Steph Swainson - The Year of our War

[Rane Longfox]

This book was Book of the Month at Ottakers, so had £1 off the price, and, more importantly, was recommended by China Mieville and Richard Morgan!

Anyone read it?

[Jay]

Like Deja-Vu I recently reviewed The Year of Our War and my full thoughts can be found HERE. Also the second book No Present Like Time was just released.


To be short I think it's defintely worth looking into, albeit with some flaws. If any are interested, my site will have an interview with Steph this week, which will also include some character sketches by her.

[Rane Longfox]

Lol, I know. I read that link when you posted it on malazan, looks quite promising

(I thought there might be more intelligent comment on this board than that)

[Jay]

(I thought there might be more intelligent comment on this board than that

I don't know, although now as busy in that particular section (The Malzan board), I have found there are a few people there that have some semblance of knowing what their talking about

[knivesout]

I've read it.


What should I say? I like what Swainston is trying to do, I like the twists her imagination takes, I really think she may one day be just the sort of fantasy author that I tediously recommend to everyone. But - she's not there yet. The Year of Our War suffers from an uneven tone, repetitive characters and situations, a plot that's a little too convuluted to follow, partly because it's hard to care about the characters enough and it's also a book with a very unfinished feeling - which may not be a problem because I hear her second novel will carry on from this one. The publishers could have mentioned that at first! Very definitely a debut novel, which is probably fair enough.

I'll certainly read her second book, and I hope she realises her potential soon, because she has lots of it. In the meantime though, no matter what Alastair Reynolds says in the blubrs, KJ Bishop is still the 'high priestess of the New Weird'.

[Jay]

To follow up on Knivesout a little, I agree taht isuffers from unevenness in plot which is more First person POV related based then it is supposed to follow neo-classical storry structure. I do think the character profile of Jant is extremely strong and one of the better instances of characterizations I have read in a debut novel recently. It suffers from some questionable dialogue moments. The secondary character issue character I discussed in my review linked above (which Steph actually agreed with after reading, in our dialogue doing the forthcoming interview). There are defintely aspects that are left to be desired, but to me the promising elements overcame them for me.


I defintely see what Knivesout is saying and those negative elements are in the novel, but it's slightly overridden IMHO in The Year of Our War just because Swainston does such an incredible job establishing a nice platform for future novels, and really what is my opinion of a first rate job on Jant (the main character). She shows a nice ability to write in totally different settings, and IMHO if this isn't the best we have seen of Mrs. Swainston we are in for some damn good books in the future.

[Rane Longfox]

Well, it certainly sounds worth a go, even if it's not setting the world on fire...

Thanks guys

[Jay]

If any our interested I just put up the interview I conducted with Steph. Check it out HERE


I will have some sketches she provided up soon as well.