Breakin it down
story 9/10
characters 10/10
addictiveness 7/10
readability 7/10
Big total
9/10 ( )

This little book, I felt, sneaks up on you surreptitiously; the story unfolding, eventually, into quite an enjoyable read! The Year of Our War offers, undoubtedly, an unusual and imaginative concept of a modern fantasy – described rather aptly, I saw, by another reviewer as new weird - and, as a debut novel, is all the more impressive and worth the perseverance, perhaps necessary, to reach the end of this first instalment.

Set in the alternate world of The Fourlands, the story is narrated by Jant Shira, a product of Awian and Rhydanne blood, who thus possesses qualities of both these races, but is the only member, of any of the races with wings, actually able to fly. The four provinces, in the name of their God, hold allegiance to, and are ultimately protected by, the Circle: immortals led by an Emperor and his coterie of fifty members – each chosen for their particular talents, and are immortal only in respect to the length of their lifespan and their ability to repel all challengers to their position; and the whim of their Emperor. Jant Shira is the immortal Comet, named Messenger of the Circle, his unique abilities and predilections positioning him well to relate the circumstances surrounding the ubiquitous war: a war the Fourlands has been fighting against a horde of Insects, and devastating their world, for a very long time; plus the inevitable political ‘warring’ between members of both mortal and immortal power bases.

By employing Jant’s perspective, with all the associated flaws and assets, The Year of Our War becomes a clever construct of a fantastical world. It is difficult to decide whether to actually like this character, but it soon becomes certain that, despite this reluctance, the reader develops an intense involvement in his present plight; is possibly appalled while simultaneously enlightened by his past circumstances; and therefore deeply invested in his future, and ultimately the future of this land. And Steph Swainston has added some dazzling notions into the mix – the entry to an alternate world, within an already alternative fabric, and only possible through an illegal drug-addled haze, or actual translocation via a lethal overdose of this drug, is inspired. Amongst this the author has also created some fascinating characters; the narrative and language used to convey colourful and, at times, quite alien concepts, is worthy of note. And there is great ingenuity with the title: the war with the Insects, the war amongst the ranks, and the highly personal war Jant wages, within his addiction, all combine to produce a 'year of our war', indeed!

This is not a pleasant tale; and I have to confess, while intrigued at the beginning, the pacing of the account in the middle was such that I needed to persist for much of this portion, until I was, once again, swept up into a fast and furious tempo. But, on the whole, this book is an entertaining, refreshing change of premise, even with the story-line tantalisingly too concise in places, and disjointed in others – I am still unsure about some characters and their place in the plot! However I was pleasing left, at the end of what is obviously only the first portion of a complex saga, much invested and genuinely interested in the forthcoming chapters of the story – enough to want to read the next book sometime soon.

(Dec 14, 2008) ( )

The Emperor doesn't rule over the Fourlands. He just protects them, while the god is away. Emperor is immortal and rules the Circle, a group of 50 immortals, who serve him to help the people to survive. All humanity is threatened by giant insects, who have been trying to conquer all lands for centuries. This is the setting, where we peek for a while.

The story is told by Jant, the Messenger of the Circle. He has wings like many other people in this world, but he's the only one who can fly. He also has a nasty drug addiction, giving him hallucinogenic visions of a different world.

The insects aren't the only problem: the immortals of the Circle can't always stand each other. I suppose defending humanity in a never-ending war against completely alien enemy takes its toll. There are several interesting plot lines, but not all of them are properly explored.

As it is, this book certainly has flaws. For example, of the 50 immortals less than ten make any kind of significant appearance. I wonder what the rest do? Well, despite the flaws the book has lot to like and even though the whole is somewhat less than the sum of its parts, I do recommend the books for readers who enjoy modern fantasy and like to explore different worlds. It's certainly an interesting world.

The book does end a bit abruptly, but I suppose the sequel (No Present Like Time) picks up where this one leaves the story. Apparently, this is actually a first part of a trilogy... So better prepare to pick up the sequels as well, if you end up liking this one. I know I'm putting the next part on my BookMooch wishlist.

(Original review at my review blog) ( )

This is a difficult book for me to review because, in all honesty, I'm not sure whether I liked it or not. I certainly liked things about it: the setting is complex, imaginative and original, and Swainston lets the details of it unfold smoothly and naturally, with the absolute minimum of intrusive exposition; the central character, Jant Shira, is intriguing, if not exactly likable, and makes for a rather good narrator; the over-arching plot, in which the more-or-less immortal defenders of what - for lack of a better term - we can call 'humanity' squabble and feud amongst themselves even as their world teeters on the brink, is genuinely compelling, and reminded me both of Zelazny's Lord of Light and of his Amber series, and there are some quite lovely passages of prose and sections of dialogue scattered around the book (though, sadly, at times both can be slightly clunky - understandable, of course, in a debut, but frustrating all the same).

I've deliberately tried to be as vague as possible about the details here - other reviews I've read have spelled things out rather more, but I feel much of the appeal of the book lies in the chance to discover these things for yourself as the story unfolds. That said, in the rest of this review I'll be rather less coy about at least the general trend of the plot, so I'd advise anybody who's intrigued by the above and can get their hands on a copy fairly easily to skip what I write below if that makes them nervous. The book's not too long, after all, and the worst that can happen is that you read it and don't enjoy it.

From this point on I'll assume anybody reading this has either read the book or doesn't mind a few hints about the direction in which the story goes - read on at your own risk.

Speaking of 'where the story goes' - well, my main criticism of the book is that it simply doesn't tell any sort of self-contained story - or at least, as an attempt to do so, it falls rather flat. That's perhaps a slightly unfair criticism given that the bulk of the fantasy fiction market at present seems to consist of never-ending 'epics' in which a band of unlikely heroes wander ceaselessly around different areas of the map while the author cashes the cheques (The Year of Our War actually does have a map, though happily it never seemed necessary to me to consult it in order to understand the plot). And to Swainston's credit, the book is rather short, free of any obvious padding, and it would perhaps have been difficult to force any sort of resolution here which didn't seem precisely that - forced. Still, it would certainly be nice if at least one of the plot arcs was properly resolved in this volume; as it is, I was left feeling slightly cheated as the conclusion.

These problems are compounded, I feel, by the problems the book seems to have with pacing. After a quite brilliant frantic start (the first sixty pages or so are certainly the strongest of the book), things seem to settle down nicely into what I assumed would be the major arc of the book. However, the narrative then lurches around a bit with no real sense of direction, and as a result the chance to really develop a single, coherent story seems wasted. Certainly none of the characters other than Jant seem very well developed, and this perhaps would have been different if we'd been able to spend more time on a single group.

Furthermore, despite all my praise for the setting earlier, in the second half of the book especially the world Swainston's presented begins to feel absurdly small. The 'Circle' of immortals is supposed to be fifty-strong, and yet barely half a dozen seem to have any real existence (the rest of them perhaps lurking out of sight while waiting for the sequels). This would be one thing if the focus of the book was simply on those half dozen, yet the events that take place in the second half seem too important for the world itself for the non-appearing Immortals [i]not[/i] to get involved. I feel that, had Jant spent just a little bit more time interacting with these other immortals at the start, their absence from the rest of the book could have been more convincingly dealt with.

Jant's frequent flashbacks, too, make the world seem smaller than it's supposed to be: I was left feeling as though before becoming immortal he spent all his time hanging around the world's one and only city. What's more, I never really got the sense that anything of consequence had [i]happened[/i] between the time of the main plot and the flashback sequences two hundred years ago; there were several things revealed in the second half of the book that I couldn't but feel Jant should have found out earlier, given a couple of centuries to do so. Again, just one or two flashbacks set during this 'missing' two hundred years would have done a lot to allay this feeling, I suspect.

Would I recommend this book to others? Well, perhaps. As a debut it is certainly impressive, and I expect Swainston to grow in confidence and technique rapidly with time (or, rather, I hope she has already done so, as two sequels have already been published). The amount of criticism I've written above might make it seem as though I didn't enjoy the book: that wasn't the case. Rather, I enjoyed it despite often feeling that there was a much better book hidden beneath this one, one that a little bit more crafting and polishing might have revealed.

While it's not a book I'd be likely to present to somebody who was reluctant about attempting any genre book at all - despite it's originality, it retains too many of the more common flaws of the genre for that - it certainly is a book I'd suggest to regular fantasy readers who were looking for something a little bit different. Ultimately, I suspect my view of the book will be coloured by my view of the sequels - and I was certainly left with an interest in reading them (though hardly with an all-consuming desire to do so).

http://nhw.livejournal.com/154782.htm...

My only substantial complaint is that I thought the book was too short for the large number of characters jostling for narrative attention. But various other bits worked really well for me; the narrator with his drug habit, the defenders against an inhuman menace turning on each other, the tension between mortals and immortals in a world where immortality is won by challenge. At first I feared that the habit of yet another unexpected revelation about the back-story every other chapter (characters unexpectedly turning out to be married, that kind of thing) would get tedious but she stopped once we had got the main points established, though this still leaves us wildly surmising about the rest of it.

I wondered why there was something vaguely familiar about the entire set-up, and then I realised that to a certain extent Swainston has based the relations between her characters on what could be observed in any large organisation's office politics - squabbles over the fringe benefits for spouses, who's chasing whose job, and the perpetual struggle for the boss's ear. I would have mild complaints about the names (one minor character is called Leigh Delamere - groan!) which are not really up to George R.R. Martin level, let alone Tolkien, but at least she's not anywhere near as painful as Robert Jordan. On the whole, pretty good stuff. ( )