Tome of the Undergates

I read this as part of the collected trilogy An Affinity for Steel. I had previously read The City Stained Red, another book featuring these same characters.

This is pure, hardcore epic fantasy, with a fresh feel. The book reads like a bunch of people who hate each other are playing AD&D together, with everyone riffing off a different fantasy character trope. If anything, the hate aspect feels wearisome at times--I wanted to yell at them to stop snapping and sneering at each other--but I didn't find that to detract from the overall book, because Sykes's banter is so very, very good. As are his action scenes. The book largely revolves around two major action sequences, so if you love that kind of thing, you're in for a treat.

I will show more continue to read the next two books in the next while, with short breaks between. show less

A motley assortment of adventurers, led by Lenk, find it difficult to do anything but bicker with each other as they travel the world in search of pay. In fact, there seems to be not an ounce of goodwill between any of them - you'd think when their ship is attacked by pirates, it would mean they'd band together, but the insults just fly worse. As Lenk attempts to round them up and point them all in the same direction - towards the demon that has appeared to threaten their lives and souls - he realises that he is having a very bad day. What follows is a rollercoaster ride as Lenk and his band are sent to take back the Tome of the Undergates from the demons that need it to open the very gates of hell: green-haired fish women, purple show more skinned Amazonians and the manifestation of all evil stand in their way as they try to fulfil their task.

The description above really doesn't do justice to the action-packed story within the pages of Tome of the Undergates. Sam Sykes kicks off the action with an immense sea battle and rarely allows the reader to pause for breath as he sends his characters into almost-certain-death time and time again. He appears to revel in putting the characters through some of the worst imaginable scenarios - madness, mutilation and murder. If you're looking for a a fantasy book filled with political intrigue or farmboys discovering their destiny, this might not be for you. For anyone who enjoys their fantasy daubed in blood and filled with crotch stomping incidents, I would urge you to give this a try.

Read the rest of the review here: http://floor-to-ceiling-books.blogspot.com/2010/03/tome-of-undergates-sam-sykes.... show less

If you read through the reviews for this book, they boil down to two camps - the haters and the lovers. I have to admit, I originally qualified as the former the first time I tried reading this book. The book initially feels like a transcript from a frat boy fantasy RPG, with a vibe that just left me disinterested.

Time passed and the world turned, as they say, and I gave the book another shot. Read it in a week, and will probably try and get a hold of the sequel(s) at some point to boot (there's only one as I write this, but I think Sykes has mentioned that the third volume is already done). The book is a fantasy action lark without any redeeming quality, which is the first clue to the kind of reader that will enjoy this. If you loved show more Abercrombie's First Law books, but wished they had a metric ton more magic, then you'll probably enjoy Tome. The characters aren't really heroes or heroic, and yet by the end you understand what makes them tick (mostly), and why they are the crappy examples of morality that they are.

Cons? "Adventurers" just sounds too much like we're describing a bunch of my fellow geeks on a Saturday night, and really shouldn't be in a self respecting book. Also, the book can be pretty evenly divided into the half where we think everyone's a jerk, and the half where we learn, one by one, what each character's motivating secret is.

Pros - everything else. Don't go looking for a lost ballad and you'll have a blast. Watery tarts, magic fire, purple skinned warriors, elf-like pro-antagonists, demons, gates to hell, the works, all wrapped in a neat, tidy package. show less

(Re-posted from http://theturnedbrain.blogspot.com)

You can’t help but admire an author with the audacity to open a book with an almost 200 page battle scene. No, that wasn’t a typo. The sprawling fight that opens Sam Sykes’ ‘Tome of the Undergates’ is as long as some novellas. It takes a certain kind of chutzpah to ignore the rules like that, and I tip my hate to Mr. Sykes for it.

In fact, I tip my hate twice, because unconventional as the opening was, I enjoyed every second of it. This surprised me, because I have a tendency to skim over fight scenes in books, even when I’m already attached to the characters. But Syke’s prose is crisp and tempered with a unique kind of humour that my interest was held from the get go, even show more though my investment in his characters was zero. I actually really liked the way each character was introduced mid fight. It was a change from how these things are normally done, and watching how each adventurer reacted to life threatening danger provided deep insight into them right from the get go.

Sykes' characters are definitely on the Abercrombie end of the Tolkien/Abercrombie character morality scale. I wouldn’t say unlikable, although plenty of people have, but certainly they have their flaws. It might be because they all claim to hate each other so much that their worst traits keep showing up, or maybe it’s just because they’re adventurers. Still, I found there was something to like in each of them, which stopped all their bad sides from being too much. On the downside I would have liked to see more character growth as the book progressed. They went from hating each other to…. Still hating each other. From being happy to let each other die to… Being happy to let each other die. Plus, man, the self pity! They hate each other, they hate themselves, come on guys! It’s not all bad!

Enough about them, let’s talk plot. The book opens at a hurtling pace and continues on that way. There are no pauses to let the reader no what’s going, you have to figure it out for yourself. Which might bug some people, but I am a fan of working shit out for myself. So, we have a team of adventurers (who rank somewhere below cockroaches in this universe) who are on a ship providing protection to some priestly fellow and his tome. Or should I say Tome with a capital 'T,' because this is one important book. The ship is best by adversaries, the Tome is stolen, and the adventurers must retrieve it against all odds. Now there’s nothing wrong with a simple plot, but I think ‘Tome of the Undergates’ was too simple. Some obstacles or complication to the adventurer’s quest would have been welcome.

Furthermore, while I hugely enjoyed the action filled opening to the book, once that battle ended and the gang set off in search of the Tome my enjoyment began to slip. Sykes handles scenes of high action extremely well, but he seems lost when it came to quieter, more introspective moments. It seemed a bit like the characters were just standing around, waiting for the next fight start. Instead of skimming the battles, I found myself skimming all the stuff between battles, which was certainly a first for me. Overall the book felt like fight scenes linked by filler, like a d-grade action movie.

Honestly, I think if I hadn’t enjoyed the actual style of Sykes’s prose so much I would have given up on this one. There’s a really unique, almost visceral quality to the way he writes, and an almost total lack of clichés. Plus, and I know I mentioned this earlier but I’ll say it again for emphasis, Sam Sykes is wicked funny. Every sentence drips with cynical humour, but the it never comes across as too joke heavy. It’s an overall air of cleverness, instead of joke after joke.

I will give the next book in this series, ‘Black Halo’ a try. I feel like even though ‘Tome of the Undergates’ may have neglected character growth and plot, there is real potential there. And if nothing else I know it will be written with style. show less

Didn't really keep me reading, I was quite willing, several times, to walk away. It's not a terrible read, but I just didn't care about what happened to the characters and didn't really care if they survived or not.

It's a story about a group of mismatched adventurers who are caught up in the hunt for a mysterious tome which is bringing them into contact with some of the powers of the world (one of the characters keeps talking about how there aren't gods, so I'm using powers, cause it's not clear what these folk are). I occasionally got confused about who amongst the extended characters was who.

Also, unless it's a race attribute, hairless legs aren't a gender sign, they're a sign of societal expectations in the 20th and 21st Western show more Society, and while, yes, women warriors who go barelegged may remove hair, it would be more akin to cyclists today who do the same to try to prevent infection. You can't tell gender from bare legs, hair length or whether or not they wore skirts (let me introduce you to some ancient greeks...)

Overall, not terrible, but didn't engage me and while I'm vaguely interested in reading the sequels, I'm not rushing out to check if it's in stock in work, and I'm definitely not hunting for it to buy. show less

Take a group of adventurers, that seem to have never met one another before, across several races, then send them out to retrieve something stolen from you, and you have TOME OF THE UNDERGATES. This is only the first part of the series, as I see there are two more books that follow, and I am sure looking forward to reading more about Lenk and the band of adventurers.

I have seen the name Sam Sykes for awhile now, speaking of his work in the fantasy genre, and now see why he deserves such mention. The skill that he employs in managing not only an interesting story, but the constant interaction among the six-member adventure group. Add to that the background details for each, that grabs your attention, and makes you want more.

This isn't show more your Young Adult fantasy, folks. This is hard-core, but totally SFW. show less

A great read. The first in a new sword and sorcery series, "Tome Of The Undergates" is about a group of adventurers, led by a human named Lenk, who get hired to retrieve a powerful book stolen by demons which holds the power to threaten the planet. A motley crew indeed, our adventurers include four humans, a schict, and a dragon man, none of whom are necessarily admirable but all of whom are deeply flawed.Sykes basically takes two large set pieces -- an opening battle and a closing battle, and connects the dots with a few scenes. The book is told from the POVs of his band of adventurers, whom we only come to know a little over the course of the book. Instead, the focus is on action and grit, both of which Sykes gives us in abundance. show more He's clearly a master of descriptive verbage, and some of that verbage might not work for those easily offended. But it does serve to make his battle scenes more realistic than most and it also makes them more powerful and effective at drawing you into the world he's creating.His world building is strong but he can certainly do a lot more with it and the same can be said for the characters. I would have liked to see the character arcs developed a bit more. We get their backstories in bits and pieces, some not even given until the very end. And while these bits and pieces of world building and characterization are strong, they amount altogether to very little parts of the whole. We still have a lot to learn, but it's a small quibble because Sykes is in this for the long haul. He's already written a sequel, "Black Halo," which comes out in Spring 2011, and I'm sure we'll learn a lot more about these heroes and their world in the further adventures to follow.A strong and entertaining story, Sykes invests his characters with distinct personalities and makes good use of humor. Despite their flaws, we like them, and we root for them, and it's a fun ride to join their journey. If you like adventure fantasy, you'll love this. Recommended. I look forward to more to come from Sykes in the future. show less