When it comes to epic fantasy, Master of Sorrows is small scale. The book covers the major events in the life of a teen named Annev over a few days' time. An acolyte at a school for stewards and avatars (think Assassin's Creed), Annev spends his days running chores for his master and studying the martial arts and lore of his order. Batting eyelashes at the headmaster's daughter, he has plans of passing his avatar tests and marrying to live the good life. But beyond preparation for the avatar trials, he has one more difficult task: to keep his missing arm a secret. A magical artifact in his arm's place, if anyone should find out about its existence they would burn him as a heretic. On pins and needles he moves forward with preparations...
Master of Sorrows checks several cliché epic fantasy boxes: chosen one, “farmer's boy”, discovery of secret powers, school of magic, romance, elder gods, and faceless evil to name most. Justin Travis Call's primary methods of preventing these cliches from overbearing the story are 1) patiently doling them out (the reader is not overwhelmed by them in chapter one), and 2) maintaining narrative suspense by keeping readers in the dark about exactly how the cliches will be utilized. I will not spoil anything here, but I will say the importance of #2 to the novel can not be overstated. I assume Call is hedging his bets that he can hook readers enough with the first volume to overlook the cliches of future books in the series. I could also be cynical and simply say it's almost impossible not to be cliché in today's market given the thousands and thousands of epic fantasy stories which have been published. Jimmy Page has already stolen all the good licks...
I mentioned scale earlier because, these days, with the market saturated with massive fantasy series featuring worlds of massive sizes, it is important. Where some writers are bent on worldbuilding, magic systems, and multiple character points of view to capture it all, most of these also do so at the expense of characterization, and sometimes good storytelling. Travis Call, however, keeps his book focused on one person and drip feeds worldbuilding, preferring to foreground Annev's inner monologue, instead. Different strokes for different folks, but I prefer getting to know the people to the world, and Call would seem to agree. At least mostly. The novel has a strong share of stereotypical characters, something which characterization is wasted on...
Travis Call's style is workaday. Not edgy or precise, it largely stays on point, trying to push the narrative forward. There are several scenes which feel more like square bricks for square holes building toward a future story point (rather than field stones handfitted into a wall), but a serviceable wall is nevertheless constructed. There are several scenes of teen angst and bullying which feel immature and out of place in an “adult” work of epic fantasy (i.e., compared to A Song of Ice and Fire, Prince of Nothing, or Godless World), but the latter parts of the novel do lose most of their juvenile nature and start to show what the wider world might offer. In short, the writing is on par with the mid-tier of fantasy writers like John Gwynne or Chris Wooding.
To loop back to the intro, it's these factors, the relative immaturity of certain aspects of the narrative, the number of cliches, and the rather plain style which caused this reader to wonder whether pushing ahead was worth it. Travis Call keeps a few toes over the line of 'good storytelling' while the remainder of the foot resides in the 'been there, done that' devices and motifs of the genre. I finished the novel but don't feel the urge to pick up the next. For other readers, however, readers who read only epic fantasy, it's possible Annev's tale will grab them more than me. The devices and motifs are used appropriately, and technique, while not blowing anyone out of the water, is sound enough. In short, this is a middling book. There are more mature epic fantasies available, but certainly more worse than Master of Sorrows.
No comments:
Post a Comment