The Iron Dragon's Daughter is exactly what a fantasy novel should be

While on holiday in New York last summer I managed to track down this small, quirky little bookshop called Singularity & Co. Inside was something close to Paradise for me: it specialises in old, out-of-print, vintage SF and fantasy. I could happily have spent hours browsing the shelves, but time was pressing and we wanted to go and get a drink at the Gotham City Lounge (it was a nerdy day). Still, I couldn't bear to leave without picking something up, and I happened across a battered copy of a book called The Iron Dragon's Daughter. I'd heard good things about it, but it didn't exactly seem like a well-known or particularly noteworthy book from what I knew. Still, it was in the 'Staff Recommendations' section, and for $5, what could be the harm?

And my goodness, if it didn't turn out to be the best fantasy novel I'd read in an awfully long time – probably since I finished A Dance With Dragons back in 2011, to be honest. And the reason why is very simple. It is purely and unashamedly a fantasy.

Well of course it is, I hear you say. But wait, I say, hear me out. As much as I like Tolkien, and I like Tolkien a lot, it's always bothered me that the vast majority of fantasy fiction basically exists to rip off The Lord of the Rings. The fact that the phrase 'generic fantasy' can be uttered without irony is a depressing indictment of the general state of the genre. Fantasy, like its sibling SF, should be a playground for the author's imagination, where they can cut loose with all the crazy, out-there concepts that you can't get away with in literary fiction. It's the entire reason people read fantasy in the first place, and yet so few authors actually make the most of this opportunity.

The Iron Dragon's Daughter is quite possibly the most imaginative fantasy novel I've ever read, simply because author Michael Swanwick never insults the reader's intelligence by worrying that a particular element might somehow be too fantastical. He isn't concerned that the reader will struggle to suspend disbelief, because if you're reading a fantasy novel that shouldn't ever be a problem. The novel takes place in a fantasy world featuring all the races you'd expect – elves, dwarves, gnomes et al – but loads of others as well, chief among them the changeling protagonist Jane, who appears to have been stolen from our world and brought to this dark, twisted version of Faerie.

The oppressive elven rulers force the poorer children to work in factories, building the steam-powered iron dragons which function as the elves' fighter jets. The plot later shifts to a great city, changing gears from an almost Dickensian beginning to an urban fantasy setting in a determinedly high fantasy world. In the city, Jane learns alchemy, cheats at her exams by practising quicker, easier sex magic, takes fantastic spins on various drugs, has a nightmarish, prophetic vision of her future, and takes part in a riot that is viciously put down by elves riding mechanical horses. It is utterly bananas, and that's what makes it so brilliant.

I've never read anything else like it, and surely one of the aims of writing a fantasy novel is to be able to elicit this sense of awe and wonder from the reader: to open to them a completely new, unfamiliar world where anything could happen, and where you don't just regurgitate the plot of The Lord of the Rings for the umpteenth bloody time. In this regard alone, The Iron Dragon's Daughter is one of the finest fantasy novels I've read, and that's not even getting into the other stuff. I could write a whole other post about the broken, heroic, utterly convincing female protagonist, in a genre too dominated by male authors and characters. Or the Iron Dragon of the title, one of the most frighteningly amoral, self-serving, genuinely menacing dragons since Smaug – and that's before he decides to have a go at committing genocide.

It's a mad book, but if you want to see what fantasy can be when the author really lets their imagination run wild, I can hardly think of a better example.

Move over, Avengers, here come the A-holes

On the off chance that you didn't see it, the first trailer for Guardians of the Galaxy is now online, and I find myself in the unexpected position of having to rank it as probably my most anticipated movie of the summer. When it was announced, my only thought was “The Who of the What?” I read comics, and I'd never heard of these guys. If Thor was a risk, I can only imagine what Guardians represents for Marvel Studios.

What I'm most excited about is that it isn't a superhero movie. Rather, it's a huge, crazy space opera with a ragtag team of misfits at its core, which is a pretty big departure from Marvel's usual fare. Even by the standards already set by these films, it looks like it's going to be utterly insane. Talking trees, blue and green alien girls, a genetically enhanced warrior raccoon, a bar which is the disembodied head of a giant space monster: this is the sort of thing that an epic space adventure should be made of.

It's a gamble, but if it works, it could represent a huge shift in how Marvel Studios and Warner Bros approach comic book adaptations. Hopefully, it'll mean they'll have more confidence in non-superhero properties, and encourage them to adapt the more obscure, interesting, out-there concepts that might be more entertaining than a superhero saving the world yet again.

My big hope is that, if it works, Warner Bros will officially start production on Guillermo del Toro's Dark Universe project: a team-up movie between DC Vertigo's magic-themed characters, such as the Swamp Thing, John Constantine, Zatanna and Deadman. Their business strategy at the moment basically amounts to copying whatever Marvel's currently doing, and Groot even looks a bit like the Swamp Thing. The hypothetical prospect of this movie is pretty much the stuff of my wildest geek dreams, providing it turns out good. In the same way that the Avengers seems to have prompted them to turn the Man of Steel sequel into a Justice League movie in all but name, the hopeful success of Guardians of the Galaxy might prompt them to take a chance on one of their less-known, non-superhero teams. It's unlikely, especially with the Constantine TV show currently in production, but the possibility exists.

Apart from anything else, it's only a matter of time before both studios start running out of superheroes to adapt, and Marvel are already scraping the barrel a bit with Ant-Man. We urgently need Black Panther, Black Widow and Captain Marvel movies to balance out the overwhelming white dudeness of the Avengers, but what happens after that? For both DC and Marvel, turning to their more obscure titles could very well be the answer, and the Vertigo characters are some of the richest and most deserving of film adaptations out there. No, Keanu Reeves' Constantine doesn't count, it was terrible.

This is all speculation, though. Blind hope on my part, in all honesty. For now, all that matters is that what looks to be an incredibly awesome space opera from the same guys who made the Avengers is on the immediate horizon – and for someone who loves space opera as much as I do, that is extremely fucking exciting.

Plus, if Guardians does well, it would give Marvel more of a reason to put Runaways into production for Phase Four. Wouldn't that be something?

Call of Cthulhu: The Crack'd and Crook'd Manse

So I spent most of Sunday, the first really nice day in quite a while, cooped up in a darkened room, sitting around a table and rolling dice. It was awesome. I always forget how much I miss playing RPGs until I actually sit down and play one. Call of Cthulhu is a brilliant game, despite the big paradox right at its foundation - which I intend to write about at a later date.

For the moment, I just feel like talking about the adventure we played on Sunday, titled The Crack'd and Crook'd Manse. Of the five Call of Cthulhu adventures I've played, I think this is the one I enjoyed the most, and weirdly, it's because we all almost died. The threat of death is a pretty constant companion in Cthulhu, and I remain honestly amazed that the entire party got out of this particular haunted house alive. 

It started out as you might expect for a Cthulhu game: a missing person and associated mystery, talking to people and reading through the records to try and learn more about them, before heading off to their house to properly get the investigation underway. First great thing: a real sense of creeping dread. The garden was completely overgrown, and the plants kept shifting as we walked through it, knocking Big Callum on the head and tripping Thea over. It was very weird, which, for a game based on weird fiction, is important. Second great thing: mishaps, injuries, and unexpected apparitions in the house, keeping us nervy and on our toes.

It was the finale that cemented this as my favourite Cthulhu game to date, though. The cosmic abomination du jour was, we were later informed, the spawn of Shub-Niggurath, which when it eventually appeared looked like a giant amoeba. Big, sentient pile of ooze with grasping pseudopods. Unpleasant. Responsible for the overgrown garden and decayed, rotting house. By this point, Josh's character - earlier incapacitated with a broken leg - had vanished, taken by the creature, and it had blocked the rest of the party's attempt to get downstairs. 

It was at this point, with Josh gone, the creature's pseudopods dragging Stassy away, and the rest of us fleeing up the stairs while flinging salt (its weakness) at it, seemingly achieving nothing but pissing it off, that the panic set in. It was a very tough battle, and in that moment I genuinely thought a total party kill was on the cards. Things only got worse from there - the creature latched onto my character's face, guns had as good as no effect on it, and Thea abandoned us by jumping out the window to escape. Eventually, once I'd got free, Big Callum, Stassy and I did the same - which resulted in me being horrifically injured and reduced to -1 hit points. 

Before everyone ran away, they decided to just throw everything we had at the creature in one last, desperate attack. Miraculously, this was enough to kill it, meaning Stassy, Big Callum and Thea were able to rescue Josh and stabilise me. 

I couldn't believe no one had died, even if I was only just barely alive. It's the only time in a tabletop RPG where I've actually feared for a party wipe, and in Call of Cthulhu, that's a great feeling. It's a cosmic horror game, it should be tense, dramatic and frightening. It was a great adventure - even though my character may still be in the hospital by the time we play another one.

My thoughts on The Lions of Al-Rassan

I don't really know how to classify this book apart from calling it historical fantasy. The setting, its geography and the broad strokes of the story are based on historical events; but the names and details are changed and the characters are largely fictional, as is much of the plot. The author, Guy Gavriel Kay, does this in most of his books, in this case basing the novel on Medieval Spain and one of the principal characters on El Cid. I can sort of see why people might have a problem with basing a fantasy world so explicitly on a real-world nation, but I actually really like it. All fantasy nations are based on historical ones at least to some extent – the Rohirrim are Vikings, the Dothraki are Mongols and so on – and the way I see it, all Kay is doing here is making better use of the history than most.

It allows for some wonderful meditations on real-world problems as well. This fictional Spain is divided among Jaddites (Christians) in the three northern kingdoms of Esperana, Asharites (Muslims) ruling most of the peninsula in the country called Al-Rassan, and the wandering Kindath (Jews) living as subjects on both sides. The main characters are the Jaddites Rodrigo Belmonte – loosely based on El Cid – and Alvar de Pellino; the Kindath physician Jehane bet Ishak; and the Asharite poet/diplomat/soldier Ammar ibn Khairan. The plot charts how their lives are interwoven and ultimately sundered by the demands of their different faiths as Al-Rassan is pushed over the brink of holy war.

It really made me think, more than anything else, about how bloody stupid and pointless organised religion is. All it really serves to do in the novel is propagate suffering and unhappiness, while spelling the doom of culture and civilisation. The people of Al-Rassan are condemned for their luxurious and pampered way of living by both the Jaddites in the harsh north and the Muwardis – fanatical zealots utterly devoted to Ashar – in the deserts to the south. The city of Ragosa, ruled by the largely secular, wine-drinking King Badir and his Kindath chancellor, seems like by far the nicest place to live in the peninsula, and both Jaddites and Muwardis would prefer it to be destroyed. Where they see excessive luxury, I see the march of civilisation. The Kindath are hated by everyone, only tolerated because they have to pay more taxes, and this book really made me think about how much, and how unjustly, Jews have suffered over the centuries. I won't get into spoilers, but the amount of pain the Kindath go through in this novel, when they and they alone are uninvolved in the conflict, is nothing short of appalling when you consider that this happened to real people.

It's on the small scale is where it really hurts, though. Rodrigo and Ammar, the titular Lions, the two best men in Al-Rassan, become friends while exiled in Ragosa. Despite different faiths, different cultures, different sides, they grow to love each other, recognising each other's extraordinariness. And when war comes to Al-Rassan, they are forced to part – and if that sounds like a spoiler, I assure you it's not hard to see coming. This is what religious hatred does: it doesn't just end lives, it ends wonderful, life-affirming friendships. Practically everything good that is accomplished is when Jaddite, Asharite and Kindath work together, disdaining their differences. Hatred, the natural offspring of religion, achieves nothing but death and destruction.

Jehane's father Ishak deserves his own mention, actually, because the idea of doctor as hero is another big theme of the book. Despite the punishment inflicted upon him by his king after performing a particularly remarkable surgery on his wife, he is adamant that he would do it again, because that's what doctors are supposed to do. Even in the scenes of blood and battle, Kay is very clear that true heroism lies not in ending lives, but in saving them.

Apart from anything else, The Lions of Al-Rassan is a spectacular example of what can be done with fantasy when the author is willing to do something completely different from everyone else – which is pretty much the point of fantasy, to be honest. It's a truly wonderful story, and one that I really can't recommend enough. Both a brilliant adventure and a genuinely thoughtful meditation on the triumphs and follies of mankind, it uses the prism of fiction to look at real issues and examine the human condition in stunning depth, just like fantasy should. It's a novel of friendship and love, brutality and beauty, humour and heartbreak. It moved me to tears on several occasions. Read it.

EXCITED EDIT: Guy Gavriel Kay himself tweeted this blog. A promising new beginning, I think.

On LIONS. 'a brilliant adventure & a genuinely thoughtful meditation on the triumphs and follies of mankind' http://t.co/kyIFArn9sB
— Guy Gavriel Kay (@guygavrielkay) February 13, 2014

New beginnings

I'm bringing back my blog! I've been inspired to write something by a book I finished recently, and wasn't sure where to write it but here. I'm not sure how long the reanimated corpse will shamble on for - the cleric I got the Raise Dead spell from seemed a bit drunk - but I'm going to try and get back into the habit of blogging at least semi-regularly. In order to motivate myself, I'm changing what I talk about on here. I write film reviews and articles elsewhere, so this is going to be a space for more niche, genre stuff that interests me a lot but might not be so interesting to a big audience. I'll probably end up talking about SF and fantasy a lot, and in all likelihood comics too. If that sounds like stuff you'd like to read, stay tuned.

The Dread Pirate is back!