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The Boy with the Porcelain Blade by Den…
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The Boy with the Porcelain Blade (edition 2014)

by Den Patrick

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1398195,287 (3.13)3
An ornate yet dark fantasy, with echoes of Mervyn Peake, Robin Hobb and Jon Courtenay Grimwood. An original and beautifully imagined world, populated by unforgettable characters. Lucien de Fontein has grown up different. One of the mysterious and misshapen Orfano who appear around the Kingdom of Landfall, he is a talented fighter yet constantly lonely, tormented by his deformity, and well aware that he is a mere pawn in a political game. Ruled by an insane King and the venomous Majordomo, it is a world where corruption and decay are deeply rooted - but to a degree Lucien never dreams possible when he first discovers the plight of the 'insane' women kept in the haunting Sanatoria. Told in a continuous narrative interspersed with flashbacks we see Lucien grow up under the care of his tutors. We watch him forced through rigorous Testings, and fall in love, set against his yearning to discover where he comes from, and how his fate is tied to that of every one of the deformed Orfano in the Kingdom, and of the eerie Sanatoria itself.… (more)
Member:JulesJones
Title:The Boy with the Porcelain Blade
Authors:Den Patrick
Info:London Gollancz 2014
Collections:Your library
Rating:
Tags:fiction, trade paperback, fantasy, signed

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The Boy with the Porcelain Blade by Den Patrick

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Showing 1-5 of 7 (next | show all)
I was intrigued by this book's cover, title and cover blurb referencing Peake's Gormenghast series. I can see why that has been invoked given this book's setting of a rambling structure in which strange noble families live, presided over by a mad and reclusive king. It doesn't reach the literary heights of Peake's prose or conjure quite such unforgettable characters, but I nevertheless found it enjoyable.

The story follows the development of Lucien, one of the Orfano, mutants who appear at odd intervals seemingly from nowhere, are fostered by one of the noble families and have to survive 'testing' in order to apply for official adoption into one of the families at age 16. Although the rules are a bit unclear - Lucien's testing as a sword fighter goes on till age 18 and imperils his survival, and nothing was revealed of any equivalent for the female Orfano. Lucien's particular difference turns out to be minor compared to some of his compatriots, although it causes him embarrassment and loneliness - he has no external ears. Lucien has enemies among the nobility and one of the Orfano works for his chief adversary so it is difficult for him to trust anyone apart from his nanny and maidservant Rafaela.

Interestingly there is a definite Italian flavour to the names and some of the language and that, together with references to the island on which they all live being named Landfall and the apparent cryogenic sleep from which the passengers had to be awakened centuries earlier when their ships were wrecked there made me wonder if this was science fantasy - perhaps the inhabitants are descendants from colony spaceships. A main plot point certainly concerns the misuse of genetic engineering.

It is sometimes a little hard to keep the time line in mind because the book switches time between chapters, with every other chapter being set in the present and those inbetween showing what has happened throughout his childhood and adolescence to lead up to the current crisis.

The book features some graphic accounts of violence and conjurings of the increasingly revolting physical condition of the Majordomo, the King's mouthpiece, who sometimes appears to be on Lucien's side, though this is a misleading impression. At one point something happened which derailed my enjoyment of the story, but this was then mitigated later on: there are some rollercoaster moments. The only thing that held it back from a full 5 stars was the occasional confusion as to what had happened prior to the present and what Lucien should therefore have already known in the earlier present-time chapters so this is a book that might benefit from a re-reading. I have had to return it to the library; otherwise, it would have been a keeper, which is rare these days. ( )
  kitsune_reader | Nov 23, 2023 |
This is a great exercise in style and atmosphere - as I said while reading, the Gormenghast is strong with this one. For my tastes, though, that leads to too tight a focus. The world is too tightly drawn around its central spire, the characters have too singular and straight a line, and the plot was complicated only by the interweaving of present and past lines of revelation... which also didn't work for me, as I found there were no surprises in the past storyline as it started getting towards the finale, merely confirmations of things that had been referenced already in the present line. It never really dug deeply enough into itself to give a richness of world, of character, or of story. And while I liked Lucien and Dino, I was convinced by neither Lucien's relationship with Rafaela, nor his antagonism with Golia, which left the emotional core of the novel a little hollow for me.

Nevertheless, an unusual and interesting addition to what fantasy's doing these days. ( )
  cupiscent | Aug 3, 2019 |
Now what to call this one? Most of the action takes place in a castle, like 95% of the book (makes me think of Mervyn Peake). There is somewhat of a Gothic Darkness over the whole castles area. A king who no one sees and who seems to be immortal. People going missing and of course the Orfanos. The king has ordered that they should be treated well so they are all in "school". Some of these Orfanos are very deformed while some like Lucien got lucky, he has no ears, but it ends there. They, the nobles, and everyone really have their own intrigues and lots of backstabbing going on here.

The whole fantasy feel is also different. The world is Italian of a sort, but then some names and myths are mentioned. It made me think that a bunch if Italians got on a ship and got ship wrecked on a mythical island. And there they are stuck, for all time and we can't find them. And island of their own horror.

The book is told through flashbacks of his life growing up and the tests he had to take. And present time when he gets into trouble. The end is open in a way, it has a conclusion for him, but I do wonder about what happens next.

I liked it. At first I was not sure about the flashbacks cos I really wanted to know what would happen to Lucien, and not see what happened before. I do hate waiting. Which all meant I could not put it down. ( )
  blodeuedd | Mar 2, 2016 |
This is a dark book, Lucien and his fellow orfano are neither admired nor respected but they are feared by the nobles of Demesne and the peasants of Landfall alike. All that saves them from more than the fear of the nobles is the interest of the king as evidenced by his majordomo. As Lucien attempts to survive the duelling halls of the Fontein clan he finds he has to understand the twisted history of the Demesne if he is to live.

This was a bit of a difficult book to get involved with (it was a Reading Group book) as no characteer is particularly pleasent, even Lucien even if he has a certain niaive charm. Although it is marketed as fantasy, there is little that is traditionally fantasy in the story itself or in the background as described in some of the alternating chapters. The various chapters are set in the 'present' of Lucien's latest testing, the one that gets him exiled from Demesne and precipitates the revolution, whilst the intervening chapters take us through Lucien's timeline from his eighth year - sometimes more confusing than it could be. ( )
  JohnFair | May 25, 2015 |
**I am grateful for Nudge for supplying me with a free copy in exchange for a review. I was reading an uncorrected manuscript proof, so some parts of the review might not be applicable to the published book.**

In the four Houses inhabiting the fortress of Demesne, Lucien de Fontein is the titular boy with the porcelain blade, and, as one of the Orfano, an outcast growing up under the king’s protection; forbidden to wear metal until his eighteenth birthday, he has to make do with a ceramic blade. Commonly branded as witchlings and feared by the people, all Orfano share a deformity of some kind; in Lucien’s case, he is missing his ears, and his blood is colourless, turning to a pale blue. The king’s protection ensures that Lucien is given privileges otherwise only afforded the nobility, but he has few friends, growing up lonely, regularly subjected to taunts. One night he witnesses the abduction of a young woman, and he realises that there is a dark power at play, one that revolves around the figure of the secluded king, rumoured to be insane, and his representative in Demesne, the Majordomo.

Den Patrick’s debut novel is situated in an unknown location, on an island called Landfall. The world he builds is convincing: the forbidding fortress of Demesne and the tower of the sanataria, the cemetery and the fields and estates nearby; it’s just a shame that we don’t see much else of Landfall, as nearly all the action takes place inside Demesne. Where he excels, however, is in creating the characters that inhabit the fortress and the ties that bind them to each other, as well as in depicting the ruthless ambition, plotting, intrigue and manipulation that all the characters, but especially the Orfano, are subject to; saying that, I have to clarify that the love story around Lucien did not convince me, and I regarded it as more of a distraction from the plot. There is a fairly large cast of characters, but the author has helpfully supplied a Who is Who at the beginning, and I did have to refer to it several times, especially in the early chapters. The narration alternates between the present and Lucien’s past, with the narrative thread set in the past slowly catching up to the present day, so that some of the actions and motivations in the present gradually become clearer as more of the past is revealed. This device makes for some tense cliffhangers, but it also makes the whole appear quite disjointed, and occasionally I had to leaf back to previous pages to remind myself of a particular development. Lucien’s confrontations with the Majordomo and the king have a certain nightmarish quality about them and are not for the faint-hearted, but the ending is too tidy in my opinion, with (nearly) everything neatly tied up; with this being the first in the Erebus Sequence, where will the sources of conflict and tension necessary for a good drama come from? Yet it also leaves a few pressing questions and intriguing possibilities open, and I guess we just have to wait and see what Den Patrick will pull out of his hat in the next sequel. I’ll certainly be there. ( )
  passion4reading | Jun 2, 2014 |
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Epigraph
Pain is a great teacher, Lucien.
Professore Virmyre
The kiss is to love as lightning is to thunder.
Popular Landfall proverb
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For Christine,
and for John.
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Lucien di Fontein stood in the antechamber waiting, feeling his pulse quicken and his mouth go dry.
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(Click to show. Warning: May contain spoilers.)
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An ornate yet dark fantasy, with echoes of Mervyn Peake, Robin Hobb and Jon Courtenay Grimwood. An original and beautifully imagined world, populated by unforgettable characters. Lucien de Fontein has grown up different. One of the mysterious and misshapen Orfano who appear around the Kingdom of Landfall, he is a talented fighter yet constantly lonely, tormented by his deformity, and well aware that he is a mere pawn in a political game. Ruled by an insane King and the venomous Majordomo, it is a world where corruption and decay are deeply rooted - but to a degree Lucien never dreams possible when he first discovers the plight of the 'insane' women kept in the haunting Sanatoria. Told in a continuous narrative interspersed with flashbacks we see Lucien grow up under the care of his tutors. We watch him forced through rigorous Testings, and fall in love, set against his yearning to discover where he comes from, and how his fate is tied to that of every one of the deformed Orfano in the Kingdom, and of the eerie Sanatoria itself.

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Lucien, the boy with
The porcelain blade, reveals
Demesne's dark heart.
(passion4reading)

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