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Kingdom
River (Snowfall Trilogy Book 2) by Mitchell Smith check out website: www.tor.com
In order to fight them off, Sam has to join forces with their rivals, the Middle Kingdom, a powerful but stagnant nation across the south of the USA, whose capital and stronghold is on an island surrounded by often frozen rivers. The feel of the combat and life is a lot like American Civil War in tone and style, only gunpowder has been 'suppressed', and only swords, pikes and the occasional bow are used. The combat scenes are very authentic and realistic and this is where Smith's strengths lie. The characters are memorable without being stereotypes and the medieval politics ebb and flow with suitable savagery. The plot, characters and to a certain extent the setting all fulfil their purpose well and the writing is strong. In particular the Queen and her bodyguard, Martha, are great to read about and the banter between members of Monroe's army is a nice touch. Despite the makings of a good tale, I struggled through 'Kingdom River'. There were three things that really killed my enjoyment. Normally, these elements would be bearable or even interesting but Mitchell Smith overuses them so much that by the fiftieth page I was sick of it. All of them derive from the post-apocalyptic setting. The first is Smith's over-liberal swearing. The Middle Kingdom's Queen is supposed to be quite guttural and lowborn and Smith has her swear and talk dirty a lot to achieve this. All the other characters swear so much that the effect goes unnoticed. I have no problem with language as such but when every other line of dialogue uses a gratuitous swear word for no particular reason and especially when the swearing encroaches into the prose, I found my patience growing thin. The second, in particular, is a case of a good idea horribly overused. Supposedly the language of the characters in 'Kingdom River' has been rebuilt from 'Warm-time copybooks'. This means that whenever a modern idiom like 'what the hell' or even a word like 'versus' is spoken, the characters involved in the discussion will pause everything to consider the aesthetics of this 'Warm-time' word. After the third or fourth, it gets tired. Smith uses this trick on most pages and it severely affected my judgement of the novel as a whole. The last and perhaps most major problem I had with 'Kingdom River' is the surprising lack of any post-apocalyptic elements to anything. Aside from a brief appearance from a Boston civilisation dabbling in genetic modification, the Warm-time annoyance and the insertion of 'Map' in front of all the place names, this book could just have been a fantasy novel. It seemed to me like the post-apocalyptic storyline was just used so the author could use American place names in his fantasy novel. 'Kingdom River' has some excellent parts to it and I enjoyed the battle segments and characterisation with the final climactic section being particularly effective. In the end, the annoying outweighed the enjoyable and I found reading this book a chore, especially disappointing as there is so much promise to it. I only hope Mitchell Smith's next book doesn't take place in a
post-apocalyptic setting, so we can all enjoy his fine fantasy skills.
Tomas
L Martin
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OTHER REVIEWS - October 2003
More reviews: October 2003 Cryptonomicon by Neal Stephenson The Dark Path by Walter H. Hunt A Place So Foreign And Eight More by Cory Doctorow The Fifth Sorceress by Robert Newcomb The Gates Of Dawn by Robert Newcomb Stories Of Your Life And Others by Ted Chiang Beyond The Hanging Wall by Sarah Douglass Kingdom River by Mitchell Smith The Year's Best Science Fiction (20th Annual Collection) edited by Gardner Dozois SpyHigh Episode 1: The Frankenstein Factory by A.J. Butcher SpyHigh Episode 2: The Chaos Connection by A.J. Butcher Doctor Illuminatus by Martin Booth Wee Free Men by Terry Pratchett Angel: Stranger To The Sun by Jeff Mariotte The Xenocide Mission by Ben Jeapes The Poison Master by Liz Williams The Manchurian Candidate by Richard Condon Shadowheart (Legends Of The Raven) by James Barclay [Spooks] Confidential: The Official Handbook by Jim Sangster
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Mitchell
Smith's 'Kingdom River' is not what it claims to be. Supposedly,
it is a post-apocalyptic novel, if you believe the blurb. In reality,
though, the flimsy and annoying post-apocalyptic elements of the
tale let down what could be a very solid and enjoyable fantasy.
'Kingdom River' is set in a ravaged America gripped by an ice age
of human making. The hero, Sam Monroe, is General and leader of
a small nation in North Mexico, his people are under threat from
a Ghengis Khan figure and his huge warband of horse riders attacking
from the north.
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