Battle of the Books, Winter 2012, Second Round :: Range of Ghosts by Elizabeth Bear vs. The Pillars of Hercules by David Constantine

Our final second round match in the Winter 2012 Battle of the Books pits Range of Ghosts by Elizabeth Bear against The Pillars of Hercules by David Constantine. Whichever book I most want to continue reading after 50 pages will grab the last spot in the semifinals.

Range of Ghosts: Tor hardcover, March 2012, 334 pages. Range of Ghosts got here by defeating Jack of Ravens by Mark Chadbourn in the first round.

Range of Ghosts is epic fantasy in a land very similar to the ancient Mongol Empire. Our hero Temur was gravely wounded fighting for his brother in a war of succession against their uncle. In the first 25 pages, we saw Temur head into exile along with other survivors of the fighting, but as a potential rival for the throne, his uncle still wants Temur dead and has called on a powerful sorcerer to eliminate him. In the second 25 pages, we see Temur befriend some of his fellow travelers, as dark forces close in on him. Meanwhile, in a city not yet affected by the fighting, we meet a woman named Samarkar, who has willingly undergone surgery leaving her barren, so that she may train to be a sorcerer.

The Pillars of Hercules: Night Shade trade paperback, March 2012, 387 pages, cover art by Daren Bader. The Pillars of Hercules reached the second round with a first-round win over Andy Gavin's The Darkening Dream. I suggested at the time that David Constantine is a pseudonym of science fiction author David J. Williams, but so far no one has come forward to confirm or deny this.

The Pillars of Hercules is fantasy/alternate history set around 330 B.C. A huge conflict is brewing, one that never happened in our world, between Alexander the Great and a powerful Athenian empire. Both sides have access to magic and advanced technology not available in our timeline. In the first 25 pages, Alexander defeated a vast Athenian fleet to seize control of Egypt, while our mercenary heroes Matthias and Lugorix managed to escape in a turbine-powered boat with a mysterious Persian princess. In the next 25 pages, the refugees arrive in Athens, while Alexander makes a pilgrimage across the Egyptian desert to see an oracle. We do not get to see this meeting onstage, suggesting Constantine is holding back something critical that Alexander has learned.

The Battle: Posting results in the first round, the challenge was not to sound too negative about books I disliked, since after only 25 pages I hadn't really given them a fair chance. In the second round, I find the challenge is to explain dropping out a book after 50 pages even though it's really good, just because the book it's up against happens to be really, really good.

The first 50 pages of The Pillars of Hercules are really good. This alternate version of ancient Greece and Persia is most interesting, and I love the descriptions of ancient Greek cities and navies even more impressive than the ones in our history. (Although you have to be careful picking through what's historically accurate and what's augmented -- reading of Athenian merchants unloading ships with cranes I assumed this was an anachronism, but further research tells me they actually used cranes in ancient Greece.) A massive conflict is brewing, driven by Alexander's ambitions. It feels like the sort of good-versus-evil battle familiar in epic fantasy, but was Alexander really evil? Although I haven't gotten terribly attached to any of the characters so far, the banter between Matthias and Lugorix is amusing.

The first 50 pages of Range of Ghosts are amazing. I read through every passage twice, once as a reader, marveling in the story, and imagery and language; once as an aspiring writer, trying to figure out how I could write like that (short answer: ain't gonna happen).

To start with, Bear shows a marvelous flair for introducing the fantastic elements of her story. Here, for instance, is the sorcerer al-Sepehr with his book of dark spells:

A book. Or what could have been the ghost of a book, perhaps -- its covers translucent gray, marked with letters white as bone; its binding rings silver; and every transparent page within etched with the gorgeous serpentine cursive letters and diamond-shaped accents of the dialect of ancient Erem.

The glass covers chimed softly as al-Sepehr drew on a kidskin glove and opened them with infinite care. Some of the page edges were chipped, and he was too well acquainted with the illness that followed when he let this dire old thing taste his blood. One by one, he turned the crystal leaves, watching as transparent letters cut in transparent pages caught the sunlight.

Every word twisted in his head and made his eyes ache and burn. He found the page he wanted and settled down to study the spell inscribed therein.

To raise the enemy's dead and bind them to your bidding.

Temur will have to faced these raised dead, including the ghost of his own brother.

All the non-fantastic elements of Range of Ghosts are just as good. The scenery and different cultures in the story are fascinating, with a very different flavor than most epic fantasy. Samarkar is an intriguing character, a woman who does not seem power-hungry, yet she gave up a position in high society for power. Temur is an extremely likeable young man -- he gets a love scene that is very beautifully written, but also downright hot, because we are so happy to see something nice happen to him. But the scene ends on a bittersweet note, as one of the moons in the night sky flares out, indicating that another of Temur's relatives has died.

Where is all this headed? Will Temur decide to try to reclaim the throne from his uncle? Will he find an ally in Samarkar? Let me say for the record: I don't care. Wherever Elizabeth Bear decides to take this story, I want to go there with her.

THE WINNER: RANGE OF GHOSTS by Elizabeth Bear

Range of Ghosts advances to the semifinals, to face And Blue Skies from Pain by Stina Leicht.

To see the whole bracket, click here.

Battle of the Books, Winter 2012, First Round :: The Darkening Dream by Andy Gavin vs. The Pillars of Hercules by David Constantine

We are down to the last first round match of the Winter 2012 Battle of the Books. Our final two entrants are The Darkening Dream by Andy Gavin against The Pillars of Hercules by David Constantine. The book I most want to continue reading after 25 pages will complete the second round of the Battle of the Books.

The Darkening Dream: Mascherato trade paperback, January 2012, 404 pages, cover art by Cliff Nielsen. This is an independent book, but Andy Gavin has rather more credibility than the typical self-published author. He is already an accomplished storyteller in the medium of video games, having co-created such best-selling games as Crash Bandicoot and Jak & Daxter, and he has taken a professional approach to his novel, including commissioning cover art from top-flight artist Cliff Nielsen.

The Darkening Dream is a vampire novel set in Salem, Massachusetts in 1913. The heroine is Sarah, a scholarly young Jewish woman, who in the opening pages of the book meets a charming Greek immigrant. Sarah and her friends are about to stumble into an ancient conflict involving vampires, warlocks and other magical creatures, which somehow centers on the trumpet of the Archangel Gabriel.

The Pillars of Hercules: Night Shade trade paperback, March 2012, 387 pages, cover art by Daren Bader (not to be confused with Paul Theroux's travel book of the same title). Night Shade isn't saying so, but I believe David Constantine is a pseudonym of David J. Williams, author of the well-received Autumn Rain Trilogy, beginning with The Mirrored Heavens. Those books were science fiction, but The Pillars of Hercules is fantasy/alternate history set circa 330 B.C.

Alexander the Great has embarked on a series of conquests, which is indeed what he was doing at that time, but he receives orders from his father, who in our world was dead by then, and he is opposed by a thriving Athenian Empire, which is not how our history books remember matters. Oh, and there is magic and surprisingly advanced technology. I want to call this "bronzepunk," because that term has a nice ring to it, but really we're in the Iron Age here, not the Bronze Age. As the book begins, Alexander is invading Egypt, currently controlled by Athens.

The Battle: The openings of these two books present an interesting contrast in styles. The Pillars of Hercules is bold and brash from the outset, while the beginning of The Darkening Dream is relatively understated. There is one four-page scene of a man being killed by a vampire, but aside from that we watch Sarah chatting with her parents and friends and going for a nice picnic.

I enjoyed these scenes with Sarah, and I find her an interesting character, a brilliant young woman in 1913 who fears she will soon have to give up her studies to settle down and start making babies. But this quiet opening is rather overwhelmed by the all the excitement at the start of The Pillars of Hercules. In 25 pages, David Williams/Constantine gives us drunken mercenaries, a mysterious witch serving an elegant lady, a vast fleet of Greek warships aflame, an Egyptian city being sacked, an escape through an ancient aqueduct, an unexpected crocodile attack, a race on an anachronistic powerboat, Alexander the Great cheered by a throng of Egyptians, all followed by a dose of political intrigue in an ancient world whose history has varied significantly from our timeline.

To compete with all this, Andy Gavin needed to pack a wallop in his four-page vampire scene, but that was the one scene in the opening chapters of his book that didn't work for me. The victim is a total redshirt, a throwaway character dropped into the story just to have someone to kill, and the attack is short on suspense, partly because we never see the killer. All the scene accomplishes is to signal that we're in a vampire story, but that just means the main character's worries about whether she is to be married off will soon become trivial, as she instead focuses on staying alive.

There is a lot more action in the opening of The Pillars of Hercules and Williams/Constantine pulls it off better. And then when the action slowed, I found the political machinations among Alexander's advisors interesting -- as soon as I put down the book I was on the Internet comparing Alexander's actual history to what has occurred in the novel. I want to read more.

THE WINNER: THE PILLARS OF HERCULES by David Constantine

The Pillars of Hercules advances to meet Elizabeth Bear's Range of Ghosts in the second round.

The second round begins next week, with Eyes Like Leaves by Charles de Lint taking on The Scar by Sergey & Marina Dyachenko.

To see the whole bracket, click here.