but by the end
of Book One our expectations are not high – instead, what is certain is that
Mark Lawrence has produced once again a fantasy of the highest order, with
characters that readers truly care about, and more action than you can shake a
stick at. There are Unborn, Undead and
Unnaturals littering every chapter, not to mention witches, bitches and seers
by the score: what more could a
dedicated fantasy reader ask for, except top quality writing and plotting. Mark Lawrence does it all. FIVE STARS
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