Have you ever built up an author (or director, musician,
etc.) in your head as being one of the greats? Maybe even a genius in their
respective field? Now I don’t think David Gemmell is a genius, but I’ve always
considered him a skilled writer who excels at certain types of stories. Those
stories often focus on tough men put in situations where their survival is in
question but the situation often leads to their redemption as heroes for having
done the honourable thing in said difficult situation. I’ve pointed out his
weaknesses as a writer before (female characters!) and his stories can be
similar when looking at them side by side (yet they’re usually varied enough in
the details to remain separate individual works). Sometimes he plays with big
ideas and when he does, he rivals many of the other great fantasy authors. To
be clear, I think David Gemmell is pretty great and up until a few weeks ago,
at least, he was one of my favourite fantasy authors, comfortably sitting
amongst the other greats in the literary pantheon of my mind.
Oh, how the mighty have fallen.
A few weeks ago I reviewed Ghost King, the first volume in a two part series. The book is also
the first novel in a series of five book, which includes the two part story
starting with Ghost King and its
followed by the Jon Shannow trilogy.
All five books are loosely connected by the appearance of the Stones of Power. Ghost King was a disappointing read.
Truly, the first bad book by David Gemmell that I’ve ever encountered. Sure, I
haven’t read all of his books (almost half at this point) but I’ve enjoyed
every single one of his book so far. Some I really, really liked. Ghost King was a bad book for many
reasons and the few things it did well weren’t the focus of the story and kind
of seemed incidental of Gemmell’s style as a writer. I had rather low
expectations for the follow up volume, Last
Sword of Power. As if to chastise me for thinking that a good book could
follow a bad one, Last Sword of Power
turned out to be ever worst.
A lot of the problems that plague Last Sword of Power are the same problems that occurred in the
first book, only this time its worst because there is a compound effect. The
errors of the second book build on the errors of the first. These aren’t big
books. They’re approximately 300 pages in length. This in itself isn’t a
problem. What’s problematic is Gemmell’s use of too many characters for the
size of the book. I say there are too many because we don’t spend enough time
with any one character to really get to know them well. Likewise, some
characters are the focus of the story for a couple chapters only to disappear
for most of the story and, if they’re lucky, Gemmell remembers to bring them
back for the last few chapters. Probably to give the reader a sense of closure
because these character call backs don’t serve any narrative or storytelling
purpose.
To make things worse, the abundance of character doesn’t
serve any purpose that I can tell. It doesn’t serve to add realism to the
story. The story of both books spans decades and it makes sense to add
characters to make the world seem populated (who spends decades of their
lifetime knowing only a dozen or so people?). That can’t be the reason because
this book is unrealistic, even by the standards of the fantasy genre. The book
isn’t filled with people in order to give the reader a wide range of believable
characters. That’s a laughable idea because most of the so-called characters in
this book are nothing more than quick sketches of actual people. The same
problem occurs with the main characters. They’re developed in some capacity but
it’s such an inconsistent development because they’re behaviour is constantly
shifting throughout the novel without any reason tied to the story. All of the
characters in the book seem like they’re stuck in a first draft. There is promise
there, certainly, but it’s not any good as is. Few of the characters really
seem to belong in the story and I can’t tell if that’s a result of them of
poorly written or if the plot is so bad no characters can truly fit within it.
It could be both problems.
Speaking of individual characters, where the hell is
Prasamaccus in this book? He was the closest thing to a genuine character in Ghost King but in the second volume,
he’s barely present. As it is, Gemmell isn’t doing well as far as characters
go, but reducing the best character down to having just a few appearances with
occasional dialogue was a poor decision.
One of the other reasons why this book simply doesn’t
compare to the rest of Gemmell’s body of work is that it features magic.
Gemmell doesn’t write magic well at all. He’s quite poor at it. My problem with
the magic in Ghost King basically
amounted to it being too loosely defined. It had no limitations or boundaries
whatsoever. The result is that the magic essentially obeys one rule: the whim
of the author. Things further deteriorated in Last Sword of Power. Gemmell doesn’t take the opportunity to
improve on the magic of the Stones of Power (also known as the Sipstrassi).
Rather, he takes the opposite approach and throws in a Sipstrassi crown and the
titular Sword of Power, also full of magic. He does take the time to elaborate
on the stones’ origin, much to my dismay. There is a comet on an orbit that
brings it past Earth at regular intervals. Long, long ago parts of the comet
were detached and fell to the ground giving the Atlanteans their first stones,
ultimately introducing magic to the world. It’s a lazy setup for magic, but
what’s worse is how Gemmell uses the comet during the book’s ending. All I’ll
say here is that it’s an atrocious ending. I wanted to through the book across
the room, but I didn’t have the strength to. This book left me feeling defeated
and utterly disappoint in Gemmell who was and continues to be (we’ll see for
how long – the next book better be great) one of my favourite fantasy writers.
I started reading Last
Sword of Power with significantly lower expectations than I had starting Ghost King. It didn’t help in my
enjoyment of the book. It still sucked. Not only is this the worst book I’ve
read by Gemmell, but it’s also the worst book I’ve yet to read as part of The
Blog Fantastic project. Go look at the
archives to see what that really means. Last
Sword of Power was a worse book than the first two volumes in R. A.
Salvatore’s Icewind Dale trilogy
which, while being entertaining, certainly aren’t anything above average. Normally
I would say Salvatore doesn’t compare to Gemmell but it’s certainly not true if
you consider Ghost King and Last Sword of Power. It’s hard to come
to terms with just how disappointed I am with Gemmell. I have two Jon Shannow books on my bookshelf and I
wanted to read them so badly just a few weeks ago. Wanting to read them is why
I read Ghost King and Last Sword of Power. Now that I’ve read those
book, I honestly don’t feel like giving Jon
Shannow a try. At least not right away. I need to read a few more fantasy
books before I give Gemmell another go. Maybe I’ll read something with lots of
magic in it to really distance myself with the Stone of Power of this series.
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