Tag: fantasy

Title: The Tangled Lands

Author: Glenda Larke

Publisher: Wizards Tower Press, 2023; RRP: 22 pounds stg

A new Glenda Larke novel is always welcome on the shelf; her The Aware – the first book in the first of her four trilogies to date – remains a firm favourite, and each of her subsequent works has shown similar skill at world building, character development and accomplished storytelling.

Larke was raised in and has returned to Western Australia, via Tunisia and Malaysia, and while she has mined those landscapes for her work, The Tangled Lands offers a more conventional European-style fantasy setting. One of Larke’s world-building strengths is the use of vernacular, drawing on the landscape and culture to add to the verisimilitude of the world’s culture. The occasional use of dialect harking to the real world undercuts this in parts here, but is overshadowed by the charm of sayings such as ‘pox n rot’ and ‘blind as a flea in a rabbit hole’.

Similarly to her first novel, the striking standalone Havenstar (1999), an intriguing magic system helps further differentiate the world, being entwined in both society and plot.

In the Tangled Lands, the magic is wielded by the redweavers of Kanter, considered a threat to Talodiac, who does its best to keep the magic users out. The redweavers are able to traverse distances by way of magical portals and can also use their magic to form compelling illusions. Talodiac’s priests, serving their strange deities, want none of that business interfering in the smooth running of their kingdom, and King Edwild agrees. Especially when the redweavers strike close to home.

The novel is divided into parts, each devoted to largely a single point of view in what is an elegant way to piece together the narrative from different characters’ experiences, whether separate or shared. Having one character scribing his experience in the first person is a nice diversion from the third person elsewhere. Pervaded as it is by the threat of an execution, the section also builds that character and the reader’s empathy for him while slotting neatly into the contest of cloak and dagger.

Glenda Larke on trilogies, landscape and her writing process

with jane routley, 2016

The first part of the novel works as a prologue, setting up the seismic events that follow. Enter Sergeant Hervan of the King’s Guard, serving his liege with rigid loyalty, even as his family is drawn deeper into a world-changing conspiracy. His son, Taygen, possessed of a strong throwing arm and certain lack of caution, becomes a counterpoint as he encounters the wanderers Haze and Innata, each with their own cloaked pasts. He finds himself caught in the classic quandary of fealty versus … let’s call it instinct, for his motivations are unwrapped delightfully upon the page and don’t need labelling here.

As one might expect in a tale of intrigue and royal shenanigans, not all is at it seems, and deception is not confined to the redweavers as the two lands are drawn inexorably together as the plot unwinds. For Taygen and Haze in particular, it is a path  of discovery as they find their place in the world and come to terms with their pasts. As the world and our protagonists reveal their layers of secrets, the story marches to its grand showdown with the fate of two lands in the balance.

It’s likely that some of the big reveals won’t come so much as a surprise but a confirmation of the reader’s suspicions, but The Tangled Land manages to dodge some of the obvious expectations to deliver another fine, entertaining addition to the Larke bibliography.

Reviewed by: Jason Nahrung

Ballarat Writers Inc. Book Review Group

Author: Russell Kirkpatrick

Title: Silent Sorrow – The Book of Remezov Volume 1

Publisher: IFWG, 2021

A highlight of Russell Kirkpatrick’s fantasy fiction is the world building. As one might expect from a geography lecturer and cartographer (and accomplished novelist, with two previous trilogies under his belt), he knows how to express the lay of the land and the cultures it supports.

Kudos to the publisher for supporting Kirkpatrick, a Kiwi now resident in Australia, in going the extra mile in this first book of a new series.

Not only does he use weather, topography, flora and fauna to imbue his world with a tangible sense of reality, but he illustrates key moments too – with maps, naturally.

Given the titular character is a gifted geographer specialising in earthquakes, such attention to detail is not surprising, but seeing the drawings of this and other characters’ observations adds an extra touch of verisimilitude to this sprawling yarn of a continent under siege.

Silent Sorrow opens with Remezov encountering the threat coming from over yonder as he battles the politics of his order, such hierarchical contests quickly subsumed under the weight of an invasion of mythic proportions.

Then a flick, and a flick again, as the other point-of-view cast members go through their own rites of passage – the siblings Spit and Polish and the talented soldier Hab bring fresh eyes to the threat hanging over Medanos.

Inexorably, the paths of the four converge, revealing along the way the strengths and weaknesses of each as they are caught up in the deeper battle between reason and belief.

Read a short interview with Russell Kirkpatrick

at the 2020 Australian SF snapshot project

Not quite as effective as the maps is the attempt to show simultaneous action by splitting the page into two columns; the technique is the only point of disruption in an otherwise smooth narrative flow, the text enhanced by gems of description that only rarely overreach.

Book 1 lays the groundwork for its successors while delivering a satisfying and suitably significant climax of its own, more than sufficient to entice the reader to resume the journey. There is plenty of world – and character – left unexplored, and Kirkpatrick is an eminently capable guide.

Given that Silent Sorrow’s publication date was set back from 2020 by the turmoil of the pandemic, one trusts the next instalment is not too far distant.

Reviewed by: Jason Nahrung

Ballarat Writers Inc. Book Review Group