Arabian Style

"Simple things ought not be taken for granted" - Litaz Daughter of Likami

The above quote by one of Saladin's quintet of characters I think characterizes why this novel was such a success to me. It was the little details he included about his cast that made them more real and the descriptions and inclusion of small details made Dhamswaat the city it is set in more present. It's the importance of tea and poetry, the indulgence of expensive imported sweets, the friendly banter and gentle play between friends on a night of celebration that really bring the characters to life along with their worries fears and desires. Though the setting is marvelous and the enemies truly monstrous in all the best and pulpy ways his cast steal the show.

Throne of the Crescent Moon is a deceptively short fantasy novel at 274pages for how big it feels. Saladin filled the world with palpable and vivid details of it's setting, hints of its myths and history, and with a cast of characters I will sorely miss till the next volume . It's exactly the kind of book I love discovering; one that can move me to both honest smiles and tears, what more it managed to surprise me when I though I had it kind of figured out. Throne is not the first book to pull its inspiration for its second world setting from the stories of the Arabian Nights or the folklore of the near east and Northern Africa but coming from someone who is of Arabian heritage there seems to be more vitality and passion for the material, an internalizing of it and a je ne cest qua to the feel. It was a great unashamedly pulp style fantasy adventure tale and is a measure of Mr Ahmed's art as a storyteller and world builder.

Ok, I know what is the story and would it be for you. As a fan of sword and sorcery style adventures and pulp fiction I can endorse the action adventure feel of the story. The tale starts as a search for ghulish killers of the main characters one time loves family and grows into a threat to the city and the world from an ancient and malicious evil. In the city of the Khalif there is a hero of the people the Falcon Prince waging a fight against the abuses of the new ruler; there cruel guardsmen punishing pick-pocketing with execution and roving groups of religious thugs. Saladin gives lots of little hints to the bigger picture and wets the appetite for more. The story is told from multiple viewpoints following the inner lives and actions of the heroes as they learn about the threats facing them. His characters are familiar heroic types to fantasy readers but the choice to make several of them older and some retired monster hunters and not making them merely mentors but able if weary heroes along with the young devout and hotheaded ones.

I think this is a great and possibly overlooked book among the doorstops that are also among my favorite books and writers. I think Saladin's focus on the important parts of telling a story makes this tale so strong. I, as a old D&D player, love all those books that spend time with the crunch, the mechanics, of their new unique magic systems and that magi-babble is abscent here and I really iked that. There are multiple paths to power in his setting with different costs and uses and Mr. Ahmed just shows this through their use or the way characters talk about them. I'd love to BS with him about thoes things given the chance but I rather enjoyed the focus on the smells of the tea, the visceral descriptions of the food and the everyday life along with the horrors of the man-jackel beast and other nasties.

I could write about the creatures ot the brilliant way he got to explore several different expressions of love or how he looks at questions about societal evils versus magical threats but I should stop before I ruin anything. I could but why not go to his website and read the free chapter and the Conan pastiche in his blog. He is a writer who deserved the nominations he got for his short fiction that is as unique, new and yet familiar like Throne. If I have wetted your appetite go and take a look; we have to make sure he gets to write more of this world he's got in his imagination.... I for one would love some of the adventures of his characters in their earlier days.....




Saladin Ahmed's website is here you can get a taste of Throne on the site here along with the map of his world
You can get a hold a e-book collection of all his fabulous short fiction here at Amazon, B&N, Smashwords and Kobo
My copy of Throne of the Crescent Moon was purchased.

You and me and him against Them....

The Wolf Age for me was predominately a book about friendship, the bonds that grow between people who suffer indignity together and the strength they can draw from one another. This book for all its grim gritty noirish sword and sorcery action and artifacts felt very personal and I had a great amount of empathy for many of its characters no matter how small a part they may have had. James managed to mix genres and folklore in ways that I really could not predict the direction the third adventure of Morlock Ambrosious would take and that is hard to do with sword and sorcery that feels so much like Moorcock or Liber's iconic stories. I wholeheartedly recommend reading James Enge's sometimes enigmatic heros tales but with the caveat that this is not the story to start with.

Here is the blurb from Pyr:

"Spear-age, sword-age:
shields are shattered.
Wind-age, wolf-age:
before the world founders
no man will show mercy to another."

Wuruyaaria: city of werewolves, whose raiders range over the dying northlands, capturing human beings for slaves or meat. Wuruyaaria: where a lone immortal maker wages a secret war against the Strange Gods of the Coranians. Wuruyaaria: a democracy where some are more equal than others, and a faction of outcast werewolves is determined to change the balance of power in a long, bloody election year.

Their plans are laid; the challenges known; the risks accepted. But all schemes will shatter in the clash between two threats few had foreseen and none had fully understood: a monster from the north on a mission to poison the world, and a stranger from the south named Morlock Ambrosius.

James Enge has so many great little and big surprises in store for readers in The Wolf Age its hard to write about the cool stuff without spoilers and since I enjoyed the reveals I don't want to say too much. I will say that when I was only a third into the nearly 500page adventure I wanted to go back to the start just to experience it all again and revisit events which I am sure I missed things. His writing is as many reviewers write akin to the noir masters; his prose is not overworked, plots move fast with wit, snappy dialogue and he pulls no punches with the grim and dark events.

So what are you getting from The Wolf Age...

Among the numerous schemers in this novel the main orchestrators are the conceptual Strange Gods; they remind me of the endless from Neil Gaimens Sandman. They are very human like embodiments of concepts like war, wisdom, justice, stupidity death and play a similar manipulative roll in The Wolf Age as do the Greek gods in the Illiad. They appear at times in the story as viewpoint characters revealing plot elements outside the other players or giving a different view of events once to oddly funny scene descriptions.

James created an entire culture of all were-wolves building a consistently interesting and fascinating society driven both by animal instincts and human seeming ideas of democracy and progress. The werewolves he created get to exist outside our modern world they are allowed to be fully in tune with both if their natures even if some of them cant fully change into both their forms. The were-characters we get to really know are just as driven, quirky, funny, and tragic as any human (or whatever other race again fantasy) I encountered in James' stories. Since they are fast healers and hard to kill the scenes that happen while the three main heroes of the story suffer a lit of pretty nasty damage making the prison scenes and even the escape very cringeworthy and grizzly.

And Morlock Ambrosious, well if you've not encountered him yet he is a names sword weilding, artefact creating, ambidextrous swordsman wizard who has been a hero, a killer, a notorious hopeless drunk and a figure of stories used to frighted naughty kids. He is also a man of his own honour and principals. At the beginning of this story he's left behind friends and companions for their protection and is in a bleak mood but gets drawn into a net cast by the strange gods and others and shown what hitting rock bottom can be like... Again. He's a long lived character, heals much better then humans (more fodder for the prison scenes) and prone to manic bursts of creative fervour and deep depressions. He's complicated and though a viewpoint character remains tantalisingly enigmatic though I felt I knew him. He is driven in this story by his strong feeling for his blood bonded friends and they to him so the tragedies that occur hurt all the more.

The Wolf Age is both one of the roughest books I read this year on terms if the wringer the characters went through. I loved reading about Morlock and his faithful wolf brothers of choice; the tale is a full heroes journey for the lot of them and it's one I want to read again.


As an addendum : there are several awful things that happen in this novel that happen as a direct result of choices characters make; characters pay permanent prices for their actions or inactions and just as the friendships are a core element of the plot so are mistakes they make.

You can find James Enge's website here and a free Morlock story at Pyr's website here.
I received my copy from Pyr for review
Here are links to places where you can get copies.....

The Wolf Age
by James Enge