Published in 1985 The King Beyond The Gate is the second book by Gemmell, after Legend. While the book is set in the same world it’s not a direct sequel. Many years have passed and all the previous characters are long since dead. My first impression was that this decision to set the novel so far into the future helped to give the book more of an epic feel. It was a tale that spanned generations. I also felt that Gemmells writing had improved.The plot is like Legend, as are the characters. As with Gemmell’s previous book one of the main themes in The King Beyond The Gate is how the main protagonists manage to survive. Especially as they are all past their physical prime. They are each haunted by their past. Gemmell does a fine job in familiarising the reader with the details of their own internal conflicts, hopes and fears.Being a Gemmell book you get the obligatory gore and blood. He is one of the best authors I’ve read for writing heroic combat and battle scenes. And of course these are always against overwhelming odds. He also weaves in misfortune, heartbreak, friendship, love and sorcery too.Mentioning sorcery, one of my minor criticisms with The King Beyond The Gate is that it uses magic more than other instalments in the series. I would have also preferred to hear about how the Dragon had fallen and Ceska rose to power at the start of the book too. As this doesn't happen, at the start of the book we get the main characters bumping into one another by chance. I felt at this point the plotting could have been somewhat tighter.So in summary, I’d recommend The King Beyond The Gate if you love exciting action driven fantasy novels. Perhaps not my favourite Gemmell book but The King Beyond The Gate does what is says on the tin: it doesn’t try to be any more than enjoyable entertainment.QuotesAs with all Gemmell books, I love to pick out the quotes which resonated with me. Here are the ones I highlighted when reading The King Beyond The Gate:- Too many people go through life without pausing to enjoy what they have. /Ch. 2- Nothing in life is sure, my son. Except the promise of death. /Ch. 4- Evil lives in a pit. If you want to fight it, you must climb down into the slime to do so. White cloaks show the dirt more thank black, and silver tarnishes. /Ch. 10- All things in the world are created for man, yet all have two purposes. The waters run that we might drink of them, but they are also symbols of the futility of man. They reflect our lives in rushing beauty, birthed in the purity of the mountains. As babes they babble and run, gushing and growing as they mature into strong young rivers. Then they widen and slow until at least they meander, like old men, to join with the sea. /Ch. 12- "Foolish: It's all foolish. Life is a farce— a stupid, sickening farce played out by fools." /Ch. 16- "I had a teacher ... He said there were three kinds of people in life: winners, losers and fighters. Winners made him sick with their arrogance, losers made him sick with their whining, and fighters made him sick with their stupidity." "In which category did he put himself?" "He said he had tried all three and nothing suited him." "Well, at least he tried. That's all a man can do, Lake. And we shall try." / Ch. 19- A man makes mistakes, but he lives by them. Foolish it may be on occasion. But in the main it is the only way to live. We are what we say only so long as our words are iron. /Ch. 19- All things are possible, ... Except the passing of regret. /Ch. 20- Life is sad enough, Magir. Laughter is a thing to be treasured. /Ch. 22
The perpetually-imperiled nation of the Drenai is under attack once more, not by the Nadir hordes of the northern steppes, but by their own government under the tyrant Ceska. Attentive readers of the awesome Legend, which dealt with the First Nadir War, are obviously gonna be confused by Gemmell's almost-immediate mention of the Second Nadir War in between the first and second books. Well, turns out, in the wake of the events in Legend, the Drenai formed a badass ultra-elite regiment called the Dragon and they were instrumental in repelling a second Nadir invasion. One of the dudes in that regiment was a Drenai/Nadir half-blood dude named Tenaka Khan...and now he is the last of the Dragon to stand against the newly-risen tyrant Ceska, who now controls the Drenai Nation with a bloody iron fist. Obviously there's a surplus of ass to get kicked, and Tenaka seems to be the only one to do it. Overall this story is a little bigger than the siege of Dros Delnoch from the first book but it's hardly sweeping (thank the Old Gods and the New...I just finished Christian Cameron's The Fell Sword and it was a bit of a strain (although a sublime one, and I will hopefully get to reviewing it soon. In the meantime, start reading those books motherfuckers.)Gemmell was not about (and I don't think really cared about) extensive and detailed complex worldbuilding or unique, complex plots but the stories have been consistently and thoroughly fun so far. The pretty-low magic content comes from the humorously Force-like "Source" which even has its own Jedi-type superpowered knights called the Thirty with their own dark, chaotic counterparts to combat and stuff like that. There's also some dark machine-made man-beast monstrous hybrids named Joinings...but that's about it. The basic idea is good shit. It skips the detailed politicking, traveling and worldbuilding and magic systems of the usual fantasy and just goes right to the moments where nations are just gonna fucking duke it out, with guaranteed constant badassery and well-crafted set pieces. It's not deep stuff by any means, it's just good. It's like restaurants. You (probably) try new places, but sometimes you just wanna go a place where you know what you're gonna get and that it's gonna be good shit.Gemmell's pretty good with characters...I mean, you're not gonna find a startlingly realistic and deep human being in these pages but the man did come up with Druss the fucking Legend, so you have to give him some credit. He's just good at coming up with tortured yet heroic badasses, and there's a ton in this book; Tenaka Khan, unerringly deadly swordsman and outcast from two warring nations; Ananais the Golden, a once-handsome leader of men who was horribly disfigured and still maintains minimum-level Gemmell badassery content by wearing a creepy mask; Decado the Ice Killer, an unstoppable force of death who has given up the sword in exchange for peaceful living with the Thirty; and Rayvan, the brave rebel general and leader of imperiled refugees who worries deeply for her soldier sons. They have passionate yet unrealistic doomed love stories, angst over skeletons in their closets and hero it the fuck up with abandon, slaying hordes of enemies in desperate battles every chance they get. One or two might buy the farm over the course of the story, but you know it's gonna be in an utterly badass and heroic way, so it's all good. It's not like some dark "gonna swallow a bottle of pills because I just finished (view spoiler)[A Storm of Swords (hide spoiler)]
What do You think about The King Beyond The Gate (1986)?
QUATTRO STELLINE SCARSELeggendo questo volume ho avuto la duplice e contrastante sensazione che fosse un po' lento e contemporaneamente fosse tirato via troppo sbrigativamente.Innanzitutto Gemmell non è decisamente portato per le storie d'amore, se devono essere così se ne fa ben volentieri a meno.Ho apprezzato Tenaka come personaggio, e così i suoi compagni Decado e Ananais. Ma le vicende mi sono sembrate forzate, non saprei spiegarmi, ma le motivazioni addotte e le soluzioni raggiunte mi sono sembrate inconsistenti.Come al solito il mio proverbiale cattivo rapporto con gli autoconclusivi fa sì che io abbia questa impressione, perché non si ha più di tanto spazio per tessere trame e approfondire intenti, in confronto a una saga che si snoda in più volumi.Però...però. Non è solo questo.C'è qualcosa che non mi ha affatto convinto qui, che non mi ha preso.Una piacevole lettura, ma certo non uno di quei libri che ti tiene attaccato alle pagine e di cui ti rimane sempre un qualcosa dentro.
—Grianne
I remember enjoying this book a lot when I was younger but my recent re-read found it slightly lacking compared to Legend, which I re-read a few weeks ago. My main problem is Gemmell's brevity and lack of description, which caused me to lose track of several of the multitude of characters presented in the book. Tenaka Khan, Ananais, Rayvan, and Decado all seemed distinct, but to be honest I found a lot of the other heroes such as Rayvan's sons, the various members of the Thirty, and others to be lacking in defining characteristics, so I quickly lost track of who was who. The book found its stride more when the fighting really starts, and I was pretty engaged in the last quarter of the book, but overall I found it underwhelming, especially compared to Legend.
—James Plunket
"The King Beyond the Gate" is the sequel novel to Gemmell's first book "Legend".The story takes place around 100 years after the events of Legend. The books main focus is the character, Tenaka Khan. In "Legend", 2 main nations had been established, The Drenai, an almost western medieval society, and the Nadir. The Nadir were a bunch of individual tribes based loosely on Mongolian culture, who were united by one man - Ulric Khan. The Drenai were led by Regnak - the 2nd Earl of Bronze.Tenaka Khan
—Tejus
