Mary Gentle

This is an all-time favourite of mine; I acquired the paperback when it first came out and read it every so often. (I love playing spot the movie reference - not that I'm much good at it because I've never been much into movies, especially war movies.) . It probably has the most politically incorrect one-liner in a fantasy novel ever, but hey, what do you expect - they're orcs! Of course they're going to be politically incorrect!

Stealing a dragon's hoard is never a good idea, especially as show more dragons have a nasty habit of putting curses on their hoards, doubly so if they're killed in the course of that theft. However, order is orders and you don't disobey The Nameless Necromancer (in service of The Dark Lord) before the final battle in the conflict between The Light (a nasty bunch of self-righteous racist jerks) and The Dark (a disparate bunch of much-misunderstood races whose only desire is to be left alone so they can get on with what they do best).

It turns out that said dragon is a collector of militaria from other dimensions; not modern up-to-date stuff, but collectible items. What the orcs raid is the Earth collection, circa Viet Nam War era... The curse is to become what they stole - so the orcs become orc marines and in the process more or less respectable citizens (if you're prepared to overlook certain unpleasant habits).

As gross as Bored of the Rings, but to my mind far funnier.

Recommended. show less

When I first read 'Grunts', nearly twenty-five years ago, it was a delightful surprise. I'd never read anything that had such a deep understanding of the sword and sorcery novels that I loved and yet was able to see their limitations and pretensions clearly and gleefully vivisect them scalpel-sharp humour. It was one of those books that I pestered everyone to read.

I was already a fan of Mary Gentle. Her books 'Golden Witchbreed' and 'Ancient Light' had me in fan-boy heaven - real show more characters, difficult issues, anti-colonial politics and a Jacobean level of death and destruction. What I hadn't expected from her was effective comedy.

The humour in 'Grunts' is a joy. It tells the story from the point of view of a bunch of Orcs - yeah, the cannon-fodder of The Dark, the creatures that someone like Gandalf slaughters by the thousand without a qualm. Vicious. Aggressive. Canabilistic. Mary Gentle takes these guys and has them fall under a spell that, without making them any nicer, gifts them with the weaponry and fight ethos of the US Marine Corps. Suddenly, they're an effective fighting force with an agenda of their own that doesn't include dying at the hands of The Light because The Dark have no strategy.

'Grunts' is a stiletto to the ribs of all those 'The Last Battle Between the Light and the Dark' trilogies that went on for thousands of pages without humour and without once wondering what made The Light something special rather than just another bunch of fanatical warmongers trashing the homes of the poor. It presents the eternal struggle between The Light and The Dark as pointless destruction and instead of seeing only glory and courage, focuses on the blood and the fear.

I had a good time re-reading 'Grunts'. It was fun in an X-rated Terry Pratchett kind of way. I started to feel some sympathy for the Orcs and hoped that they'd rise up against both leaders of The Light and The Dark. I particularly enjoyed that the 'Grunts' analogue of Hobbits were treacherous, murderous, thieves and pimps.

Unfortunately, this time around, I found the book too long. I gave up after 250 pages. I didn't have the stamina for the rest.

I still recommend 'Grunts'. It is a unique read. show less

Set in the same world as Ash, some time before the events of that mighty tome. Where Ash looks at (among many other things!) the varied roles of women in the medieval European military, Ilario looks at varied non-gender binary roles. The title character is intersex (calling himself/herself 'hermaphrodite' and using pronouns according to however he/she is currently presenting in societies that are all too binary); he falls in with a eunuch, whose sister is trans and whose cousin is the show more ceremonial-beard-wearing Pharoah Queen; and they meet up with a lost Chinese ship with yet another perspective of the role of eunuchs in society.

There's a parallel theme of slavery vs freedom; and there's also a whole lot about the development of perspective in Western art. The plot meanwhile centres around Ilario being the unwitting centre of a political scandal that looks likely to end up either with her being murdered or with his home country being invaded by Carthage. The Penitence that was so important in Ash plays its own role here; we also encounter a golem, and a goat-footed girl who I was sorry we never came back to (though she may not be): Ilario's jerkhood towards her was related to how he perceives himself and I was expecting there to be some resolution of that. show less

This was a reread, although to be honest I remembered little of my original read back in the early 1990s. It’s not typical of her oeuvre as it’s a comic fantasy, although some of her short stories, particularly those written for the Midnight Rose anthologies, are similar. Back in the 1980s and 1990s, there was no comic fantasy market for writers in the UK, there was only a Terry Pratchett market. Having said that, Grunts! is not a novel Pratchett would have written.

A group of orcs show more discover a dragon’s hoard of weapons beneath a mountain. The dragon is dead, and the weapons appear to come from many different worlds, including our own. The hoard is cursed, however: whoever uses the weapons becomes like those from whom the weapons were stolen. In this case, the orcs arm themselves with guns and equipment used by the US Marines, and so slowly become US Marines.

The forces of Dark lose the final battle - despite the orcs with assault rifles - but the ors are keen to show their continuing usefulness. So they go into the arms business. With the help of a halfling duchess of questionable morals, they manufacture and sell advanced weaponry to all the other nations. Then the Dark Lord returns from his defeat, but decides this time he can’t be bothered with a long war and a final battle Instead, he wants an election. Meanwhile, a horde of space Bugs, a cross between giant biomechanical scorpions and the xenomorphs from the Alien franchise, have invaded…

Gentle pastiches pretty much every fantasy trope going, and every movie that features US Marines (and lots more besides). A lot of the fun in reading Grunts! is spotting the references. I’d definitely forgotten how bad some of the jokes were. For example:

“And now,” the small orc cried, “a song I’ve dedicated to Quartermaster Zaruk. He tells me he’s been getting lots of requests from you orcs for those camouflage cloth squares you can roll up and tie around your head. Unfortunately there aren’t any left in the stores”… “Yes, we have no bandannas…”

A lot of the orc characters are pastiches of stock characters from war films. There’s a covert operations undead orc squad, a mad genius inventor orc, and a squad og butch female orc Marines. The fantasy characters, on the other hand… they’re jokes, but they don’t come across as send-ups of stock fantasy characters.

Grunts! is a fun read - except for some of those jokes - more visceral than is usual for high fantasy (but that’s a Gentle thing), and despite being a comic fantasy filled with really bad jokes makes a number of serious points. Not Gentle’s best book by a long shot, and readers looking for something like Pratchett might be a little disappointed. But still a fun read. show less