Antoine Rouaud

Tricksy tricksy writing. It's lucky it's good writing, or the tricksiness of it would be a little too precious. Indeed it wasn't until the second layer of tricks hit, that I was really hooked.

The description makes it pretty clear what this is all about. A young historian in a sword and sorcery type world, hunts down an old man who babbles in his cups about feats of the past, and a magical sword of destiny that he might have once had hold of. Our young historian Viola hopes he is the real thing, not just a wishful old drunk.

And so it begins, with our old drunk Dun-Cadal, relating his story a little incoherently to Viola, and herein lies the first layer of tricksiness. This is a bit beyond the standard flashback sequence, because Dun-Cadal is often unaware if he's speaking or remembering, and sometimes confuses people and events in the present, with memories, giving us our first hints that he may not be the most reliable narrator. Nor is it clear how much of what we're reading, he's actually saying out loud to Viola. The plot frequently drifts between the past and the present from paragraph to paragraph. All of which sounds dreadfully complicated, but it's actually surprisingly easy to follow, once you get the hang of it.

And then we get to part II. Here we get a Rashômon style alternate point of view as simultaneously with the present day plot moving along at a quick pace, another character remembers his version of many of the same events Dun-Cadal has already told. Not only is there a different perspective, but there's a hint this narrator is no more reliable than the first - and the main person he's trying to fool is himself.

The plot itself, is the usual political intrigue, old warhorses and young firebrands, revenge and betrayal, honour and oaths.

I expect the writing style will not be to everyone's taste, , I wasn't sure it was for me until I was quite a ways in. But for me it worked neither despite nor because of the tricks, fun as they are, but ultimately because the characters are fantastic.

And now I have to wait for the second book to go and get translated.… (mais)

Interesting fantasy by a non-English speaking author. Not the best I've read, but certainly not the worst. The author's "world" is somewhat strange--a mixture of medieval France [primarily Provence] and that of the French Revolution. The story describes the fall of the Empire [ancien regime?] and the rise of the Republic [French Revolution?]. It's mainly a revenge story of a young knight, Frog, seeking to avenge his father's death and with an old has-been alcoholic general of the Empire, Dun-Cadal, trying to stop Etienne Azdeki, a Robespierre figure who wishes to overthrow the Republic and to vest all power in himself. The story involves a sword--a symbol of the Empire, and an indestructible scripture in which is written the destiny of mankind. As a fighting tool there was the animus, which I took as a kind of mind control of movement of objects, on its simplest level, to death, on its deepest.

Some of the juxtapositions of time periods were strange: e.g., councilors and statesmen wearing togas. The choices of names of characters made me smile and were jarring until I got used to them; many were close to Shakespearean names: Laerte, Oratio, Iago, Viola or to those of legend: Esyld [Isolde?]. The author did a masterful job of switching from the novel's present to its past--not blatant flashbacks but italicized sentences from the past bleeding into prior action or, a more usual literary device: section breaks. It took me awhile to figure this out. At first the story's told from Dun-Cadal's viewpoint as a defender of the Empire, then the same story from Frog's. The novel stressed the themes of loyalty, friendship, love and loss, deceit, revenge. Some things were not as they appeared on the surface. I felt nothing for any of the characters until the last couple of chapters. For much of the novel they seemed one-dimensional. Although not the most gripping I've read, this novel is still worthwhile.… (mais)