David Anthony Durham, The Sacred Band

I have not done enough.  I took apart an evil castle built of stone one small block at a time.  Much of it remains, and ever will.  I did what I could, though.  Now, I hope you will as well.  Dariel, seeing what I have done, can you forgive me?  Do you forgive me?

Of course, Dariel said.

Nâ Gâmen closed his eyes for a time.  Opened them.  Thank you.  Forgiveness is a circle, Dariel.  A band that joins us.  Thank you.  If you will accept it from me, I will give you a blessing.  It's the last thing I have to offer you.  Will you accept?

Of course. (p. 178)

The Sacred Band, David Anthony Durham's final volume in his The Acacia trilogy, not only completes the major plot arcs but also unites thematic elements introduced in Acacia and The Other Lands.  In order to review this book properly, some time will need to be devoted toward exploring character motivations, actions, and consequences.  Durham set up in those two volumes a complex array of characters, ranging from the separate personalities and goals of the four royal children of the House of Acacia to the northern Mein to the murky history of the southern Santoth sorcerers.  While each step of their actions are lucidly drawn out through the first two volumes, there is room to surprise here in The Sacred Band and the final results serve to unite the three volumes into a reflective story that executes several thematic interests in a brilliant fashion.

One theme that Durham explores throughout the trilogy is the cool, calculated cruelties that humans can inflict upon one another, especially in that mass suffering known as child slavery (or the Quota in the tale).  How easy it is, Durham illustrates through the memories of various characters, to forget the bonds that unite human to human when we reduce our goals and desires to ciphers marked in a dusty account log.  We see the callous disregard through the eyes and thoughts of leagueman Sire Dagon, the fear and contempt intermingling through the memories of the Lothan Aklun, the warring ennui and lust for fecund immortality among the Auldek, and the perceived need to maintain a crumbling, exploitative system in order for Queen Corinn.  Acacia and The Other Lands introduced readers to these characters and their conflicting desires, setting out a history whose roots were chains around most of its peoples.  Throughout The Sacred Band we see these chains bursting.

"I know better than most that children deserve the truth of the world, explained as they can handle it, and reexamined as they grow.  I would do the same with them myself.  I swear I would.  But our history is not all horrors.  It's still being written.  If you show them what we have done, make sure to show them the things that will make them proud.  Let them have that as well.  And be kind to them.  I know you will, but there is nothing harder for a monarch than to be asked to give back what he thought was his.  This new world that you and I want so much, if it comes, it will not be easy for them.  I had thought once that I would oversee things myself.  Now I see my work was not about me.  It was about helping set the stage for them.  I haven't done it all that well, but I'm still trying." (p. 430)

This quote by the eldest of the royal children, Aliver, contains the keystone for this book and for this trilogy.  Over the course of the series, we witness several characters develop and change their goals and aspirations.  Aliver, the idealist among the four children, realizes here the selfishness that had been imbedded in his goals to reform and reshape Acacian society.  Corinn, the ruling queen, has an epiphany of her own after her own callousness is revealed to her.  Mena, the fighter, learns to become more than the human end of a weapon.  Dariel, the youngest, suffers with the victims of the Quota and his voice becomes the strongest of the four over the course of the trilogy.

Others we see at a remove.  The League perhaps changes the least of any group or faction; their desire for hidden power and wealth remains mostly constant throughout the series and here in The Sacred Band serves as a counter-example of the moral epiphanies that others experience.  The Auldek are much more complex than the superhuman, cool, distant portrayals found in The Other Lands.  As the story here progresses, their motivations become more understandable even if the root cause is still deplorable.  The Santoth are revealed to be much different than how they appeared in Acacia.  At first, their change was puzzling before more information revealed just how subtly Durham had established their characters and motivations in the first volume.

With this disparate set of characters, it would have been relatively easy for Durham to have set up a black/white, good/evil dichotomy and let the two forces battle it out.  He does not do this.  Although there is some fighting and although there is some suffering and loss of life through external conflict, the main struggle is internalized and reveals itself in little passages such as the quote involving Dariel and a mystic who haunts the remains of an ancient castle.  How does one combat indifference and casual cruelty?  For some, the answer likes in the creation of new, voluntary bonds that shatter the old chains, forming "sacred bands" that are stronger because people give freely of their own volition rather than having their lives and souls taken from them.  For others, it is the admission that they do not and cannot run the show and that advancement is made by submission to this rather than fighting against the realization that one cannot reform others if s/he cannot accept self-reformation.

Durham rarely rings a false note during the course of The Sacred Band.  Characters that might have seemed oddly cold and distant in the first volume have by the end of the third gained a depth of character and voice that is rarely found in epic fantasies and is not that common in other, more character-oriented literary genres.  The final pages bring full circle the promise of the earlier volumes, making The Sacred Band one of the most satisfying and fulfilling epic fantasy conclusions that I have read in recent years.  The Sacred Band is easily one of the best 2011 epic fantasy releases and it is one that I highly recommend to readers here.

Interview with David Anthony Durham, Part II

Here is the second half of the interview I conducted with David Anthony Durham over the past month.  In this part, we focus more on his Acacia novels and his future plans.  For those wanting to read Part I, just click the link here.

Acacia: The War with the Mein was your first fantasy novel.  What lessons did you take from that experience and how did you apply them to your most recent novel, The Other Lands?

Every novel (and publication) is a learning experience. There are always up and downs. Hits and misses. I don't feel that the fantasy aspect of Acacia changed that – or that the lessons I walked away with are somehow more specific.

What I can say is that with most of the setting work done in the first book I could jump into motion faster in The Other Lands. Each character begins the novel either in action or with it thrust upon them pretty quickly. And when there is a new world to get to know it's done looking over the shoulders of the characters who are seeing it for the first time. It's less about world-building exposition and more about experiencing things with the characters. I like that about it. So far, at least, it seems like readers do too. That's something I want to keep rolling into the third book, which is where Acacia's ancient history and recent history really collide in earth shattering ways.

How different was it for you to sit down and to start writing a book which had little in the way of a true beginning and no real conclusion to it?  Did it take several drafts before the introductory and concluding chapters felt right?

It didn't take many drafts to figure out the opening or the conclusion. I knew the ending before I began. That's almost always the way it is for me. Right at the start I know how things conclude. Most of the writing process is about how I write the story to get to that ending.

So... The rocks that Dariel walks across heading west… The child that Kelis is guarding… What Mena is faced with in preparation for the next book… The magic that Corinn works at the end… I had all of that at the beginning. I know all the endings of the third book too. That doesn't mean it's easy to get to them, though.

With The Other Lands I took things as far as I could, up to moments of change and revelation for all of the main characters. And then I had to cut it there because the things that come next all mark the beginning of a plot arc that will take hundreds more pages before there's a pause. To me, that’s the stuff of another book. It’s a book that’s almost joined at the hip with The Other Lands, but it is its own creature.

Is there any danger of this third book spilling over its conceived boundaries and thus necessitating a fourth volume to the Acacia series?

Ah… How much do you think people would mind if it did?

That’s tempting, but I think I can keep it from happening. I know what the narrative arc of each character’s story is for this third book. The end is the end, and I don’t think it likely that I’ll need to carry on into another book.

I have other ideas of further Acacia books, though. I don’t know if I’ll write them. That depends on how much readers are interested. But those further ideas aren’t continuations of the core plotlines of this series. They’re other stories, perhaps other multi-volume series in themselves.

Well, there might be a few people who will threaten to hold their breaths and not buy your work, but outside of that, I guess most wouldn’t mind.  So you know the end of the story, huh?  Any chance that something in the writing process might inspire you to alter the narrative arcs in some major way?

That’s always possible, but I don’t think so. I’ll admit that I probably have more loose ends than I’m entirely sure what to do with at the moment. Just the other day I realized I had two plotlines that I couldn’t figure out how to merge. They just conflicted and I was getting pretty sure I couldn’t have both. One would need to be cut.

But then… I was admitting that to my wife. Halfway through saying it I realized the way I could have both. It was very weird. It just happened, and suddenly several things that I’d introduced but didn’t quite know what to do with slotted into place. That happens a lot. Usually, it’s not a matter of the outcome changing, though; what may change is the path to that outcome.

Several reviews of your last two books noted certain “real world” issues, from enslavement to the drug trade to imperialistic attitudes, being present.  Did you set out to tackle these issues from the beginning, or did they arise to meet the needs of the story?

I'm not sure what comes first: the issues or the story. Did I sit down to write a fantasy about slavery and drugs and imperialism? Not exactly. These novels began with a family, with a father and his children. But moments after that I have to place them in a context that feels real to me. And then seconds after that the seedy elements that have always controlled the world start to climb out of the woodwork.

The "real world" elements of the story are there because I've never seen – looking backwards at human history – a time when these issues weren't affecting our lives. It would be very strange for me to write a world in which some variation of enslavement didn't exist. It was part of our history ten thousand years ago. It's part of the modern world. For me, fantasy is wonderful, but it’s not an escape enough for me to ignore the gritty workings of the world.

Did I intend for the League to be some sort of egg-headed version of Haliburton? For Acacia to be some representation of American and European colonialism? For the mist to be something between China's opium trade and current "reality television" and a metaphor for living on credit? No. And yet… I can't deny that when I look at what I wrote it's those things that I see.

I just wrote a scene in the next book where one character explains why one nation is attacking another. I realized what I was describing could just as easily been about why Europeans conquered the New World. I hadn’t particularly thought of that ahead of time, but when the moment came to explain the move I realized the words coming out of the characters mouth could just as easily apply to our world history. That seems to happen a lot.

Since the root word for “story,” historia, also deals with our present-day concepts of “history,” perhaps there is a strong connection after all?  What would the Acacian chroniclers make of all this?

Oh, they’d be gravely perplexed, I imagine. Just like we’d be a bit disturbed to discover we are characters created for the amusement of another world…

It’s funny, though. The first thing that comes to mind when you ask about “Acacian chroniclers” is that it would depend on what age we’re talking about. The chroniclers from Tinhadin’s time to Corinn’s  - a period of four hundred and some years – weren’t expected to record the truth. Their  work in preserving the history of the empire was really about building the myth of the empire. They were there to lie convincingly about the nation’s history for certain political purposes.

But history goes on and on. I do see there being different ages of Acacian history, some of which would value finding the truth much more. Maybe I’ll get to write about that age someday.

What books, if any, did you read during the composition of your latest novels?  Were there any authors, whether read years ago or more recently, who have had some sort of influence on how you’ve chosen to tackle a narrative problem or how to tell a story?

I read all the time. I have books beside my bed for at night, and I’ve always got something on my iPod that I’m listening to as I go about life.

Thing is, most things I read don’t directly influence how I write or solve narrative problems. It’s not like I read something and go, “That’s it! That’s awesome. I should do the same thing!” That just doesn’t happen often. I may read something and think it’s awesome, but that doesn’t usually translate to wanting to do the same thing.

More often, I love reading writers that do things quite differently than I probably ever will. I’ve really come to love Neil Gaiman. I’ll never write like him, but that’s probably part of why I enjoy his work so much. He reminds me of the power of storytelling for storytelling’s sake. I’m on Richard K. Morgan kick, loving the technologically enhanced violence and cyber sex and hipness of his work. I’m in awe of the crime writer George Pelecanos. His writing is so unadorned, straight and to the point. It’s deep, too, but his approach to language is nothing like mine. I got a kick out S. M. Stirling’s In the Courts of the Crimson Kings because of the everyday strangeness of his Martian world. I enjoyed the blood-splattered macho melodrama of Tim Willocks’ The Religion. I couldn’t write something in which the triumph of the main character is so clearly pre-ordained, but I enjoyed the foul, stinking, lusty ride of that novel.

Octavia Butler has become very important to me also. In that case, I do feel a lot of kinship to her, but the thing she has that I don’t is bone-deep wisdom. She’s really, really empathetically wise. She layers that into her writing with a quiet skill that I’m in awe of. But that’s good. I like being in awe of other writers some times.

It’s interesting that you proclaim a love of reading authors that perhaps might touch upon some elements you include in your writing.  Many authors interviewed in the past by myself and others have stated that they try to avoid reading anyone working in a similar area to their own work.  What do you make of these claims that reading similar-type stories might “ruin” their own work and creativity?

I certainly believe that can be true for other writers. We each individually know what effects our writing, for better or worst. Personally, I just don’t feel it’s a problem. My voice is my voice. My style of storytelling is my style of storytelling. It can no more change because of influences than I can change my speaking voice because I’d rather have a Scottish accent. My wife has the Scottish accent in our family. I love it. I hear it every day. I lived for years in Scotland. But damn if I don’t sound like an American every time I open my mouth.

Same is true of my writing. But even with that example I know that other people are different. My sister in law is Scottish, but her accent changes depending on who she’s talking to. American, English, French (which she speaks fluently), New Zealander (she’s married to a Kiwi and lives down under)… it doesn’t matter. Her accent morphs to theirs, and I don’t think she’s consciously aware of it when it happens. I kinda wish I had some of that, but I don’t. Nor do I think my writing fundamentals are skewed by reading other writers.

I think not reading other writers of similar material is equally dangerous. I’ve never in my writing career been accused of stealing from another writer – except for some readers thinking that Acacia: The War With The Mein was influenced by Martin’s Ice and Fire series. Thing is, I hadn’t read a word of Martin when I wrote Acacia. I’ve read every word of the series since, and I love it. I can see similarities, but they’re not the similarities of influence. They’re the similarities of us both finding ourselves drawn to tell similar stories.

If I had read A Game of Thrones before starting my fantasy I would have modified some things. The effect would have been just the opposite of imitation; I’d have been compelled to make changes to avoid similarity. That wouldn’t have been hard to do. I see those similarities as superficial. Thematically, I think George and I work in very different territory.

The Locus review of Acacia: The War With The Mein said something I found very interesting. It was very thorough, insightful review. The reviewer explicitly said that the book shouldn’t be compared to Martin’s work nearly as much as it should be compared to China Mieville’s. I dig that. That makes sense to me. That reviewer is the only one I’m aware of that made that comparison, though. It’s got nothing at all to do with style and character and plot similarities. He was pointing at a philosophical backdrop to it all that’s harder to put your finger on. He may just have something there. I’ll have to read more Mieville to find out.

While I hadn’t thought of comparing the two of you like that, after reading that, I can see where the comparisons between you and Miéville could be made, especially in The Other Lands when the consequences of the mist trade are revealed.  Harking back to the “truth” question above, could it be argued that the revelations given by those victims constitute a central “truth” about the Acacian world and perhaps its possible future?

Yes. Well said. That sort of observation is key to the way I think societies need to be understood. Acacians aren’t going to understand what their nation is really about until they include within their notion of themselves all the things entailed in selling children to a foreign land – why they did it, how they benefited, what happened to the ones sold and to the souls of those who were spared. That’s Acacia. The sparkling palace on the idyllic isle is only a small part of the larger picture.

The same is true of real world societies. If you studied American history but only learned about the Founding Fathers, about the high-ideals of the nation and all the fine things we’ve accomplished… you might be studying the truth, but you’d be getting an incomplete picture, one that would hamper your working understanding of this country. In terms of functionally looking to the future, you’d also need to know about slavery, about the incredibly crimes done to Native Americans, about how long women were kept out of the political process, about how various immigrant groups were exploited… I don’t think people should consider such things for some bleeding heart liberal guilt reason; I think they should consider them because they’re smarter if they do and they’re more capable of making successful decisions.

I hope that Acacians manage to get more of that perspective as they move into their future.

You mentioned above that you are working with George R.R. Martin and other writers on stories set in the Wild Cards universe.  How did you come to be a part of this?

Albany, World Fantasy 2007. It's the night of the big signing session thing where all the authors show up in a big room, grab their name card, and find someplace to sit. Likely, you seek out friends, find a corner, or just carry on in with whomever you just had dinner with. I walked in there looking around for a choice seat. I saw George, kinda off by himself, getting settled down.

Thing about sitting near George at a signing is that… well, no one wants to do it! Who wants to sit there making paper airplanes next to a guy with an unending line of devoted fans/book dealers arriving with bags of first editions, etc? Apparently, I did. I went over and asked if I could share his table. He graciously agreed. He hadn’t read my work at that point, but he seemed to have heard good things about Acacia: The War With The Mein. He signed. We talked. He signed. We talked. He signed… You get the picture.

We ended up talking about historical fiction, including my novel Pride of Carthage. I offered to send him a copy. He said sure. So after the con I did. At some point a few months later I got an email from him saying he’d read and enjoyed the novel. Very cool. We’ve been in touch ever since. I’ve seen him at a number of cons, spent time at his parties or just in the bar.

I think is was sometime after World Fantasy in Calgary that he dropped me a short note asking if I’d any interest in being involved in Wild Cards. I’d read a few Wild Cards stories before, but never imagined I’d be part of it. Of course, when George makes an offer one should jump at it! That’s what I did.

I started reading up on the series, thinking up characters, brainstorming with my kids. I pitched him a few character ideas that he kindly shot down. And, then I offered one that he liked: The Infamous Black Tongue. Before I knew it, I was in, and IBT had a three-part story scheduled for an upcoming book!

So far it’s been a lot of fun. It makes me flex slightly different fictional muscles, and it means a level of collaboration I’ve never tried before. Wild Cards novels use characters created by lots of different authors, with twenty-some books worth of history to consider, with lots of different styles and temperaments to blend together. Very interesting process, and I’m still in the middle of it.

The book is called Fort Freak. Look for it in a year or so!

Is your contribution to Fort Freak your first published foray into writing shorter fiction, or have you had short fiction published in the past?

I’ve published a few short stories. Like… uh… three, I think. I got pretty good mileage out of them, though. A couple have been anthologized several times. Those stories “The Boy-Fish”, “August Fury”, and “An Act of Faith” are all contemporary African-American focused. Mainstream fiction.

Fort Freak is my first time writing SF in the short form. George had already signed me up before he thought to ask, “By the way, do you actually write short fiction?”

In the end, George met me halfway. My story is a three-parter, spaced throughout a larger narrative. It’s not miles away from having a novelistic feel to it. It’s still about my character over time, dealing with a series of events that are complicatedly plotted. Other characters written by other authors intersect with mine. In lots of ways I’m not so much writing three short stories as I am writing three parts of a larger narrative.

Writing in a shared-universe setting often carries a stigma.  What are your thoughts about shared-universe and/or media tie-in stories and how they relate to original fiction, genre or otherwise, in terms of story crafting and character creation?

I’m aware that to some degree I’m a writer for hire in this gig. George gave me pretty specific stipulations about the type of things that needed to happen in my sections. It’s up to me how I make those things happen, but I’ve got to do my part so that the other parts fit together. It’s not going to be about making my parts stand out from the crowd; it’s about being part of a collaborative. So, yeah, it’s different than writing entirely original fiction.

But I’m chuffed to be getting a shot at the contemporary, urban sf comic blend that Wild Cards is. By my internal cool meter, this one has the needle popping. I’ll trust that. I don’t think I’d say yes to just anything, though. Wild Cards pushes a lot of buttons that I find interesting. The first book, in particular, was serious, dark, intense. Since I respect the series I feel comfortable writing for it. If I didn’t respect the series that would be another issue entirely.

I’ve been invited in to bring things to the series. To bring perspectives and characterizations that are particularly my own. My story is about a vigilante half-snake mutant on the run from the police and trying to get the cops that framed him, but it’s also about an African-American youth that’s dealing with not having lived up to his family’s expectations. It’s about him coming to value himself despite that. It’s also about his search for connection – friendship and romance – and how the difficulties of that shape his character. Thematically, that stuff interests me, and I’m glad to layer it in the action the stories contain. To me, that’s engaging with the creative process in a meaningful way.

As for writing a media tie-in novel… that’s probably not my style, but I haven’t been asked yet either. I can’t swear I’d say no to something until it’s on offer as a real possibility.

After you finish the Acacia series and Fort Freak, what sorts of stories do you envision exploring next?

I’m tempted to give you a long, rambling answer, detailing all the story ideas that I have, all the different possibilities and explain why they’re important to me. But I think I’d regret that…

Truth is, I have lots of ideas, but I’m not sure what will come next. I won’t know until I’ve finished the Acacia trilogy. That’s all I can say with certainty now.

Interview with David Anthony Durham, Part I

Due to the growing length of this interview, David and I decided it would be best to divide it into two parts, with the second part appearing in the next few days.  

A couple of years ago, you were interviewed by several bloggers at Pat's site, including myself.  What important things have happened in your professional and personal life between the publication of Acacia: The War with the Mein and The Other Lands?

Lots of stuff, mostly good. Acacia: The War With The Mein performed rather nicely. I was very happy with the reviews it received and with the overseas attention and publications. It got me nominated for the John W. Campbell Award for Best New Writer twice, and the second time I won it!

As important as any of that is that I’ve been overwhelmingly pleased by my acceptance into the community of science fiction and fantasy writers. When I walk into a convention now I know I’m among friends. Also, I’m part of a group of sff writers from around the world that daily shares information and exchanges ideas and stories about publishing. I’ve been asked to do several anthologies and collaborations – most of which I’ve had to turn down – and I’ve had the pleasure of accepting George RR Martin’s invitation to write for his Wild Cards series, which I’m doing right now.

All things considered, it’s been a good couple of years professionally.

Very cool news!  I’m curious about this group of sff writers of which you are a member.  Can you divulge any information on what that group does - is it more of an informal manuscript peer review, support group, or all that and a bag of chips more?

Oh, the group isn’t exactly a secret, but we don’t really advertize ourselves either. It’s sort of quiet, self-regulating group. Every now and then we invite new folks in, not as if we’re trying to be elite or something, but just with an eye toward keeping the group supportive and diverse and low-key. Once in, we’re just sort of an extended group of friends and peers to call on when we need to. We talk publishing biz stuff. We ask questions as we make publishing decisions or just want to get other perspectives. It’s great to see what other writer’s experiences are, and to have folks to talk to other than our editors and agents. For me in particular it’s eye opening in terms of issues specific to sf genres. It’s a good group.

Interesting.  So this is as much of a social support group as it is a writing workshop one?  Also, have you been involved in such groups for all of your professional writing career or have there been shifts in how you approach the writing craft and the sharing of written material with other writers?

It's not really a writing workshop group at all. I'd say social support group describes it.

I've not been involved in anything remotely like it before. This genre nurtures more networking and interaction than the "literary" genre does. There's certainly plenty of friction between factions in sf, but there's supportive communication too.

In terms of sharing work with other writers… I still don't do that much. I had a few people read Acacia: The War With The Mein during the revision period, and a few read The Other Lands. Mostly I work alone, and then bring my wife, agent and editor in.

That said, I have floated my stories for Wild Cards out to a few of the other people working on the series, and I've read pieces from others as well. And one prominent author recently asked me to read an early draft of the first novel of in a new series. So I guess sharing is becoming more and more a part of my writing life.

Whenever I read your blog, one of the things I notice most is how close-knit your family is.  How much of an influence has your family been on the characters and settings of your novels?

Quite a bit, actually. It would be hard for me to explain just how, though, since they get into my writing in bits and pieces, in fragments that probably only make sense to me. For example, the Akaran children are based on the template of my wife’s family, but once the template was set the characters began to evolve different. Sometimes Mena is my wife; sometimes she’s more inspired by my daughter; much of the time she’s neither. A character like Melio is named after one of our cats, a fact that brings my kids fits of laughter every time I mention something heroic the character did.

Other things I only understand afterwards, like that in writing about the relationship between Mena and Elya in the second book I was sort of writing about the relationship between my daughter and another one of our cats, Dolphin. Go figure.

My family affects everything I write. How could they not?

Since your family takes such an active role in influencing the characters, have there ever been times that one of them has been tempted to throw something at you because they saw themselves reflected in one of the characters?

For a while I lived in fear of that. It’s most obvious with the Akarans. Aliver was based on my brother in law, and look what happened to him! And Corinn began as my sister in law, and you know how she turned out… I’m happy to say they took it all in good humor, though. The truth is that from the moment the characters first open their mouths and start moving around the Acacia stage they become something different than any of the real life people that inspired them. My family understands that. Lucky for me.

Every now and then, there's some comment or assertion on some blog or article about how there's some discernable difference between "mainstream," "literary," or "mimetic" fiction and "speculative" or "SF/Fantasy" fiction.  As an author who has had stories marketed in both categories, what differences, if any, do you believe exist between these perceived narrative modes?

There are differences. Sure. There are commonalities too. I tend to think we make too big a fuss over differences, though. People stake out their turf and take too much self-righteous glee in lobbing insults onto other people’s turf. To me this is kinda silly. Kinda childish.

Here’s what I believe about “literary” and “mainstream” fiction – just today’s selection of thoughts.

I believe that there is value in writing and reading purely for entertainment, but I also believe fiction can offer more than that and that when it does it’s often harder to access without effort.

I believe that literary fiction by its nature intends to speak meaningfully about the human experience, but I also believe literary writers have no monopoly on this and that they often wear blinders that stop them from seeing quality work in other genres.

I believe that genre fiction has its roots deeply in long-standing traditions of storytelling, sometimes reaching right back to the classics, but I also believe a lot genre writing is uninventive and boring.

I believe that literary fiction’s goals are admirable, but that it’s often… uninventive, boring, safe and lacking ambition.

Looking at my own work, I’ve heard many responses that make it clear genre readers have appreciated my literary attention to character psychology, language, complexity of detail in social and political landscape, but I’m also aware that my writing seems to short circus some readers that don’t connect with any of those things at all.

Some genre readers seem to choose not to like a book when the book fails to be what they expected it to be, when the story or characters aren’t just like the last book that they really loved. That’s a perfectly valid reaction, but I don’t think it should necessarily lead one to conclude that a book is bad – or that literary is just boring. That book may just be different. The author’s interests may be different. Not all readers may share those interests, but some readers give up before they’ve engaged enough to know.

And that’s where I think there is a difference between mainstream and literary that matters. Mainstream writing by its very nature should be easy to swallow. It should go down smooth, without challenging a reader too much – or by challenging them in the ways they expect to be challenged. To take another example, McDonald’s isn’t a massive chain because they make the best tasting hamburgers in the world. They’re massive because they’ve managed to find the right formula for delivering consistently familiar food, food that never surprises and… never fails to be what you expect when you walk in the door. That’s a rather remarkable achievement, and I do think similar impulses drive book buying in the genres as well. Why not return to authors, stories, plot twists that have worked before, rendered in language that doesn’t get in the way?

Literary fiction often begins with a different premise. It may require that a reader learn to read it. Even if you’ve bought a hamburger of a novel, it’s hopefully a different cut of meat. Your first bite isn’t just like the first bite of every Big Mac you’ve ever tasted. You might have to chew for a while to know what it actually tastes like – and then to figure out if you like it.

That’s probably a lot easier an experience to go through with a hamburger than with a novel, but I think there’s a parallel. Some genre readers are turned off by literary fiction before they’ve chewed on it long enough. And, to be fair, I think that many literary readers ignore that the genres do have lots of complexity within them, many titles that they’d love if only they had the sense to give them a try. I’d say one has to learn to read Octavia Butler or Neil Gaiman or Kelly Lynch. They’re literary. They’re also fun to read regardless, but I think they get better the more you digest them.

I’ll never forget an early review of my first novel, Gabriel’s Story, in the San Francisco Chronicle. The reviewer found the language of the first part strange, convoluted and a bit hard to figure out. But then he wrote that by the second part the language had started to work to “greater effect”, and by the end he loved the book! He seems to have walked away thinking that the first part wasn’t as good as the following three parts. But I’d argue that the writing was consistent. What changed was that it took him that first part to get into the rhythm of my writing. After he did, everything got smoother and smoother for him.

Now, if I’d started the book with simpler language he might have been happier from the start, but if I’d done that I wouldn’t have been using the language that he’d learned to love by the end. I think that’s often the case with good literary fiction. (And I do mean the “good” stuff; I’m not saying that all literary fiction is.) Hopefully, it holds you from the start, but in a great many ways full appreciation of it comes gradually.

Nice presentation of the literary/genre presumed divide there.  You raise an interesting point about how your first novel was received.  Would it be fair to say that for those who read Acacia: The War with the Mein and struggled with the first section before finding themselves enjoying the rest of the book might have had a similar experience to that review of Gabriel’s Story?

Before I delve into that, I should make it clear that I don’t believe a writer has an elevated authority in terms of judging how readers respond to them. We think about it and can have opinions, but I don’t think we can determine exactly what any reader is or isn’t experiencing. The whole process is about offering stories to people. It’s the offering that counts, and once you do that you loose control over how others interact with your stories. That’s the way it should be.

With that caveat out there, do I imagine that some Acacia readers had the same experience as that Gabriel’s Story reviewer? Sure. And I thank them for sticking with it! I hope my novels are enjoyable to many people, but they do require some effort on the reader’s part. Most of the people that read Acacia were new to my work. It makes sense that some would need to get used to my approach. I’m just thankful they did.

When someone comes up to me and says they were hooked right from page one I’m always a little surprised. Really? From page one, huh? I’m proud of everything I’ve written, but I don’t think that hooking readers quickly is one of my strengths. I try to get readers chewing on an entire mouthful of baited hooks without really feeling any of those hooks too obviously. I don’t rush to yank too soon, either. I’d like to think it happens gradually, that it grows on readers so that they never know the exact moment when the hooks start sinking in.

Anyway, that’s my approach. It must be natural to me because even in novels that begin in mid-action, like Walk Through Darkness, I still don’t reveal the main hooks controlling the story until near the end.

Have there ever been times that a reader or reviewer comment has led you to reevaluate your approach, perhaps even add an element or two in order to “clarify” a point that may have been more confusing for readers (I’m particularly thinking of Acacia here) who were not used to your narrative approach?

Things that readers/reviewers say may plant seeds that effect decisions I make in the next book, but I’m not sure I’d be able to pinpoint what comment effected things I did a year later. It just gets in the mix somehow. On one hand, I make decisions consciously and I believe in them, but I also know that the whole thing is about communicating stories and ideas with people. I'd be a fool if I didn't keep an ear open and stay willing to respond to readers.

Multiculturalism in literature of all sorts has become more prevalent in the past two decades.  However, in certain fields, epic fantasy being one of them, there seems to be some controversy over how certain characters are portrayed and if the imagined secondary worlds are a bit too homogenous.  What is your take on the arguments on this issue, including the so-called “Racefail ‘09" debates online?

I can’t speak about Racefail ’09 specifically. I didn’t participate in it, and, though I know some of the details, I’m no expert on what went on. What’s my take on this issue in general? Again, I offer the thoughts as I have them today…

I think it’s part of the record that a lot of fantasy and sf has been laughably white.

I think it’s a bit silly when depictions of humanity in the future 1) are basically white, or 2) are diverse in ways that mirror our contemporary notions of what diversity is. The first is embarrassing because the majority of the human population isn’t white (not even right now), and unless all these folks have been killed off in some way they’re going to be in the future in ever larger numbers. The second is embarrassing because it’s so limited and shortsighted. I think it’s much more reasonable to imagine a browning of humanity that means it will be harder and harder to find people that have kept the bloodlines undiluted (and lacking the benefits of genetic diversity).

I believe that in fantasy there is something insidious about creating an entire world peopled only with variations of white people: humans, elves, dwarves, etc. I’m not moaning about it. I’m just saying that intentionally or not writers that have done that are revealing things about they way the perceive – or don’t perceive – people of color.

But I also see growing diversity in fantasy. I think it’s always been there in the readership – although not necessarily visible in the folks that make up fandom – and I see it in people’s work and in the small, growing population of writers of color that are striving to get into the field. That’s progress. It should be acknowledged and encouraged – partially because it’s just a good thing, and partially because it can only make the genre more interesting. It doesn’t mean the issue is resolved, though.

There are layers upon layers of issues built into our racial perceptions and interactions. This is one thing I think white people often view differently than people of color. (I’m very aware that I’m speaking in generalities. Such things aren’t perfect, I know.) I think it’s easier for a white person to point at a few authors or books and say, “Look, there’s proof that there’s diversity. Case closed. Can we please stop talking about it?” Whereas a person of color is more likely to say, “Yeah, you can name five black sf authors now, but let’s look at what they’ve written, how they’ve been marketed and received, how that compares to how white writers of similar material were treated, etc. And, yes, there may be other races in lots of new fantasy series, but let’s look at how they’re depicted, how central their roles are, how much they embody earthly stereotypes, and let’s consider that there’s something wrong when the people in the book are all brown and the people on the cover are all white, etc. And perhaps you can stop talking about it, but that’s because it doesn’t matter to you the same way it does to me. I have no choice but to keep talking, because stopping would mean I was failing to acknowledge and express things that I think, feel, experience every day.”

As with everything to do with race and culture and social history, there aren’t any easy answers. And when there are advances it doesn’t close the matter; it just opens up further avenues that need exploring/debating. I do wish the debating didn’t get so hostile so quickly, though. From a distance, that’s one of the things that seem problematic with episodes like Racefail ’09.

In general, we can all do better. I had a friend over from Scotland a few weeks back. White guy. He’d been talking about how much he liked District 9, which I haven’t seen. As I looked up stuff about it online I came across Tananarive Due and some other writers of color talking about depictions of race in it. Some were highly critical; others supportive of the film, etc. I showed them to my friend. He came away from reading them and said, “Well, I don’t exactly agree that it’s racist in the ways some of these authors think it is, but, still, it does get me thinking about some things I hadn’t before.”

To me, that’s perfect. Couldn’t ask for more. I wish more folks could listen to people they don’t agree with like that – with a mind open enough so that the dialogue broadens their perspective in some way, even if it’s in ways lateral to the point being argued. 

Good points.  Correct me if I’m wrong, but isn’t part of the problem many PoC writers and readers have is with “diversity” in writing that consists of having a shallow, token non-caucasian appear in a limited, or rather limiting roles?  In what ways have your stories shown a substantive difference in approach toward addressing the issue of representing PoC characters, concerns, and situations that might differ from how a caucasian writer might represent them?

Yes to the first question. Often when white writers included PoC they're there as part of the gang around the main characters, in support roles. I'm sure those writers feel that they've been inclusive by doing that, but being on the margins of the story doesn't help if the PoC characters are always at the margins. That's not true engagement.

White writers having true engagement with non-white protagonists is rare. Richard K Morgan does it. I love it that Neil Gaiman has had lots of diverse characters in supporting roles in his books and stories, and that he made a black Caribbean character the primary in Anansi Boys. Neil delivers. He also made the decision to have Lenny Henry read the audio version of that book. You could say that's just because the main character has a different personality than Neil, but that's only part of it. We all know Neil's an awesome reader. I'm sure he chose Lenny because he wanted a black voice narrating his story about a black character. If he'd tried that with his own voice the identity would've blended with Neil's, and that would be diluting the effect of his narrative choices.

And that happens a lot too. Writers like Ursula K LeGuin have explicitly written about worlds filled with brown skinned characters, only to then see their publishers or filmmakers present those characters as white on the covers of their books. This is partially a subconscious thing – the ones making the artistic decisions kinda forget that the characters were described as brown-skinned. And I know it's partially intentional – that publishers believe they're more likely to sell less books with a PoC on the cover.

Readers may scoff at that. "I don't think about the color of the person on the book!" I can't argue with an individual on what they do or don’t consider. I'll just say that it's a fact that publishers consider race and prejudice as they make marketing decisions in which race and prejudice may play a part. You may not think you think about it; they're sure that at some level – even subconscious – you do.

In terms of my own writing, the most direct ways I've approached race differently can be seen in my earlier novels. Gabriel’s Story was a response to Cormac McCarthy's Blood Meridian. I loved that book, but I hated the way the one black character in it was called "the nigger". He was as much a part of the group as any of them, but his marginalization had it's own nasty character to it. So I wrote a Western that began with a solid historical fact – that there were many black settlers in the West, especially after the Civil War – and ran with it. I made the black characters the central focus. I’m not aware of a white writer ever having done that.

Walk Through Darkness is as a runaway slave story, but an entire half of the book is focused on a white character, the one who I'd argue is the real main character of the book. It was an exploration of how intermingled the American bloodline is, how much that's been subverted, and how freeing it can/could be to acknowledge it more directly. I choose to include it because I think it's an important aspect of the American experience and because the story is in my blood, in my family history.

In my Hannibal novel, Pride of Carthage, I wanted to translate what ancient sources and what modern historians tell us about the Second Punic War into fiction. That meant making decisions, choosing between alternative possibilities, condensing and splicing things, but it was all in an effort to get that epic conflict on the page. I also wanted to pay tribute to the diversity that was the ancient Mediterranean. That's part of why there was such a wide cast of characters: Carthaginians and Romans, Greeks and Macedonians, Gauls and Celts, and Libyans and Numidian. They all featured in the war; they all feature in my novel – not just as walk on characters in the background, but with devoted scenes specifically telling their stories. I’ve read a few fictional takes on the Second Punic War, but none of them made central characters out of North Africans other than the Carthaginians. I did. It felt important – and natural – to do that.

With Acacia: The War With The Mein I just wanted to write a large fantasy story set in a racially diverse world. I didn't center the story around Northern European-like cultures or around sub-Saharan African ones. I went for placing it in between, and then casting a wide net around that. Once that was in place I just proceeded with the story I wanted to tell.

 How have reader reactions been to your decisions in your novels, especially in Acacia: The War with the Mein, to include so many different ethnic groups that have their traditions and which aren’t shallow riffs on the dwarves/elves/orcs that you noted above?

Nobody's complained about it. Nobody’s said, “I’m so disappointed. Where are the elves?”

Readers of color and folks interested in PoC have quite welcomed it, who seem to feel that the combination of a writer of color creating a multi-cultural world is a very good thing. I’m happy about that. On the other hand other readers have said, "What's the big deal? It doesn't feel that different." Different readers; different reactions.

I believe that only part of the way an individual perceives a story is shaped by the written words themselves. Those words mix with whatever perceptions/perspectives/prejudices the reader carries with them. That’s the magic of it, but it means that not everyone reads the same thing the same way, especially when ethnicity is one of the issues at hand. When I read Earthsea I’m jolted each time Ged and most other people are physically described as dark, coppered, brown. Each time that rings in my head like a little bell, reminding me that this is a world of PoC characters. It’s so very there in the text, and I think readers who match those descriptions themselves latch on to the ethnicity of the characters – as LeGuin wants us to do. But I’ve also spoken with a lot of white readers that look at me funny when I point this out. They don’t notice it the same way. To them those descriptions don’t stick, or don’t seem to mean the same things.

The same is true in Acacia. Again and again, I mention that the Acacian’s are of a light brown complexion, that they tend to have brown eyes and dark hair, that feminine beauty is typically round featured in the face. By contrast, the Meins are the ones that have really blond hair and fair skin and sharp features. The Talayans are very dark-skinned.

Still, though, a lot of readers sort of slide the Acacians to the European realm. I’ve seen this in the artwork for some of my European covers. I’ve certainly seen it in the names of actors people come up with to fit roles in the film. I think the tricky thing is that secondary world fantasy has been Euro-centric for so long that it’s become the default picture people have in their minds. Subtle changes to that template don’t always register.

On the other hand, complete shifts, like what Charles R. Saunders attempted with Imaro, truly resets the template. He wrote African-based sword and sorcery. No mistaken that. Problem is that few people read it. Sales dove. The series got cancelled. They tried this twice, by the way, and the same thing happened both times.

David Anthony Durham on perceived differences between "literary" and "genre" fiction

This is one small part of an interview I'm currently conducting with him, but I thought his response to one question in particular deserved to be highlighted on its own.  Hopefully, the full interview will be completed in the next few weeks (both of us are swamped with work right now, it seems):

Every now and then, there's some comment or assertion on some blog or article about how there's some discernable difference between  mainstream,   literary,  or  mimetic  fiction and  speculative  or  SF/Fantasy  fiction.  As an author who has had stories marketed in both categories, what differences, if any, do you believe exist between these perceived narrative modes?

There are differences. Sure. There are commonalities too. I tend to think we make too big a fuss over differences, though. People stake out their turf and take too much self-righteous glee in lobbing insults onto other people’s turf. To me this is kinda silly. Kinda childish.

Here’s what I believe about “literary” and “mainstream” fiction – just today’s selection of thoughts.

I believe that there is value in writing and reading purely for entertainment, but I also believe fiction can offer more than that and that when it does it’s often harder to access without effort.

I believe that literary fiction by its nature intends to speak meaningfully about the human experience, but I also believe literary writers have no monopoly on this and that they often wear blinders that stop them from seeing quality work in other genres.

I believe that genre fiction has its roots deeply in long-standing traditions of storytelling, sometimes reaching right back to the classics, but I also believe a lot genre writing is uninventive and boring.

I believe that literary fiction’s goals are admirable, but that it’s often… uninventive, boring, safe and lacking ambition.

Looking at my own work, I’ve heard many responses that make it clear genre readers have appreciated my literary attention to character psychology, language, complexity of detail in social and political landscape, but I’m also aware that my writing seems to short circus some readers that don’t connect with any of those things at all.

Some genre readers seem to choose not to like a book when the book fails to be what they expected it to be, when the story or characters aren’t just like the last book that they really loved. That’s a perfectly valid reaction, but I don’t think it should necessarily lead one to conclude that a book is bad – or that literary is just boring. That book may just be different. The author’s interests may be different. Not all readers may share those interests, but some readers give up before they’ve engaged enough to know.

And that’s where I think there is a difference between mainstream and literary that matters. Mainstream writing by its very nature should be easy to swallow. It should go down smooth, without challenging a reader too much – or by challenging them in the ways they expect to be challenged. To take another example, McDonald’s isn’t a massive chain because they make the best tasting hamburgers in the world. They’re massive because they’ve managed to find the right formula for delivering consistently familiar and mediocre food, food that never surprises and… never fails to be what you expect when you walk in the door. That’s a rather remarkable achievement, and I do think similar impulses drive book buying in the genres as well. Why not return to authors, stories, plot twists that have worked before, rendered in language that doesn’t get in the way?

Literary fiction often begins with a different premise. It may require that a reader learn to read it. Even if you’ve bought a hamburger of a novel, it’s hopefully a different cut of meat. Your first bite isn’t just like the first bite of every Big Mac you’ve ever tasted. You might have to chew for a while to know what it actually tastes like – and then to figure out if you like it.

That’s probably a lot easier an experience to go through with a hamburger than with a novel, but I think there’s a parallel. Some genre readers are turned off by literary fiction before they’ve chewed on it long enough. And, to be fair, I think that many literary readers ignore that the genres do have lots of complexity within them, many titles that they’d love if only they had the sense to give them a try. I’d say one has to learn to read Neil Gaiman or Kelly Lynch, for example. They’re literary. They have the advantage that they’re also fun to read regardless, but I think they get better the more you digest them.

I’ll never forget an early review of my first novel, Gabriel’s Story, in the San Francisco Chronicle. The reviewer found the language of the first part strange, convoluted and a bit hard to figure out. But then he wrote that by the second part the language had started to work to “greater effect”, and by the end he loved the book. He seems to have walked away thinking that the first part wasn’t as good as the following three parts. But I’d argue that the writing was consistent. What changed was that it took him that first part to get into the rhythm of my writing. After he did, everything got smoother and smoother for him.

Now, if I’d started the book with simpler language he might have been happier from the start, but if I’d done that I wouldn’t have been using the language that he’d learned to love by the end. I think that’s often the case with good literary fiction. (And I do mean the “good” stuff; I’m not saying that all literary fiction is.) Hopefully, it holds you from the start, but in a great many ways full appreciation of it comes gradually.
 

David Anthony Durham, The Other Lands

In the offices that had once been her father's, Queen Corinn Akaran bent over her desk, arms spread wide and palms pressed against the smooth grain of the polished hardwood. The flared sleeves of her gown formed an enclosure of sorts, a screen that shielded the document from view on two sides. She was alone in her offices, but she knew - better than anyone else in the palace - that until she had eyes in the back of her head she could not trust that she was ever as unaccompanied as she believed herself to be. She favored this posture when she wished to focus her attention on a particular document, above which she would hang like a falcon poised to drop on a field mouse far below.

***

If all the scheming complexity of her position had etched fine wrinkles at the corners of her eyes, so be it. If she was fuller in the hips and chest than she had been before childbirth, what did that matter? If she walked more on her heels and less on the eager balls of her feet, that was as it should be. She had been lovely as a girl, but she knew that there were other ways to be lovely as a woman. She was not yet the age her mother was in her memories, which meant she had not reached the age to measure herself against her understanding of beauty. And of mortality. That day would come, she knew, but not just yet. (pp. 29-30)

Reviewing middle volumes of a multi-volume work is very tricky. There really isn't a true "beginning" to the novel and there certainly will be no real conclusion as well. To evaluate a middle volume such as David Anthony Durham's second novel in his Acacia trilogy, The Other Lands (September 2009), perhaps it might be best to look at how it builds upon developments begun in The War with the Mein and to see how the two books complement each other, rather than trying to weigh The Other Lands' merits in a vacuum.

Character development is a good place to begin this evaluation. In my review of The War with the Mein (2007), I cited a passage where the young Princess Corinn is mourning the impending loss of her mother to a deadly illness. There, she was conflicted, noting the similarities between her and her mother, while also worrying about the ravages of mortality. Compare that with the passage I quoted at the top. Corinn, now almost twenty years older, is more confident, but yet there is still that nagging insecurity that is represented in the form of her comparisons of herself with memories of her mother. In many ways, these two short passages from the two novels give valuable insight into one of the more complex and interesting characters of this series.

The other characters also benefit from increased time delving into their character developments over the nine-year span between the events of The War with the Mein and The Other Lands. Corinn's younger sister, Mena, and brother, Dariel, each are much fuller, dynamic characters than they were in the first novel. Each has conflicts arising from their actions nine years before. Mena is torn between her gentle nature and her capability to be fierce, as the avatar of the wrath goddess Maeben. Dariel suffers constantly from his order that his brother Alavar's killer be surrounded and slaughtered after a duel between the Meinish and Acacian army leaders ends with Alavar's death. Mena and Dariel's story arcs not only highlight these tensions within them, but they are reflected on a grander scale in the plot dynamics of the novel.

The Known Lands, or the continent that the Acacian Empire mostly controls, is still reeling from the events of the past 18 years. Corinn is a shrewd ruler, but the people are beginning to grumble, especially since she has doubled the Quota of children sent via the League to the mysterious Lothun Aklan and the Auldek magicians east across the Grey Slopes. More and more supplies of the drug Mist are distributed to quell the unrest, but still things continue to boil over in the Known Lands, as each natural (and unnatural) setback is blamed upon the young queen. And while Corinn occupies herself with the magic book she discovered at the end of the first novel, it appears the threat from the East is only looming larger.

If one compares the plots and thematic developments of the two novels, a certain mirroring can be discerned. Alavar's more idealistic, egalitarian view of governance is mirrored in his sister Corinn's pragmatic rule that continues to reinforce the inequalities that the minor, "salt of the earth" characters of the two novels note in their brief PoV chapters. The combination of power lust and ancestor reverence that the Mein displayed in the first novel finds certain parallels with the Auldek of the Other Lands. But what dominates large portions of The Other Lands, whether the action be set in Acacia, in the wilds with Mena, or (later) in the Other Lands with Dariel, is the desire for change. The old systems, whether they be magical (Santoth, Lothun Aklan), commercial (the League, Quota), military (Numrek, various Acacian dependencis), or social (Auldek, the people in the Known Lands subjugated to the Quota), are all on the verge of collapse. The chains of inhumane inequality are being rattled and it appears each link is much more brittle than suspected.

This exploration of the desire for equality and freedom, referenced several times by the royal survivors in the form of Alavar's apparently stillborn movement (and then explicitly in a surprising scene at the end of the novel) is one of two themes that I believe Durham develops well here. He avoids becoming "preachy," in that there are several facets presented and the reader is never allowed to see any side (except perhaps for one revealed in the second part of the novel) as being all or even mostly "in the right." Yet Durham also manages to avoid the trap of relying too much upon relativism. While no side is pure white and light, one group certainly is darker and less good than the other. Which side that is, however, depends on how one interprets events.

The second great theme of The Other Lands concerns itself with the interconnections of events and actions. Everything in this novel and its predecessor has consequences, some of them dire and often unexpected. Demonstrated first with the corrupted magic of the Santoth and then later with the consequences of the Quota, the novel's plot is full of examples of how events are connected in ways that might surprise the reader if that reader has not paid close attention to the seemingly minor details of what Mist is, how the League and the Lothun Aklan conducted their trade, why magic practice fell out of use in the Known Lands almost 20 generations ago, and so forth.

The writing here is of a similar quality to the first novel. Some readers may become impatient with Durham's descriptive prose, but I found it (as I did with the first novel) to convey the important elements of the narrative quickly, with just enough attention to detail to spark interest, but without the turgidity that sometimes can set in when authors reach almost pornographic levels of detail about what a character is thinking or what people are wearing or eating at feasts. Sometimes, withheld detail and a more "pan out" scene setting serves to create a better narrative perspective than too much of a focus on the "showing" aspects of a narrative. Durham balances the dialogue and the narrative "telling" quite adroitly here and the story flowed at a nice, even pace throughout the novel.

On the whole, there are no resolutions to be found in The Other Lands, only more questions raised. But what else would a reader expect from a middle volume? The plot was advanced in interesting directions, the characters developed nicely, and there are hints of some interesting events on the horizon. All in all, The Other Lands complements and reinforces the qualities of The War with the Mein and it leaves me eager to read the concluding volume. This certainly was one of the better epic fantasy volumes that I've read this year. Highly recommended.

David Anthony Durham, Pride of Carthage

This was originally posted on Vaguely Borgesian, my other blog, which now has fallen into disuse since I decided to cover non-speculative fictions works here as well on occasion.

History is a word fraught with ancient emotions and depths. From the ancient Greek ἱστορία, meaning roughly “narration of what is learned,” to the Latin historia, which has the extra connotation of “story” to go with the Greek meaning to the French histoire, the Spanish and Italian historia, and of course the English history, the word refers not just to the past, but also to what we’ve learned from the past, as well as the narrative tales we transmit from generation to generation in order to impress upon our youth the important “lessons” that past events can teach us.

It was for the storytelling aspects, the ability to learn from prior events and to piece together meanings and stories from people from other places and times, that led me to get my BA and MA in European cultural/religious history a little over 10 years ago. Although I currently am not working in that field, I still value and cherish it and for the most part, I have looked at “historical novels” with a skeptical eye. Common questions I have asked myself when reading historical novels have been “Will the author be more “true” to the mechanisms of change or will s/he try to be “true” to the “spirit” of the events? Will the “story” aspect of history be on display here, or will it devolve more into a hodge-podge of mostly-unexplored events and poorly-developed characters, with just a surface layer of “historicity” to top it off?”

These were some of the questions that I had when I began reading David Anthony Durham’s Pride of Carthage. Now I had earlier read his excellent fantasy, Acacia: The War with the Mein, as well as two smaller-scope historical works, Gabriel’s Story and Walk Through Darkness (I plan on re-reading the latter two before reviewing them here in the coming months), so I was familiar with Durham’s basic writing style and his approach towards characterization, but still the question still lingered about how he would approach the larger-than-life persona of the Carthinginian general Hannibal during his 218-203 BCE campaigns against the Romans during the Second Punic War. Would Hannibal be portrayed more as an übermensch, dominating without much effort or struggle, or would he be set up more as a tragic hero, whose own virtues end up being the cause of his downfall at Zama at the hands of Scipio Africanus?

What I found while reading this novel is that Hannibal is neither all of A nor all of B, but a bit of both with some surprising (but fitting) elements tossed in. Eschewing a more traditional approach of concentrating mostly on the general himself, Durham devotes quite a bit of time to his family, from his brothers Hasdrubal, Hanno, and Mago, to his father, Hamilcar, and in some of the more poignant scenes that frame the novel, his son, also named Hamilcar. In many ways, this is a tale about a father who has done many great and terrible things, at a horrendous cost to his home and family in the end.

Below is an excerpt from near the beginning of the novel that reveals quite a bit about how Hannibal came to be the leader that he was. His father has taken the then-eight year-old Hannibal to see a prisoner, one who had tried to betray Carthage:

“This man betrayed Carthage, “Hamilcar said, his voice a dry rasp that he could not shake, though he cleared his throat several times. “Do you understand that? This man conspired to open the gates of our city to the mercenaries. He did it for money, for power, out of a sheer hatred that he hid behind the mask of a countryman. He almost succeeded. had this man the power, he would yank you up by the ankles and bash your skull against the stones beneath us. He would nail me to a cross and leave me to die slowly. He’d see me a rotting, maggot-filled corpse, and he would laugh at the sight. He would slit your brother’s necks and rape your mother and have her sold into slavery. He would live in our house and eat our food and rule over our servants. This is the man before you. Do you know his name?”

Hannibal shook his head, his eyes pinned to the stones and not moving even as he answered.

“His name is Tamar. Some call him the Blessed, others the Foul. Some call him friend. Some father. Some lover. Do you understand? He has other names also: Alexander. Cyrus. Achilles. Khufu. Yahweh or Ares or Osiris. He is Sumerian, Persian, Spartan. He is the thief in the street, the councillor who sits beside you, the man who covets your wife. You choose his name, for he has many, as many names as there are men born to women. His name is Rome. His name is mankind. This is the world we live in, and you’ll find it full of men like this.”

Hamilcar released the man’s head and placed his hands on his son’s shoulders. He pulled him close and let the boy rest his forehead against his cheek. Hannibal did this willingly, for he did not want to look at the man about whom they spoke. “Son,” he said, “there was a noose around our neck and to cut it I had to kill many men most horribly. You are a child, but the world you were born into is no kind place. This is why I teach you now that creation is full of wolves aligned against us. To live in it without falling into madness, you must make of yourself more than a single man. You love with all your heart as a father and son and husband. You wrap your arms around your mother and know the goodness of women. You find beauty in the world and cherish it. But never waver from strength. Never run from battle. When the time comes to act, do so, with iron in your hand and your loins and your heart. Unreservedly love those who love you, and protect them without remorse. Will you always do that?”

Against his father’s chest, the boy nodded.

“Then I am proud to call you my firstborn son,” Hamilcar said. He pulled away and stood up straight and yanked a dagger from the sheath on his ankle and pressed the handle into his son’s hand. “Now kill this man.”

Hannibal stared at the blade in his small hand, a dagger nearly as large as the toy swords he practiced with. He closed his fingers around the handle slowly, felt the worn leather, the rough weave of it and the solidity of the iron beneath it. He raised his eyes and moved toward the man and did as his fathered ordered. He did not lift the man’s head, but he slipped the blade under his chin and cut a ragged, sloppy line that yanked free of his flesh just under the ear. He fell against the dead man’s body for a moment. Though he sprang back, the touch still stained his nightclothes with the man’s newly flowing blood. He was just eight years old that night. Of course he had not forgotten that moment. Nor would he. It would be with him on his deathbed, if the moment of his passing allowed for reflection. (pp. 88-90)

It is in this scene, one-sixth into the novel, that foreshadows so much of what transpires later. Hannibal the character becomes a well-rounded individual who flashes both the iron of necessary action and the warmth of a caring and generous heart. He inspires his men through his valor and bravery, even though he sees only out of one eye after one battle. While many of his characteristics seem to indicate that this will be the tragic hero who falls down to Death at the end, Durham chooses not to take that path. Although Hannibal remains at the center of the tale, Durham devotes much time to developing his secondary characters, especially the conflicted and complex relationship between Imco Vaca and Aradna, whose periodic encounters serve to underscore the various tensions that are on display throughout the course of this novel.

When I evaluate a historical novel, I first want to see if the invented characters blend in well with the historical main characters. In Pride of Carthage, they do for the most part. Then I want to examine the writing and see if it feels “alive,” that it is more than just a dry retelling of the past without anything really contributed in the way of an actual story. As indicated from the lengthy excerpt above, I believe that Durham’s writing suits the story very well, with the humanness of the characters on full display. Some readers might complain that the narrative approach is a bit “too distant” for them. Perhaps they’d rather have more dialogue or intense action than the panoptic third-person PoVs that Durham employs to tell his story. For me, the narrative voice works here because with the scope of the action and the amount of time that Hannibal’s story has to cover (the first 43 years of his life), I cannot think of a more appropriate narrative voice that would have managed to accomplish as much within a single 568 page novel.

However, there are a few cases in which a bit more time devoted to dialogue could have made the ending even stronger. In particular, the political maneuvering taking place both in Rome and Carthage perhaps could have been shown in more detail. It would have been nice if Scipio Africanus could have had more “talk time” in the buildup to the Battle of Zama. Maybe even more could have been said about the Battles of Lake Trasimene and Cannae. And let us not forget the rather compressed timeline, in which Hannibal’s son still appears as a child at the end rather than the young adult he would have been after being separated from his father for 15 years. But these are quibbles, for the most part. No historical novel can be completely “true” to the recorded events without encountering places where the storyline needs are going to clash with some historical gaps or contradictions. So while the compressed timeline might be annoying for those history buffs who want super-accurate renderings of battles and events, for those who want a good tale set in a particular historical mileu, Pride of Carthage is an enjoyable and rewarding novel. It certainly was one of the better historical novels that I have read in the past ten years and I would highly recommend it to others who enjoy reading historical novels or for those who like intriguing and dynamic characters.

Publication Date: January 18, 2005 (US), Hardcover; January 3, 2006 (US), Tradeback.

Publisher: Doubleday

Best of 2007: The Next Ten

For those who may have wondered why Book X or Y failed to make my Top 12 Countdown list, I decided that I would post a list of ten others that I considered adding (again, there will be a separate list for short story collections and anthologies in the coming days), but ultimately decided not to for various reasons. Hopefully you'll find these works to be worthy of reading and discussion in the near future.


Elizabeth Bear and Sarah Monette, A Companion to Wolves.

While this was one of the few animal companion stories that I have read and enjoyed (the few others that come to mind are too treacly for my tastes), not to mention the authors have constructed a multilayered society fraught with political, social, and sexual tensions, I ultimately decided against having this book appear on the Countdown for a very simple reason: I did not want to have multiple novels by the same author appear on the Countdown. Besides, any of these ten could have made the Countdown if I had chosen the list another time.

Tobias Buckell, Ragamuffin.

While I'll say more about this book and its author in an upcoming post on the three authors who made my 2006 Debut Author list, I can say that I believed that Ragamuffin showed necessary plot and characterization growth from 2006's Crystal Rain. I enjoyed this tale and its broadening of the storyline universe, but I decided to exclude it from the list more because I am expecting even more goodness from Buckell in his upcoming third novel, Sly Mongoose. It's just hard for middle volumes in any genre or storytelling form to win the prize (I think Monette's The Mirador was the only middle volume work I had on the Countdown), but like the others on this list, Buckell's work certainly would have been a worthy candidate for the Countdown.

Hal Duncan, Ink.

I loved his first volume of the Book of All Hours duology, Vellum, when I read it back in July 2006. It was full of interesting archetypes and the 3-D concept of time/place was done quite well. So it was with great anticipation that I preordered Ink, eager for its February release. I read it over a couple of days, but ultimately, it felt a bit "flat" to me, as if a string or two had broken in the performance. While far from a "bad" book, Ink for now (as I suspect a re-read might increase my opinion of it) is just merely a "very good" read, thus dropping it off of my personal Top 12 for 2007.

David Anthony Durham, Acacia: The War with the Mein.

Durham is not a new author; he has published three excellent historical novels (Gabriel's Story; Walk Through Darkness; Pride of Carthage) and in this opener to the Acacia trilogy, he brings a lot of the historical fiction tools to this secondary world setting. We see all sorts of links and chains that bind the Acacian ruling family to sordid things such as slavery and the drug trade, things not often talked about or shown in such books. While the more removed third-person limited style was a bit off-putting for those readers who wanted to immerse themselves in every sweaty, dank moment, I think it was an appropriate voice to capture the "historical" feel that I suspect Durham wanted this volume to have, not to mention that it made it possible for this story to be told in one 576 page volume rather than being sprawled out over multiple volumes. This book was one of the very last ones cut from the list (I originally was contemplating a Top 15) and I dropped it more because I am awaiting to see how the characters develop in the following two volumes. I suspect those volumes will be even more rewarding than this one.

Elizabeth Hand, Generation Loss

This was an emotionally draining but powerful story of an aging photographer from the punk scene in the 1970s who has been having some nasty flashbacks from her past. More of a psychological horror novel than anything overtly "speculative" in nature, this was a very well-written and gripping narrative. The only reason it didn't make the Countdown (or even get a full review from me when I read it last month) is that I was left numb at the end - not the dull sensation caused by inferior prose, but rather that it was so overwhelming in places (having worked with and known teens that are going through the same stages that Hand's main character does) that I think it'll take time and a re-read later for me to be able to write a succinct review.

Patrick Rothfuss, The Name of the Wind

Rothfuss certainly knows how to incorporate elements of oral storytelling forms into his story, as I got this sense on occasion that I was being "told" the story rather than just reading it. Kvothe was an intriguing character and there is much promise for the next two volumes in this trilogy for it to become a classic in the years to come. However, there were some rough patches in the characterization and the narrative flow. Not enough to damper the enjoyment much, but just enough for me to leave it off of the Countdown. Rothfuss, however, does have the potential to write a book that might make a future edition of the Countdown.

Brandon Sanderson, Mistborn: The Well of Ascension

Despite having a tepid, lukewarm reaction to Sanderson's debut novel, Elantris, when I read it in January 2006, I found myself enjoying the first two volumes of the Mistborn trilogy when I read them back this summer. The characters weren't as wooden, the action was better-plotted, and the premise of "What would happen in the world if the Dark Side won?" made for an engaging opening volume. While I enjoyed The Well of Ascension almost as much as I did The Final Empire, it suffered a bit from the usual middle volume problems of lacking a defined and separate introduction and conclusion. For that, it gets an honorable mention but no place on my Best of 2007 Countdown.

J.R.R. Tolkien, The Children of Húrin

For those who aren't familiar with Tolkien beyond The Lord of the Rings or The Hobbit, this expanded narrative (pieced together from various drafts by his son Christopher) of a dark, tragic First Age tale might seem unsettling with its "historical" feel and its rather nasty ending. I enjoyed reading this tale a lot in abbreviated form over the past 20 years and I thought Christopher Tolkien did a nice job in constructing a good narrative from all the bits and pieces his father had written over the years. However, this edition was little more than a compilation of drafts that I had mostly read elsewhere over the years, so it's mainly for this reason that I decided not to include The Children of Húrin in the Best of 2007 Countdown.

Daniel Wallace, Mr. Sebastian and the Negro Magician

Although I have not read Wallace's other works (Big Fish being the most famous of those, I believe), I will try to correct that in the coming year as this was an excellent sleight-of-hand telling of a backroads circus performer and his tragic life. There are hints that the "negro magician" might actually have made a deal with the Devil for actual magical powers, but in this shifting narrative told by those who knew him best, the truth becomes buried under layers of artifice until a rather surprising history is revealed. I enjoyed this novel quite a bit and had the privilege of hearing Wallace read from it when he was in Nashville on my birthday back in July. It didn't make the Countdown more because it was hard for me to decide between that and a couple of others and ultimately those other tales stayed in my mind just a tiny bit more than this excellent tale did.

Zoran Živković, Steps Through the Mist

Serbian author Zoran Živković has written some delightfully meditative and interconnected stories over the years, in arrangements that he calls "story suites." In this collection, there are five women who have various interactions with a sometimes-metaphorical, sometimes-very real "mist," each of those encounters occurring at a pivotal point in the stories. These were very well-written, but not as moving as his earlier collection, Seven Touches of Music. For that reason, I decided to leave this work off of my Best of 2007 Countdown, although I certainly would recommend it to most people, especially those who are fans of Živković's earlier work.