Nutshell: military dilemma comes to improbable resolution through the intervention of a surly codger who kicks half million kids off lawn.We know we might be in trouble on the first page with the “slanted eyes” of the foe (1). Trouble is confirmed by “the face was flat and cruel, the eyes dark and slanted” (2). Leader of the enemy is identified as “the Khan” (222).This enemy is reportedly “half a million tribesmen” (20), and has “more than twice that in camp followers, cooks, engineers, and whores” (80). Rather than exaggerated, this number may be “underplayed if anything […] outlying tribes were still coming in” (153). The economic system that produced this army is laid out: “the northern steppes make poor farmland. Mainly they breed goats and ponies” (160). The army is nevertheless “the greatest ever assembled, a horde that within twenty years had built an empire stretching across a dozen lands and five score cities […] the largest empire in known history” (194). In the penultimate round of bellicose braggadocio, emperor claims “I have four armies like this” (317).We know from Hans Delbruck, in the History of the Art of War Volume I Warfare in Antiquity, that such army strengths transform the exceedingly improbable into manifest impossibility. Herodotus for instance gives the Persian invasion a strength of 4,200,000, including logistical components; Delbruck notes that a Prussian “corps of 30,000 men covers, in the German march order, some 14 miles, without its supply trains. The march column of the Persians would therefore have been 2,000 miles long, and when the head of the column was arriving before Thermopylae, the end of the column might have just been marching out of Susa” (loc. cit. at 35). In the second volume, The Barbarian Invasions, the professor had cause to consider, more appropriate hereto, the strengths of the Germanic invaders who broke Rome: “Even in the period of the migrations, the Germans were not very numerous, and this is only natural, since their economic conditions had remained the same. From start to finish, the Germans were principally warriors and not farmers. If they had significantly developed economically in the period, they would necessarily also have created cities. But they were still without cities […] they were primarily raisers of livestock and hunters […] Since the production of food can have increased but little, the population, too, cannot have expanded significantly […] the density of population cannot have risen importantly; it still cannot have gone far above 12 souls per square mile” (loc. cit. at 292). His inference is that “we may never exceed 15,000 warriors for any of the migrating tribal armies. A figure of 15,000 warriors, together with women and children, presupposes a total of at least 60,000, and with their slaves around 70,000 souls. Such a mass is already too large to move as a unit” (id. at 293).He concludes: “We have estimated the population of the Roman Empire toward the middle of the third century as 90 million people. […] Is it imaginable that such a large population would be overcome by attacks of barbarian hordes that were no stronger than 5,000 to 15,000 men? I believe that there can be no conclusion of greater importance in world history than that this was really the case. The legendary exaggeration in the army strengths have hidden the realization from us until now” (id.). Locus of confrontation in Gemmell is “the greatest fortress ever built” (195). Impossibility of army strengths notwithstanding, the stage is set therefore for the dialectical confrontation of immovable object and unstoppable force. The substance of the confrontation, even though it is stylistically meritorious western freedom vs. evil eastern horde, a common cold war conceit (Elric fights several undifferentiated eastern hordes, but the classical formulation is Tolkien), is southern civilization vs. northern barbarism. We might simplistically designate the former geopolitical orientation as the Germanic ideology of epic fantasy, whereas the latter is the Romanic ideology. Now that the cold war is over, fantasy is liberated from the Germanic geopolitics of Tolkien and can return to the presentation of a falling or fallen empire, as was important to the Arthurian tradition, the Nibelungenlied, Galfridus Monumentensis--the despair of St. Augustine ultimately. We survey the current field: Abercrombie, Morgan, Bakker, Jordan: the enemy is not the eastern horde, but rather the northern barbarian. Martin has both, maybe neutralizes both, perhaps is sui generis. Gemmell, in this text, is aesthetically Germanic but ideologically Romanic. He combines nostalgia for a dying empire with casual racism. The dying empire must defend against a northern barbarism, which without agriculture has two million soldiers under arms. It is more than impossibility. This text then might be considered a key transitional point in late cold war fantasy. The confrontation cooks slowly for the first two-thirds of the volume, boiling over in the final third for lots of jaw-kicking and spine-ripping. Text is marketed as a classic of military fantasy, but given the impossibilities, above, I can’t give that thesis any credibility whatsoever. Another defect in the “military fantasy” argument: eponymous surly codger’s fame is founded primarily on a Thermopylae event: “There were a few hundred Drenai warriors holding Skeln Pass while the main Drenai army massed elsewhere. […] They were outnumbered fifty to one, and they held on until reinforcements arrived. […] Gorben had an inner army of ten thousand men called the Immortals. They had never been beaten, but Druss beat them” (48).Turning once more to Herr Delbruck, we see that these type of pass defenses are extremely improbable (Morgan has one in the background of The Steel Remains, as I recall it): “carefully conceived strategy does not use mountains in the same way as Leonidas did for the defense of a country. Over a mountain range […] there is always more than one route […] It is hard to occupy all of them, and one can never succeed in defending them all. The enemy will always find a place […] Once the line is penetrated at one place, then the garrisons of all the other passes are endangered” (Warfare in Antiquity at 92). So, yeah, not persuasive. If the text is important (and I think it is), then it is important for its transformational position, the knife’s edge on the Romanic/Germanic orientation: the immovable object of Tolkien’s cold war orientation broken by the unstoppable force of Romanic nostalgia. Marred overall by improbable narrative development, generic setting development, lack of perspective discipline, and a generalized cheesiness.Recommended for those who believe that you son of a slut is a useful pejorative, persons who stand at a frozen moment of history, and readers who feel the strange sense of departure that heralds the baresark rage.
I just reread this for my book club, and came back to check what I had written here after my first read. This was all I had:This book was tremendous, David Gemmell is truly a brilliant fantasy writer.I owe the late David Gemmell an apology for such a half-assed review. While what I said was and still is true, it is a huge understatement considering this is one of my all-time favorite fantasy novels. I will now try to do it better justice this time around.First of all, the entire story, which is fairly grand in scope, takes place in one 400-page book. Think about how impressive that is considering how long-winded some fantasy authors are (Patrick Rothfuss) or how some endlessly serialize their works (Robert Jordan, who didn't even let death get in the way of serializing more of the The Wheel of Time series).The novel takes the trope of the farmboy-turned-chosen-one on its head, by having the titular protagonist, Druss, be an old veteran warrior -- whose back-story is only vaguely hinted at -- knowingly and intentionally marching to his death at the siege on Dros Delnoch. It also has a number of other interesting supporting characters, from Rek the baresark (Gemmell's word for berserker), to a group of mystical warrior monks known as The Thirty, to the lovable rogue Bowman.Equally important, the leader of the invading Nadir army, Ulric, is not a stereotypical, stock villain. More than once it is mentioned that he is only doing what the protagonists' ancestors did hundreds of years before, when they created the Drenai empire. Ulric also has his own sense of honor, and in one scene near the end, he laments how (view spoiler)[by his champion using a poisoned blade to kill Druss (hide spoiler)]
What do You think about Legend (1994)?
3.5 starsIt is unfortunate in many ways that fantasy is such a popularised genre right now. I think that there is a lot of potential for literary critics or for authors to look at fantasy in a literary way rather than producing books which are generic. Fun, but generic. This is what I see Legend as, a novel which is fast to read and plenty of fun but lacks the depth of some other novels. Yet it must be praised as one of the greats of fantasy for what it introduced in its old and fallen hero returning again to face the day.Just because something is fun or popular doesn't mean it can't have some deeper idea behind it. I refer to Jurassic Park for instance as a book which is entertaining and yet has the idea about how man should not play at being God. Admittedly this idea is done better in Frankenstein, much as the dystopian elements of The Hunger Games (media control, rebellion, lies and deceit) are done better in 1984. However I think since we still don't learn from those books we keep needing new reiterations on those subject matters. I think that modern fantasy should learn from this to reflect upon similar subjects that humans need reminding about.Legend follows a war, showing how characters adapt and develop according to difficult circumstances and reflects on how one man, a 'legendary' figure, can inspire others. All interesting enough however it was done better in previous books and mythology. I recognise that this might sound like I'm doublethinking about fantasy since The Lord of the Rings has ideas done well in previous myth. My argument would be that Tolkien's work is a unique mixture of ideas and far grander than this book which appears written for entertainment only. I think Legend could have been far more. A look at how legends are made and a deeper look at character's psyches. And in many ways it was this.Yet at the same time the novel relied upon (and added to) the fantasy clichés of the heroic fantasy novel. The romance was one of the weakest wish fulfilment romances I've read in fantasy. And I have read plenty of weak romances in fantasy. And yet, still it features as one of the 1001 novels to read before you die. Perhaps it is because this is a tale which outlives its narrative, much as its main character outlives his own physical body.
—Jonathan
The review contains some spoilers.It's finally over. I thought I'd never finish it...I started this book with high expectations because of the many four and five star reviews, but it disappointed me from the first pages. Although there were parts I enjoyed, I didn't really like most of it and I kept reading trying to finish it.I think that Legend has a lot of problems.First of all, I didn't like the writing style. It's really flat and abrupt, the dialogues are awkward and there were many times that I found what the characters said pointless and stupid. Then, we have the characters. I didn't really care for any of them. The book is a big battle so many die, but I couldn't bring myself to care. The storyline was another issue. Sometimes, I feel that many male fantasy writers have a problem with writing about relationships. Falling for someone from the very first moment you see him isn't believable. Declaring that someone is your true love on the very fisrt day is stupid in my opinion. Especially, after you thought that he is a coward and you felt a strong dislike.Gemell also has a problem with character development. He wasn't consistent with his charachers. For example, we learn early on that Rek is a big coward and he only cares for his well-being. Later on, the character changes totally and becomes a true hero. Finally, the ending was really surprising. The Nadir was on the point of winning and then Urlich retreats. Really????? You couldn't spare one more day, or even half a day, to take a castle for which so many men had died? You had to leave that instant? Then, the writer goes and resurrects Rek's wife and everyone lives hapilly ever after. What a load of crap....Two stars because there were few parts I enjoyed, although I can't remember them now...
—Xara Niouraki
I never read any David Gemmell until I was already published. And even then, he first came to my attention after someone e-mailed me, saying something along the lines of, "I'm glad someone like you is here to carry on Gemmell's tradition now that he's dead..." After I got a few more e-mails along a similar line, I went out and bought Legend, read it, and was terribly flattered by the comparison. Since then, I've actually won the Gemmell award. Which is flattering in its own right. Plus awesome, because the award is an actual AXE. Here's a link to the blog I wrote about it, with pictures. http://blog.patrickrothfuss.com/2012/...Anyway, I just re-read this, and I enjoyed it every bit as much the second time around. It's much more action oriented than my books.... So... yeah. Highly recommended. Especially if you like stories about what it means to be a hero.
—Patrick
