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The Swords Of Night And Day (The Damned
book 2) by David Gemmell check out website: www.booksattransworld.co.uk
Only joking, it's fantastic! After reading the first couple of chapters, I was absolutely gob-smacked by the audacity of an author who could attempt such an interesting experiment with an ostensibly sequential fantasy novel. When he concluded the first book, Gemmell left many of the plot threads open-ended and unresolved, creating an obvious pool of material to draw upon for future instalments. To my delight and surprise, Gemmell has decided not to go down that rather pedestrian route, but has instead taken a major detour by throwing his main character one thousand years into the future.
This incredibly brave premise means that many of the avenues we might have expected him to explore in this sequel are made irrelevant by the passage of time. All of Skilgannon's past friends and foes are dead, ground to dust by the turning of the clock. We also discover that Skilgannon was aged about fifty or so when he perished, allowing Gemmell to deal with many of his lead characters original goals in retrospect, as part of Skilgannon's internal remembrances. The brutality of Skilgannon's translocation in time acts as a kind of winnowing process removing the baggage of past events, characters and places and leaving us with only the most essential element of the series: Skilgannon himself. Although entrancing intellectually, this move does have the effect of marginalizing the first book into a kind of prologue for 'The Swords Of Night And Day'. 'White Wolf' starts to feel like an anvil on which Gemmell has hammered Skilgannon into the marvellously complex and likeable character we see here, rather than a book in its own right. I must admit to feeling a little bit dislocated by this whilst initially tackling the book. However, these feelings quickly fade as the grandeur of the new setting and the scope of the storytelling soon make up for any nebulous feelings of loss you might be experiencing. As magical a piece as 'White Wolf' was, 'The Swords Of Night And Day' is better. There is a greater degree of thought put into the pacing of the plot and the construction of the book as a whole. Scenes of raging violence are balanced by sections of wonderful dialogue, making the action all the more important to us as Gemmell draws us emotionally nearer to the characters. The first book is a barbarian of heroic fantasy. Reading this novel is like meeting that same barbarian again after he's gone away to study a bit of philosophy at his local college. He's now got wonderful things to say about the human condition, but he can still pull the head off of an angry Alsatian with his little finger if he needs to. It's strange but I can guarantee that even those of you who demand that at least one henchman is disembowelled with each turn of the page will love this book and fail to notice the fact that it is incredibly character driven. It's a book in which nothing much happens. There are some fights, some wonderful legendary doo-dads turn up and, every now and again, there's a little bit of a twist to keep your attention. The real pleasure here though is in appreciating Gemmell's use of this setting as an experimental playground for characterisation. New and complex characters arrive to help and torment, archetypal extras are turned on their heads and familiar characters reappear as variations of themselves, like identical notes played on different instruments. His villains come in all flavours but never leave a bitter taste in the mouth. Their motives are laid bare to us and many are as or even more likeable than the protagonists they contend against. As always, Gemmell is a master of this genre of fiction and delivers everything the fans might want. Those still unconverted to this style of novel should read 'The Swords Of Night And Day' just to witness the depth and quality of the material that can still be garnered from this literary form when it is addressed by a skilled author, with a true love for the structure within which he is working. I am coming to rely on Gemmell to provide me with the one thing I think we were all looking for when we first picked up a book as children, before we began to feel the need to mask our desires with intellectual pretensions and prejudices: A damn good story about real people in an unreal world, a story that sits on top of your heart until you finish it, leaving an indelible impression there as it stands up and walks way. Paul Skevington
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OTHER REVIEWS - July 2004
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Despite
my glowing review for the first book in this sequence 'White Wolf',
I'm afraid I am sadly forced to inform you that the sequel does
not live up to the high standards set by the original.
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