Return of the Crimson Guard

So there's good news and bad news.

The good news is that Return of the Crimson Guard by Ian C. Esslemont is one of the best war novels, regardless of "genre," that I have ever read. The bad news is that it does wear genre trappings that may be offputting to anyone who doesn't appreciate or can't set aside those trappings.

Let's push through the bad news first. Crimson Guard is the second book in an ongoing series that is tightly tied to another ongoing series that is up to nine books. So a mainstream reader might feel compelled to read up to ten books before Crimson Guard, but it really isn't necessary. As I've written about some of the other books in the Malazan universe, the books are only loosely conjoined. In fact, despite a cast of dozens, as best I can tell there are only two characters in Crimson Guard who appear in any other books, and their role in the shared universe is fully explained within the pages of Crimson Guard itself. Therefore, the same sense of disjunction a brand new reader feels as they are thrown into a new world with new characters is similarly felt by an ongoing reader—most of what they are reading is new also.

The other genre issue that could be offputting is that the Malazan sequence is medieval high fantasy; in other words, the war that is fought in the pages of Crimson Guard involves soldiers in armor with swords, bows, and spears, and most disconcerting, sorcery. To some readers, the story being set in another place and time (and to be honest, with other races) delegitimizes the foundation of the story itself, despite the power and strength of its other elements. That's unfortunate, since there is still merit in reading, for example, The Red Badge of Courage, a fairly accurate depiction of life on the front lines during the Civil War. And I'm not saying that Crimson Guard is as important or as well written as Red Badge, but making the point that the kind of war should not taint the artfulness and the storytelling contained in a novel.

Return of the Crimson Guard takes place in three parts, a tightly built narrative structure—part one is the gathering of the armies and the individuals who offer the narrative viewpoints, part two is day one of the war, and part three is day two of the war. There is also an epilogue that tries to tie up some loose ends but mostly acts as a denouement to the final climactic scenes of the war that has just taken place. Esslemont artfully uses part one to develop a rapport between the reader and the various actors in the war while putting the players in position. The characters are uniformly fascinating, built as they are not just on exposition but in character interaction, even the ones the reader might find to be despicable. Again, it could be easy to get lost in place names without previous reference, but it doesn't really matter. Since the war that Crimson Guard describes involves armies with conflicted loyalties, the places aren't really important. What's important is the universal message of all war novels, that the armies are made up of individuals, not faceless machines—and those individuals have stories and lives. And because the war involves sides made up of former allies, a touch of regret and irony colors the events that take place in Crimson Guard.

To his credit, and to the book's strength, when war does arrive, Esslemont doesn't pull his punches. War is not pretty and survival is often a matter as much of luck as it is of rigor and skill. Characters that Esslemont has built up in part one die, sometimes horrifically, sometimes comically, in parts two and three. And often, if a character does not die, they have painful epiphanies that are just as wrenching to the reader as the deaths that are described. Esslemont's structure also allows him to contrast specific horrors of war—that is, is it worse to kill up close and personal with swordplay and crashing groups of highly trained groups of men, or safely and from afar, when sorcery is used as a sort of medieval weapon of mass destruction. For tactical reasons, neither side of the war use their sorcerers in part two, and little time is spent discussing why this is a sound tactic. Instead, we file through narrative viewpoint after narrative viewpoint detailing what seems to be about the worst conditions one can imagine. And in part three, when the sorceries do start up (in what can easily be read as a metaphor for modern advanced remote fighting if one so chooses), the scenes are equally terrible but in a different way.

Reading Crimson Guard is an emotional investment, made to care as we do for the characters written for us, and then watching so many of them die in all the ways that war allows. Its strength lies in that investment we make, so that each death also kills a tiny part of the reader as well. Each terrible decision takes its emotional toll on its audience. I suppose it can be argued that a lot of what I have said here would be true of any war novel. However, I don't think I've ever felt as invested in the people in a story as much as I do for the characters of Crimson Guard. And I really can't think of praise any higher that I could offer to a writer of any genre.

Night of Knives

The story of how Steven Erikson and Ian C. Esslemont came up with the world that their Malazan books inhabit is fascinating enough that I am going to repeat it here, perhaps with a little bit of jealousy. Erikson and Esslemont were pen-and-paper role game players, and they created the entire background of their novels—one of the most complex and deep worlds I have experienced in speculative fiction—as a locale for their games. My jealousy arises from either the desire to have played in that kind of world when I did play tabletop RPGs, from wanting a game master as brilliant as that when I played (although I did have some darned fine GMs), or perhaps from wanting to have taken the seeds of ideas for game locales and coming up with something as massive and brilliant as Malazan.

It must be daunting to write a new entry in a milieu that has been so well established. Esslemont has the advantage of having been a creator of that world and so has a better grasp on it than just any ol' writer. Yet the Malazan books have become a tremendous international success, thus increasing the weight of expectation for anything set in that world.

Fortunately, Esslemont's first book is successful on a number of levels. Like Erikson's books before, the characterization in Night of Knives is particularly strong. The plot is primarily carried by just two characters, a roguish young woman named Kiska and a veteran warrior named Temper, and the point of view shifts back and forth between the two of them with a very few exceptions. With their perspective, the reader witnesses the arrival of strangers to Malaz and hears the rumors of the mystical Shadow Moon, a night when the boundaries between the natural and supernatural are their thinnest. Both Kiska and Temper are compelled by a sense of something beyond themselves; Kiska wants to leave the backwater town she has grown up in and figures the best method is to show off her rogue skills: stealth and espionage. Temper, on the other hand, has long served in the military and his suspicions are raised when he recognizes some of the visitors to Malaz and, while investigating, promises to perform a service in order that friends are permitted to survive. Their paths cross once or twice through the night with some comic effect, but mostly their stories are their own. Kiska is continually pointed forward, trying to make a better future for herself no matter the cost, and she trips over events and other people continuously on this magical night. Temper is clearly more important than his appearance would indicate, and the plot provides flashbacks in order that we can know him and his life better. But neither of them have any idea what is going on around them as factions and magics collide in the dark.

As a result, the reader doesn't know either. If the reader is familiar with the earlier Malazan books, they may recognize this night as the foundation point upon all of the stories are based. If the reader doesn't know the earlier novels, there is no indication within the story itself how important this night is, and the motivations for what happens are not apparent at all (in fact, the only explanation comes from the blurbs on the book's covers and in the introduction by Erikson). This creates an implied dichotomy that reflects the two main characters in Night of Knives: some readers are like Kiska, intent on getting through the night but not understanding all of the struggle going on around them, and others are like Temper, with a history that helps explain what is happening while leaving some questions unanswered. In either case the storytelling is powerful, with powerful action scenes and thoughtful character development, and more than a hint of the supernatural.

The final product feels in many ways like an extrapolation of the great weird pulp tales of writers like C. L. Moore. Those pulp stories often make the reader feel minute in a titanic struggle which can only be partially grasped due to an implied ignorance and weakness. While the human point-of-view character struggles to survive the supernatural circumstances in which he or she finds herself in, the narration keeps the plot moving from conflict to conflict, with little time for thought on the part of protagonist. And the reader is carried along pell-mell as well, perhaps coming up for air long enough to ask themselves what the conflict is about or how these things can happen, but without the story ever delivering an answer. Ultimately, the protagonist survives, often through some sort of mystical intervention rather than any effort on their own part, or if their own effort saves them, the protagonist again rarely knows how their actions worked.

Night of Knives works in this same way, but instead of being restricted to a short story or novelette, Esslemont works in the space of a novel, giving him the room to develop Kiska and Temper beyond the often flat characters in the great weird pulp stories. Even the side characters have some development, further enriching the earthly activities in the novel. But even the reader most familiar with the Malazan books would have difficulty identifying all the factions in play across the island, and Esslemont compounds this difficulty by introducing entirely new characters and factions and by moving some of the action into worlds strictly composed of magic. For example, in one of the few scenes not involving Kiska and Temper, puissant magic-users (not magicians…sorcerers? Wizards? Practitioners of the magic arts? We're never really given a name for them) argue amongst themselves as they defend Malaz from some sort of invasion from sea-based wand-wielding cold creatures. Esslemont's writing conveys the danger and necessity of the scene, but we have no idea who these creatures are or their plan, just that they must be withstood. It's also not clear what their relationship to the rest of the events of the book are, only that they must be fought back—one of the most powerful scenes in the book is the failure of just such an attempt. So the scene is compelling, but we are given no indication of its effect on the rest of the story.

The result is a book that will infuriate some readers while delighting others. For myself, having some knowledge of the events in the Malazan stories until now, I found that it really didn't matter other than the occasional recognition of a name. When the story is over, we still never really see the specific events that make this night important to the series. But the story-telling is compelling and I enjoyed it, especially given my recent readings in the pulps. But I can imagine someone not familiar with the pulp tradition, or having no knowledge of Malazan, would be extremely frustrated by the book if they were not carried away by the story itself. Perhaps their ire would be saved until the action is finished when, upon reflection, they realize that they really don't know what happened beyond the survival of the protagonists. But, if the reader can set aside the bigger issue of knowing how it all fits together, Night of Knives is a powerful read, made up of elements of what makes for good story-telling.