Today, another guest review by Chris King.
Reviews tend to be positive. We read books that we think we
would enjoy and because we are selective then there is usually very little that
we can find wrong. We pick a book because it ticks boxes – boxes like: well-known
recommended author; author we have read before; genre we are familiar with;
appealing plot described by the blurb. Usually there is very little we are not
going to like. But there can be the occasional shock when it doesn’t go right.
This, as you guessed, is one of those times.
And so this review is bad, very bad. Other people may well
disagree with my verdict – curse us for all being individuals and not one unified
collective mind, but it explains why when people give reviews out of 10 they
normally give a 2-3 or 8-10. Either it was more of what they liked, surpassed
it to be a favourite book, or they were disappointed. (People don’t give 1’s or
0’s, at least not British people; it isn’t kind and you look unreasonable).
I loved another of Abnett’s books, Blood Pact. It had believable characters and a wonderfully explored
back stories, even for the minor characters. The villain was not some generic
Big Bad but a believable human. No one was super-human (which is nice to see in
a Black Library book about the 41st Millennium), and there was not an excess of
warp magic to perform plot actions. But it would be wrong to review an author
generally instead of a specific work – even if the inside cover of my edition
of Triumff was filled with praise for
the author’s science fiction… in a
fantasy book.
Let me take you through the reasons why I did not enjoy Triumff, after a rough overview of the
setting and plot premise. Shall we?
It is the year 2009. For the last 500 years there has been
little change in fashion, public health, technology or the monarch’s name (all
praise to Her Divine Majesty Queen Elizabeth XXX!). This is due to the
rediscovery of magic during the Renaissance. Spain and England unified and
became the greatest empire, eclipsing what either of them could have been alone.
With magic, no human endeavour for the future is ever needed. Admittedly the
premise sounds great – but upon reading the book I found very little magic; the
words ‘alternate history’ would have been enough. There is little narration of
the setting; I gather we are just meant to imagine 16th century England with a
bit of magitek and that will do. There is no detail or explanation about the alterations
to this alternate history, like what might happen when Spanish and English
culture is mixed. I felt disappointment.
The basic premise is this: Triumff, dashing and daring hero,
has discovered Australia and brought back one of the natives of this magic-less
land to present to Her Majesty when he returns his Letters of Passage to
declare the voyage over. Only, he doesn’t give back the Letters of Passage; he
keeps them because he has fallen a bit in love with Australia and its crazy
steam powered industry. Returning the Letters of Passage would mean invasion,
colonisation and land grabs by companies and could see the end of the country
as he discovered it. (We have to assume that magic will win against an
industrial nation, although very little magic is done in the book to allow an
informed hypothesis). There is also some grand plot by some dastardly Spaniards
and unscrupulous English nobles, and a plot against the Queen, in which Triumff
features as the first stepping stone. I got pretty lost as to what the other
steps really were since the villains’ motives (other than the cliché seize
throne, rule world, continue living privileged life!) don’t really enter into
it, making them and their plan entirely forgettable. My disappointment rose.
Now we get to more solid reasons why the book was not fun. There
are many, but not as many as there are characters. I am suspicious whenever I
open a book to find a list of characters; unless it is an epic with a multitude
of settings, it tends to mean I am in for bland and forgettable characters
spread over three-hundred and a bit pages. Sadly this was the case here. Having
now finished the book, I can still only remember about four of the characters
names, and that includes the eponymous hero. All of the characters are trying
to figure out what is happening and plots and counter plots constantly appear,
making it easy for readers to lose the plot. Maybe it was my fault for not
trying harder to figure out what was happening, but I prefer to blame the book
for not keeping my interest. Most self-respecting readers would not do anything
other than blame the book.
The story is partly told by a self-appointed nobody, William
Beaver, one of the many characters who appears in addition to those listed in
the dramatis persona. Normally I would call William Beaver an unreliable
narrator; after all, he gets strung along on false missives and unlikely
situations – by which mean I found it unlikely that any character would act in
such a way. (When you’re in a high speed chase and the secret police tell you
to pull over your sedan, you wouldn’t keep going based on the loose prior
instruction of a suspiciously English-sounding French loot player you just
met.) Regardless, he never quite knows what is going on. Normally in a mystery an
unreliable narrator is great for misleading the reader. However, while Beaver is
an unreliable narrator and supposed to be compiling the book, his role is rendered
pointless, because most of the action comes from third person omniscient narration.
The omniscient narrator gives detailed speech and actions to scenes Beaver is
not in and would not be privy to. Even scenes he is present in sometimes take place in third person; the jumps from
third person to first are jarring and damages the already-limited immersive
powers of the world.
Did I mention that this is intended as a humorous book in a
similar vein to Pratchett’s Diskworld series? The humour is forgettable, such
as the coincidence of a man who bakes, a man who cuts meat, and a man who
engineers the production of candlesticks, all living in the same village (and I
think the way I put this makes it funnier than in the book). The comedy often
amounts to little more than casual puns or references to popular culture. For
example, the character of Eastwoodho repeatedly enquires if another character
feels particularly lucky and in a tour of the magical bowels of the Church; we
sort of get to glimpse a bit of magic, but world building is abandoned in
favour of a Bond reference.
Since we know so little of the world, and since it’s
sort-of-modern, sort-of-Shakespearean, sort-of-magitek in setting, we don’t
know codes of conduct. This means we are never sure if a situation is supposed to
be funny or dangerous. For the most part it seems that characters in the dramatis
persona are immune to repercussions. While magic is supposedly forbidden for
laymen and done exclusively by the Church (how creepy that makes the Eucharist
we will never know, because it is not explained or explored at all. Not that I
am disappointed or anything), Mother Grundy can walk in from the countryside
and magically set two men on fire, but get away with only a brief chat with the
inspector because she needs to team up with him for the sake of the plot. Triumff
too can get drunk, duel a man and, because he couldn’t use his multi-use magic
sword, right cut off his ear with a potato peeler (I am not sure how this is
sharper than a sword) and still be happy in the arms of his woman by the night.
There is no further question of his conduct or unsporting use of
non-traditional weapons.
Like the inspector and Mother Grundy teaming up, much of the
action appears to be done simply because the plot needs it or it seems cool. So
when the best swordsman in Spain, who has thus far schemed his way through the
book, has the opportunity to poison his greatest rival, he doesn’t; instead
they have an epic sword fight. The villain has every chance to drop poison in
the drink as he casually passes it to his unsuspecting enemy or even to stab
the fellow when he wasn’t looking. Instead as he happens to meet his rival in a
hallway he mentions-off hand that he may be plotting regicide; the Scotsman
accepts this and then they fight. This was just so obviously contrived, and the
two fighters had no real character development. The two-dimensional fellows may
as well have been written out entirely.
Thus my complaints have come full circle, and I am back to
being irritated by the numerous and depthless characters. To break the endless loop,
I think it best to close the review here. I recommend that you skip Triumff and rest contented that, for now
at least, I will stick to Pratchett when I seek humour in fantasy. I can’t go
far wrong there.
Worst bit: Two pages of characters’ names only accounting
for around half of the characters present (not including code names and aliases).
Best bit: Well it was a pretty good sword fight (even if we
never get to see the end).
Afterthought: Abnett said that he had been planning to write
this book for the last thirty years, that it remained a constant companion in
his mind. Perhaps this should be a warning to all prospective authors that your
life’s work should be heavily edited before you consider publication.
With many thanks to Chris King for this beautifully sceptical review. I’ll be back next week with another review.
Click below for more of Chris’s reviews:
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