“The Year Of Our War” is the debut fantasy novel by British author Steph Swainston. It is a highly impressive book, even ignoring the fact that this is her first novel. It is highly original, entertainingly plotted and very well written. It is set in “The Fourlands”, a setting which is unusual mix of medieval society with some early-20th Century trappings such as semi-industrialised cities and tabloid newspapers. The population is divided into two categories, the immortal Eszai and the mortal Zescai. The Eszai consist of the fifty members of the “Castle Circle” (and their spouses) who are chosen for immortality because they are the best at a particular task – best archer, best warrior, best blacksmith, best sailor and so on. As long as a more-talented mortal doesn’t come along and successfully challenge them the Eszai can live forever, guiding and protecting the mortals. They are all ruled over by the immortal Emperor, San, who controls the circle and claims to be the oldest man alive.The title of the book might imply that the Fourlands are fighting a year-long war. This is a bit misleading since the empire has been at war for millennia, fighting against an alien race they call “Insects”. The Insects are roughly man-sized, possibly sentient and extremely vicious, attacking everything that moves and covering the land in walls and buildings made of a strange pulpy material the Fourlanders call ‘paper’. Two millennia ago they suddenly appeared on the continent in a small enclosure, they quickly spread over a large part of the continent, turning it into their ‘Paperlands’ before the newly-formed Castle Circle managed to stem the tide. Since then the struggle has been ongoing. The book starts with an attempt by Dunlin Rachiswater, a mortal King of one of the Fourlands, to advance into insect territory and hopefully drive them back. The attempt goes horribly wrong, the King is mortally wounded and the Insects start spreading out into new territory, killing as they go. The Insects are appearing in greater number than ever before, and they threaten to overwhelm the Fourlands. At a time when unity is required, Dunlin’s heir cowers behind his castle walls with his army while the Eszai squabble amongst themselves. The main character of the book is Comet, the Messenger of the Circle and the only immortal able to fly, due to his unusual ancestry. After a harsh upbringing in the gangs of Hacilith, the Fourlands’ largest city, he gained immortality by challenging the previous Messenger. Now he finds himself charged with discovering where the Insects are coming from, while at the same time mediating between feuding immortals. His other problem is an addiction to the drug ‘Cat’ which allows him to ‘shift’ realities into the world of Epsilon, a world he can’t prove exists. Epsilon is a surreal place, seemingly largely populated by puns (inhabitants include Fibre Tooth Tigers, Laardvarks, Impossums, Whorses and Problemmings – lighter than air rodents that throw themselves off cliffs and float into the air), dominated by the vicious Tines and fighting its own war against Insects. The conflict between the immortals is caused by a dispute between Mist, the Circle’s Sailor, and his wife Ata, who hates her husband and believes she should take on the title of ‘Sailor’. Their marital dispute threatens to turn into a martial one after Ata raises an army (and navy) to fight against her husband. Lightning, the Circle’s Archer and Comet’s best friend, allies himself with Ata having long resented Mist being the ruler of land that used to be in Lightning’s family. Comet has to try and reign in Lightning and Ata and get them to fight the Insects instead, while simultaneously providing unwilling assistance in Lightning’s wooing of Swallow Awnydyn. Swallow is a mortal governor of a small town and probably the best musician in the history of the Fourlands. However, after the Emperor decrees that only skills useful to the war qualify someone to become an immortal she embarks on an ill-advised military expedition to try and lift the Insect’s siege of Lowespass fortress, with Lightning and Comet providing unwilling support. As you can probably see, the plot and setting are extremely original – apart from some similarities between the Insects and the Locusts in M.John Harrison’s “A Storm Of Wings” there is nothing else even remotely like this book. It is fascinatingly strange, while still being comprehensible. The land may be very different but the characters are easy to relate to, just trying to go about normal-ish lives in very abnormal circumstances. The main character, Comet, is particularly charismatic despite his serious failings, and his witty commentary on just about everything is one of the novel’s highlights. The writing is superb, sometimes surreal, sometimes ominous, sometimes highly amusing. Each chapter seems to have at least one brilliantly-constructed, highly quotable sentence or phrase – usually provided by Comet. Probably the only criticism that can be made of this book is that the plot does seem a bit aimless at times. A lot of the time the book gets distracted from the war against the Insects, and even the looming civil war between the immortals. While Comet’s reminiscing over past events and his escapades in Epsilon are highly entertaining, they sometimes seem to have little relevance to the main plot. Also, the ending is rushed and the book end far too abruptly. Swainston builds up a fascinating plot, and then ties everything up neatly in a handful of chapters which is slightly unsatisfying. This is an excellent book, and particularly impressive considering that it is a debut novel.
Boy, does Steph Swainston's first book come with a lot of hype. The quotes on the cover and back of the US edition include such cutting-edge authors as Richard Morgan and China Miéville himself. After reading these glowing quotes and finishing this book, I have a theory about cover quotes: writers give them only to authors that don't threaten their supremacy.I read the book based on a short but positive recommendation from Emerald City, having otherwise been totally oblivious to any kind of literary hype (China will do that to you!) That being said, I did expect some tasty weirdness and interesting world-building, which is the staple of so-called Weird Fiction. In both these regards, however, The Year of Our War is weak.The setting is not the most intriguing, but it does have promise: Jant, the protagonist, is a cross-breed of two races, which gives him the unique ability to fly. This has made him attractive to the Emperor, who grants immortality to 50 individuals who are the best at their given task. Since Jant is the only one who can fly, he is the Emperor's Messenger. Other members of this Circle of immortals include Lightning, the Fourlands' best archer for 1,500 years, and Mist, the Emperor's sailor.A twist to this setting is the Insects, man-sized creatures slowly overtaking the Fourlands and converting them to Paperlands, named such for the hard, paper-like substance the Insects use for construction. The Insects are a nice twist on the traditional Fantasy enemy: they're mindless, incomprehensible, and totally ruthless. In a Fantasy setting, they provide a suitably unsettling Starship Troopers quality to the conflict, which you usually don't find with your run-of-the-mill gloating bad guy who wants to overtake the Heroes for his own Evil reasons.Ah, but there's more: see, Jant is also a drug addict, whose heroine-like substance addiction sometimes takes him to an alternate reality he calls the Shift, which is also infested by Insects. The Shift is actually richer in details and more fantastic, filled with man-turtles, women made of worms, and other weird characters.Whew. Sounds overpacked with crazy details, doesn't it? Well, not really. Truth be told, all of the concepts in The Year of Our War sound awesome on paper, but they're only half-realized. Most of the novel is spent with very soap opera-esque characters fighting amongst themselves; you get women rebelling against their abusive husbands, secret love children, drug fiend self-loathing, and a lot of other things that are not that interesting, really. The secondary characters are sketched at best, and lack a certain quality to really make them stand out. For instance, we are told, rather than shown, that the King is a just and mighty King, and that the Emperor is wise and fearsome. When it came to actually showing them in action, they didn't truly stand out. The most annoying is definitely Mist Shearwater, who spouts modern-day truisms in two words, such as "Curiosity. Cat." or "Bitten. Shy." It's annoying the first time, and overwhelmingly irritating after sixty.This lack of depth is unfortunately also the case for events in the story; you just feel it would have been more interesting if written by a better author. The biggest victim here is the Shift, which sounds on paper like it is meant to be a violent and visceral version of The Wonderful Wizard of Oz. You get turtle-men, leopards with square spots, horse-men wearing invisible clothes, and "problemmings" who jump from cliffs and fly in the air. Unfortunately, the lack of scope of these ideas means they're just there to decorate the plot and don't bring much atmosphere.Overall, if you get past the soap opera and the sometimes awkwardly modern language, there are some cool ideas in The Year of Our War. It's not a bad book; it just doesn't stand out all that much. And when it's placed next to contemporaries such as Perdido Street Station, it only suffers from the comparison. Still, it's Steph Swainston's first novel, so there's hope for a bright future.
What do You think about The Year Of Our War (2005)?
2 StarsI tried to enjoy this highly imaginative fantasy by Step Swainston, but it never got a hold of me. The setting is awesome and the landscape and world building are all top notch. The war with the insects could have been amazing but only was just ok for me. The characters are colorful and a plenty but unfortunately I never identified with or even cared about the main protagonist. Honestly, I decided not to finish this book as I lost my interest in it. Maybe I will come back to this book and this series another day...for now I pass.
—Jason
In the distant past, god created the Fourlands, and then left the immortal emperor San in charge while it journeyed elsewhere. Two thousand years before the story opens, the world was invaded by the Insects, pony-sized ants (basically) which devour everything in their path and cover conquered territory with giant papery nests. In turn, San created the Circle, 50 individuals granted immortality for each being the best of the best at their specialty (thus we have the Sailor, the Archer, the Messenger, etc). At any point, these immortals can be challenged by other aspirants, with the winner maintaining or usurping the role in question. Our (anti-)hero here is Jant, the Messenger, a drug-addled half-breed - did I mention that the people of the Fourlands are divided up into human, super-skinny super-fast Rhydanne, and (ugh) Awians, with vestigial wings? Jant, as the only known offspring of the latter two, can fly, unlike everyone else, hence his appointment as the Messenger.Now, I do really like the setup of the world/overarching narrative here, but the book itself never really lives up to the promise. What’s interesting here is the idea of the vacationing god and exactly who San is and what he’s up to (particularly regarding the seemingly endless/inertia-less war against the Insects, who are themselves a nice literalization of the generic faceless/individual-less fantasy “enemy horde”) but what we get a narrative about instead is the politicking and dramatics of the Circle. Even this is interesting at times - particularly regarding the Archer’s endless nostalgia and the Sailor’s refusal to adapt to or even allow for the possibility of innovations - and yet it has a tendency to devolve into melodrama at times.The prose is good, but not great, and some of the modern affectations feel shoehorned in - Swainston can’t seem to decide if this should be pared-down noirish language or more poetic languorous stuff. The worst is Swainston’s decision to make the Sailor pepper his dialogue with adages boiled down to two words (as in “Curiosity. Cat.” or “Drop. Ocean.” or “Pot. Kettle.”) which is obnoxious enough on its own, but also feels entirely out of place as a kind of hyper-ironic affectation coming from such a salty grump of a character.So: a book that never really delivers on its promise, but a promising enough debut that I’ll probably pick up Swainston’s other work when I come across it.
—Zach
When you start to read this book, it's like someone spun you around and placed you in an unknown location, amongst a bunch of strangers. There are different species, but you don't know what they are or the differences between them, everyone seems to have several different names or titles, and you don't know what they mean or who is who...and so on and so forth.This disorienting beginning, is a detterent from forging on. You do get a lot of answers in the end, but some things are left unexplained. I don't know if the purpose of this approach was to intend people to keep reading onward to figure out what was happening...whatever it was, it was a different approach, and by different I don't mean better.The lead character, I found hard to relate to....at his best, he was egotistical and a bit of a gossip. At his worst he's a philandering, selfish, junkie. His addiction serves some purpose in the storyline, and is the means by which he (accidentally) destroys the world, and saves the world. Some of his other less likeable quirks could be explained from the fact that he is a mix of two races (or species I suppose?) but the battle between his inclinations isn't always clearly stated, so sometimes he is definitely the anti-hero. Well, he's always the anti-hero, but sometimes he sinks lower then other times.There are some very funny lines, and some wise introspection, but the vague aspects of this book, kept it from clicking into place for me.
—Jennifer
