Review: The March North
Jan. 3rd, 2015 07:38 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
jsburbidgeGraydon's book was one of the best books I read last year. Here's a review I originally posted on LibraryThing:
This is a very finely written narrative which deserves far more exposure than it is likely to get.
To begin with, the craftsmanship is several cuts above what you would normally expect in a military fantasy. The prose is concise and precisionist-grade, pared down without being too spare. Incluing is gradual and details are subtly woven into the narrative.
The narrator is fully characterised and probably unreliable -if the reader doesn't pay careful attention at the beginning he/she will miss details clarifying the events which are expanded on only much further on. (I don't think it is clear by the end of the book which gender the narrator is.) Graydon's style, or rather, the voice he gives to the narrator, eschews personal pronouns, presenting a viewpoint from which gender is only of incidental interest. (It's worth contrasting Ann Leckie' Radch books which take a different approach to the issue.)
Thematically, the work definitely reflects the interest in societies as systems which pervades much of Graydon's discussions dating from his rasf[wcf] days on forwards. These have particular effect when contrasted with the reflex quasi-mediaeval autocratic polities which appear in most heroic or military fantasy.
This is far better than most of the novels published by the commercial houses, and in a world with any justice it would (a) be snatched up by a major publisher, with cash incentives to produce more, and (b) be a strong candidate for a Hugo nomination.
It is available via Google Books and Kobo in non-DRM'd ePub format, but not from Amazon, due to banking issues for Graydon with Amazon's payment model.
This is a very finely written narrative which deserves far more exposure than it is likely to get.
To begin with, the craftsmanship is several cuts above what you would normally expect in a military fantasy. The prose is concise and precisionist-grade, pared down without being too spare. Incluing is gradual and details are subtly woven into the narrative.
The narrator is fully characterised and probably unreliable -if the reader doesn't pay careful attention at the beginning he/she will miss details clarifying the events which are expanded on only much further on. (I don't think it is clear by the end of the book which gender the narrator is.) Graydon's style, or rather, the voice he gives to the narrator, eschews personal pronouns, presenting a viewpoint from which gender is only of incidental interest. (It's worth contrasting Ann Leckie' Radch books which take a different approach to the issue.)
Thematically, the work definitely reflects the interest in societies as systems which pervades much of Graydon's discussions dating from his rasf[wcf] days on forwards. These have particular effect when contrasted with the reflex quasi-mediaeval autocratic polities which appear in most heroic or military fantasy.
This is far better than most of the novels published by the commercial houses, and in a world with any justice it would (a) be snatched up by a major publisher, with cash incentives to produce more, and (b) be a strong candidate for a Hugo nomination.
It is available via Google Books and Kobo in non-DRM'd ePub format, but not from Amazon, due to banking issues for Graydon with Amazon's payment model.
