Review of Many Are the Dead by Anthony Ryan

One of the advantages of novellas is that it gives readers a taste of a writer without the financial and time commitments to a full novel. With epic fantasy books these days doubling as wall-building material, this was never more helpful when looking to explore a new writer; you can test out their style before jumping, or not jumping, into the deep end. Many Are the Dead (2018), was my litmus test for Anthony Ryan. Acid, base, or neutral?

And time now for the obligatory plot summary: old friendships come anew, fantastical beasts attack, and Medieval swords and spears in forest and stronghold. Yeah, that's about it. Oh, and a gruff, no-nonsense main character who does heroic things with his sword. Anything else? Not really...

“Many Are the Dead” is a novella that will likely appeal to the crowd of readers for whom grimdark/heroic fantasy comprises 90% of their reading. Probably there are minor details which set it apart from other such Medieval fantasy worlds, but for this reader, at the macro level, it's extremely vanilla. Unlike twenty or thirty years ago, this type of writing is more than ever dependent on the degree of singularity which the writer can imbue their characters and setting, and to some degree plot (though that, it can be argued, is a beaten, dead horse across all literature). The number of possible plots is limited in number, hence dependence on the amount of soul the other major elements have is really the only way to distinguish a piece of such entertainment-focused writing. Ryan adds little soul, and as does little to distinguish the story/novella from other material of a similar cut. This isn't to say the plot is predictable, only that if you've read a lot of other grimdark/epic fantasy, there is little new here overall. It's comfort food for people looking for such food.

In the end, “Many Are the Dead” is the dictionary definition of “mediocre epic fantasy”. Precisely middle of the road, it should be used as a midpoint for what is better and what is worse. Ryan's technique is simple and straight-forward, adding nothing and subtracting nothing from the story. The setting and characters are 1.5D, holding just enough substance to propel the plot yet possessing nothing singular. They are exactly what one would expect in an epic fantasy novella. The sum is a commercial product more than authorial passion project. And so while I will likely not be digging further into Ryan's oeuvre, for readers who swim in grimdark/heroic fantasy this may be in your wheelhouse. Thank you novella-length fiction for this litmus test.