Special Double Review
Reviewed by Matthew Nadelhaft & Louis West
Black Gate Online, August 4, 2013
Reviewed by Matthew Nadelhaft
My run as a reviewer for Black Gate probably needs to be prefaced with an admission: I don’t really like fantasy. However, I’m not so much a hater as waiting to be convinced. I’m ready to have my horizons broadened.
Unfortunately, Mark Rigney’s 15,000-word “The Keystone” isn’t the story that’s going to do it for me. This novella is the third in a series by Rigney about a character known as “Gemen the antiques dealer,” and it might be that much of what was missing for me is provided by the first two stories, but I have to review this story in and of itself.
Reviewing parts of a series is tricky. How much sense, I wonder, would the third story about Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser make on its own? Heroic fantasy requires massive world-building. These exotic eras and lands require a sense of history best imparted gradually, through the careful accumulation of detail rather than abrupt and artificial geography lessons.
Coming into the world of Gemen through the third of his tales I found myself at a loss. I had no idea who anyone was; I couldn’t fathom their motivations. Gemen, along with a few companions, is rushing to a far-off ruin where he needs to build an arch. Somehow, Gemen hopes to locate his long-lost sister by means of this ritual. But Gemen is pursued by armies representing two different factions.
The chase is intriguing, with Gemen’s party employing skillful deceptions to throw off their pursuers, and these trackers doggedly staying with their quarry. But I never understood why Gemen was being pursued, despite the use of a near-omniscient narrative position. Many characters were introduced but I never felt like I knew any of them. The pacing was good, for such a long story, with the lengthy chase leading to a frenetic battle scene, but the multiplicity of viewpoint characters hindered the development of tension.
Worse, I found the prose distracting and cumbersome, with massive amounts of unnecessary detail, an explosion of adverbs and possibly all the commas in Europe. Fantasy clichés abound: people say “know this;” predicates precede verbs, and everybody shouts (or yells, or cries, or hollers) – a lot. This abundance of melodrama and description made the story seem, to me, like a forced role-playing session in which a game-master reads aloud a pre-generated description of every location and every encounter before demanding initiative rolls.
A story as long as this one needs to demand to be this long, and “The Keystone” didn’t do that. Its length was the result of the addition of unnecessary points of view and over-description, undercutting the tension inherent in its premise. There might well be a wealth of fascinating information in the previous two stories, but reading 15,000 words without developing a sense of attachment to any character doesn’t incline me to sally on.
Black Gate Online, August 4, 2013
“The Keystone” Part III of the Tales of Gemen by Mark Rigney
Reviewed by Louis West
In Mark Rigney’s “The Keystone” the quirky yet relentless Gemen finally completes his life-long mission to rebuild the portal through which his sister had disappeared so long ago. Except, once the portal is reconstructed, nothing goes as Gemen had planned. This masterfully told story closes out this trilogy yet opens possibilities for continued Gemen adventures since, as Gemen himself concludes, “the world is once more in play.”
The tension never stops, starting with nightmares, followed by chases across half the world, as two forces pursue Gemen and his party. The Corvaen seek justice for wrongs Gemen has visited upon them, and the Thornland Raiders, merciless reavers from a long-abandoned land, are zealously bent on destroying Gemen, seeing him as the incarnation of all that’s wrong with the world.
Once I started reading, I couldn’t stop. I highly recommend the complete trilogy.
Louis West: Sub-atomic physics, astronomy, biophysics, medical genetics and international finance all lurk in Louis’ background. He’s fond of hard SF, writes reviews for a variety of Speculative Fiction publications and volunteers at several New England SF&F conferences. As an Author-in-Progress, his SF writing embraces both Nanopunk and Biopunk genres.