I DNF'd this at 20%. It isn't good. There is quality writing here, even poetic prose at times, but the main character is such a misogynistic idiot that I can't stand reading from his point of view. If there were hints that this might change, that growth might happen, I might be willing to go on, but that can't be the main point of a fantasy book. And it's almost not egregious enough to be the pivot of change - but damning enough to piss me off as I'm reading it. The plot is also fairly meandering and lacks focus, which might be fine if I like the main character. I do not.

Read for the 2019 SPFBO. Review and rating to come soon.

I DNF'd this book at about 25%. I wanted a book that compiled a lot of writing advice, most of what I already know, so this should have appealed to me. However, the majority of the book is just the author self-congratulating himself on knowing so many other authors, and it's so boring that I was nearly in tears. What a waste of publishing energy.

Rating may change with time away from it, but I loved this book.

The Gutter Prayer was one of the few books that I have pulled off a bookstore shelf simply because the cover was so arresting. I did not know a thing about the book but ended up loving its gritty world and misfit cast of characters. The Shadow Saint, The Gutter Prayer's follow-up, goes in with the disadvantage of expectation - I knew mostly what I was in for and it was up to Hanrahan to deliver a worthy successor to his breakout hit. He did it, and while I think The Gutter Prayer might be the better novel, The Shadow Saint is in many ways the ideal way to showcase the middle chapter of a series. It is rare for a second book in a trilogy to be the one that everyone raves about (I know it happens, Star Wars fans), and so that tempered my wildest expectations enough that I was able to settle in to The Shadow Saint and simply enjoy myself.

Strengths

What immediately caught the attention of most of The Gutter Prayer's readers was Hanrahan's world-building ability. The city of Guerdon is a character all its own, and like any good character, over the course of these novels it changes drastically. At the end of the first book, a New City is literally grown from the body of a dying man, giving the old city a coat of fresh paint that plays an integral part in the second book. Even beyond that, Hanrahan has such an interest in politics and religion and how they intermingle to form a society, that even did Guerdon not change in a very real physical sense, it would do so thematically. To add to this is Hanrahan's pantheon of gods - a group of deities that defy any logic and exist in the same way that the violent old gods of our own mythology do. In The Shadow Saint, gods from across the sea are coming to destroy Guerdon, and the city's only defense is a weaponized distillation of the Black Iron Gods, the very evil Carillon and Spar sought so desperately to stop in The Gutter Prayer.

Part of what makes Guerdon so interesting is its tone. I always question why human beings choose to live in dangerous places, and my confusion extends to fantasy realms. Guerdon is not a friendly place, and why everyone hasn't moved out to the countryside to live in suburbs with SUVs and in-ground pools is beyond me, but I'm glad they haven't because I enjoy the constant sense of danger and weirdness that Guerdon offers. Adding in the New City, a place that can quite literally change with a thought, gives the entire thing an even weirder context - as though the characters aren't really on the mortal plane at all but rather existing in some city of the gods. It works, and Hanrahan's writing style fits it like a warm blanket.

The Gutter Prayer had readers following Carillon, Spar, and Rat as they tried to survive a veritable apocalypse, and I quite liked that original cast. In a surprise move, Hanrahan takes the focus off of Carillon and onto her cousin, a young woman named Eladora who is featured in the first book but isn't front and center. She is joined as a point-of-view character by a spy who is never given a true name and exists as several people at once, and a prince from a Northern realm that, if its mentioned at all, was not in my memory from The Gutter Prayer. I like the new cast, and Carillon isn't entirely absent from the book, but I really liked those misfits from the first story. They would be hard to top in this context, and I actually admire Hanrahan's willingness to move out of his comfort zone. Even if I may not have liked them as much, there is no doubt that these are fully fleshed out characters who probably adapt and change more than did those in the first book (Spar might be the exception). Eladora changes dramatically in The Shadow Saint, and I think her evolution is remarkably well done.

Weaknesses

Where The Gutter Prayer is a nigh on neck-breakingly paced book, The Shadow Saint slows things down, and this probably more than anything is what dimmed it for me. As I said in my introduction, the middle portion of a trilogy almost has to be this way because it acts as a bridge between its bookends. However, what The Shadow Saint does at times is get so bogged down with its politics that I found myself struggling to read it. This may work for some, and I think Hanrahan's political writing is well done, I just didn't enjoy reading about it much in the same way that I don't enjoy reading about politics in a newspaper. This is not to say that I don't enjoy politics because I am as political as anyone who lives in a society, but the methods of conveying those politics can often bore me. For me, The Shadow Saint was at its best when it was dealing with its deities, which happens more at the beginning and end of the book than anywhere in between.

The Shadow Saint also suffers in its middle book syndrome by leaving dangling threads - plot lines that aren't satisfactorily explored or concluded. I wanted more with Carillon, for instance, who does not seem as though she is finished with Guerdon or this story. I expect I will have to wait a year or more to see if my wishes for this series are fulfilled by a third book that has a lot of baggage to successfully carry.

Parting Thoughts

I liked The Gutter Prayer more than I liked The Shadow Saint, but that's like saying I like a nice red ale more than a stout - they are both beer and I love them. I think Hanrahan is here to stay as one of the premier fantasy authors of this decade (assuming we are all around to see the rest of it). It would have been a simple and tragic thing to fumble the second book after such a strong debut, but he kept hold and delivered, and I am 100% here for the conclusion of The Black Iron Legacy. I hope some of these characters live to see the end of it - a wish I also hold for all of us readers. Stay safe!

Kalanon’s Rising is the story of a Brannon Kesh, The Bloodhawk, veteran and King’s Champion, who simply wants to be a physician - a counterbalance to his life of killing. Unfortunately for Brannon, his legend far outweighs his own desires, and it is not long into the book that he is drafted by the powers that be to solve a murder.

I was excited to read a fantasy mystery as I can think of few books that fit that bill outside of the Dresden Files, and in fact this book does remind me of Butcher’s work in a lot of instances aside from the lack of an Urban Fantasy setting.

Setting

Kalanon’s backdrop is the typical medieval Europe fantasy land. There’s a King, there was a war, and the kingdom of Kalanon is still recovering from the conflict with its neighboring Nilar. The story largely takes place in the capital city for the first half of the book, and then shifts to a more rural, small village locale for the back half. This is all fine. There is nothing unique nor wrong with this setting, and it serves its purpose stoically. What is lacking here is any type of world-building. Kalanon could be nearly any kingdom in any book a fantasy reader has ever read.

Where some world-building does happen is in the shadowy or mystical societies that Smith has populated. There is a group of nature-worshipping druid-types who can control evil spirits and turn them into slaves, in essence, through the use of the dead. There is a hidden cadre of assassins who have some relevance to the plot but seem present more to foreshadow themselves in subsequent novels than to retain any major importance in this one. These facets of the book are interesting, but again, they are not particularly unique to fantasy. Smith’s Risen, those corpses possessed by evil spirits, are novel in their origin, but that’s about it. Again, this all works fine, but never captivates.

Plot

As Kalanon’s Rising is a mystery, the plot is the real lynchpin of the book. Mysteries can get by on weaker characterization if their central pivot is strong enough. Oddly enough, Smith reverses this typical situation because while I found his plot fairly predictable, I enjoyed his characters enough that I was willing to see it through. Obviously, this is a problem in a mystery novel, whether it’s fantasy or not. The secrets here are thinly veiled, and I wager there aren’t many who didn’t see to the heart of the book’s shadows fairly early on. It is difficult to explain just how the plot is weak without actually spoiling the entire thing, but suffice to say that point of view is incredibly key to a work like this. Smith has several different PoV characters - almost all of the central characters get a few chapters even if Brannon has the main viewpoint. I think the novel would have been better served had Smith chosen to set the entire thing in his main character’s vision.
Even aside from the mystery, the story leaves some things to be desired. I don’t think I’m alone in thinking that the eventual reveal is disappointing and petty, and had it not been a mystery, this is a story that would have been very rote and typical.

Characters

I liked Sir Brannon Kesh quite a bit. He reminds me of a Geralt in a lot of ways - a world-weary soldier who is tired of humanity’s bullshit and just wants to do his job. He is also aged, and as I age myself I find I appreciate the older protagonists more. This may be a personal bias. The cast is rounded out by Draeson, a 300-year old mage who recently found himself a young body with all of the troubles that a new vessel brings, Ylani, the Nilar Ambassador to Kalanon whose position is about as precarious as the peace hammered out years ago, Ula, one of the aforementioned druid types who I thought would be more important to the events of the book but who I largely forgot about until she spoke up once in a while, Taran, a priest with shady talents in alchemy, and Jessamine, Brannon’s new physician apprentice. They blend fairly well, but I often found the common problem of Smith needing a character to talk every once in a while to ensure the reader that they still existed. I’m not entirely sure every character was necessary to the plot, which can be problematic.

I also liked Ylani, and I think Smith does well in her characterization. She is the fish out of water in the story, and her customs and attire make her stand out - an attention to detail that I appreciated. There is a spark between her and Brannon, but it’s subtle and never gets in the way of the plot. It manage to fill a kind of femme fatale trope common in Noir fiction, but isn’t ridiculous in the way that that often can be. She also does not smoke an elongated cigarette.

Parting Words

Kalanon’s Rising was a mixed bag for me, but overall I enjoyed it and I think it is one of the better finalists. It does not win the contest for me by any stretch, but the writing is well done, the plot and characters engaging enough, and it presents a good package even if the mystery is weak. I would recommend it to anyone interested in fantasy mystery, which is a shallow pool and Kalanon’s offers enough that’s different from the rest of the genre that it is worth reading. That I am even considering reading the sequel, and I am considering it, is testament enough that I liked it because that is rare for me!

I was excited when the lists for the 2019 SPFBO were announced. I saw Blade’s Edge’s cover and the striking East-Asian themes spoke to the Japan-loving nerd that is always hovering near the edge of my professional demeanor. Then the book was stripped away from FBC with absolutely no explanation, and I was crushed. This was of course before I knew that the SPFBO 2019 finals would be packed with Japanese-themed fantasy. Having read all three of these ambitious novels, I can say that I am happy not to have made the decision to push one of them to the finals because they are all deserving and it would have been tough to choose.

Oddly enough, all three of these books are wildly different, despite their shared setting. Blade’s Edge is potentially the most “Japanese” of the bunch in that it is set in a very Japanese-like land that is also quite grounded in reality. Having Japanese literature as my second great love behind fantasy means that I read a hell of a lot of Japanese translated fiction, and to my semi-trained eye, Blade’s Edge felt the most authentic compared to the standard fiction from Japan that I’ve read. This is impressive given that McClain is not herself a Japanese author, but it is clear that she has a great love for Japanese history and culture, and it really shows in her treatment of this pseudo-Japanese setting.

That said, the adherence to a historically-based Japan also means that McClain’s writing feels hampered. It almost feels more like historical fantasy than secondary world fantasy, despite her Gensokai being a fictional place. This is not strictly a problem, and there is a place for historical fantasy, but the push to prove this a secondary world feels inauthentic at times.

The setting isn’t the heart of my problem with Blade’s Edge though. There is something missing in this novel, the kind of indefinable something that I likely won’t elucidate with this review. The story has merit. It tells of two girls, inseparable early in life but driven apart by circumstance. They each must strive in their own new worlds against a patriarchal, nobility-driven society that wants to see them and their inherent magical powers tamped down like a snuffed flame. They both manage to find sympathetic ears and eventually are reunited in dramatic and climactic ways. In theory, this sounds exciting and like fertile soil for good plot. Unfortunately, there never is any real excitement in the novel, despite some fight scenes that are mostly glossed over with people simply doing amazing things without much preamble. Topping it off is a climax that feels completely contrived and actually left me severely disappointed in how little sense it made compared to the rest of the story - a scene that speaks only to character emotion in a novel that is entirely about real consequences.

But perhaps the lackluster plot would have moved me more had I actually cared about the characters in McClain’s SPFBO entry. It’s really surprising to me that I connected so little to either Mishi or Taka. My absolute favorite character type is the powerful female protagonist who spends most of a novel finding her power and then uses it to great effect. This is 100% what I want from almost anything I read. Blade’s Edge has it, but the characters affected me to such a minor degree that this thing that I love ended up having almost no impact. Again, this is a hard critique to put one’s finger on - what was it exactly that failed to inspire me about either character? I don’t know. I only know that neither of these young ladies felt particularly vibrant to me, and by the end of the novel I wanted someone else to root for.

Blade’s Edge is the very definition of a competent novel. It’s well written, nearly error-free, and it flows nicely. What it lacks are the indefinable touches of magic that a winner of this type of contest absolutely needs, and what any novel that seeks to strike a chord in its reader needs. Perhaps this book touched some in that way, but despite it being heavily stacked to do so with me, a lover of Japanese fiction and strong female protagonists, it failed to resonate in almost any way with me. It’s a decent book, no question, but in the end I found it disappointing.