{"id":621,"date":"2009-06-25T23:51:31","date_gmt":"2009-06-25T13:51:31","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/batrock.net\/?p=621"},"modified":"2009-07-29T01:33:40","modified_gmt":"2009-07-28T15:33:40","slug":"the-craynarbians-drank-freely-of-their-caffeel-spliced-with-slipsharp-oil-for-circle%e2%80%99s-sake","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/batrock.net\/?p=621","title":{"rendered":"The Kingdom Beyond the Waves: An Exercise in Everything Good"},"content":{"rendered":"

The craynarbians drank freely of their caffeel, spliced with slipsharp oil, for Circle\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s sake …<\/em><\/p>\n

I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122m not normally much of a one to read fantasy or science fiction, with my toes only dipping as deep as Neil Gaiman and Terry Pratchett \u00e2\u20ac\u201c special men, and special exceptions. It\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s not a failing of the genre so much as it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s a failing of the self: I find so much of the material I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ve tried so dry that I haven\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t been able to immerse myself much further than a few pages. Combine that with the authors\u00e2\u20ac\u2122 tendencies to prolificacy, which makes it dang near impossible to find a place to start, and then in sequence, and it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s something that I generally stay clear of.<\/p>\n

Let\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s ignore entirely SF and fantasy writers\u00e2\u20ac\u2122 other <\/em>tendency, after their works get a bit long in the tooth: that of transforming their series into a collection of rape, incest and paedophilic fantasies \u00e2\u20ac\u201c which is a wild generalisation, but common enough to note \u00e2\u20ac\u201c and let me focus on something good.<\/p>\n

The other week, browsing in my favourite \u00e2\u20ac\u0153surprise\u00e2\u20ac\u009d bookstore (there\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s no point going there for anything specific, it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s a pot luck affair), I saw Stephen Hunt\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s The Kingdom Beyond The Waves<\/em> on the shelves. Intrigued by its cover, featuring a steampunk u-boat trailing an ancient diving suit, I meditated on the book and its promise of an archaeology professor seeking the lost civilisation of \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Camlantis\u00e2\u20ac\u009d. I didn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t buy it immediately, but rather came back a few days later and purchased it after the allure of a Victorian submarine<\/em> could no longer be resisted.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

The Kingdom Beyond the Waves<\/em> turned out to be well worth it, but I had some initial misgivings. It soon became clear to me that this was not the first book that Hunt had written in this world. It turned out later that it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s a case of world and history sharing, rather than character sharing, but this still poses a problem because if you\u00e2\u20ac\u2122re unprepared you can drown in terms for races and places and drinks that you\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ve never heard of. Hunt is a good enough writer that soon enough you\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ll realise that there are apparently a race of four armed crab people operating alongside humanity and \u00e2\u20ac\u201c more importantly \u00e2\u20ac\u201c \u00e2\u20ac\u0153steammen\u00e2\u20ac\u009d who subscribe to a voodoo like religion.<\/p>\n

Once I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122d figured all of this out, the book became one giant ball of \u00e2\u20ac\u0153yes<\/em>\u00e2\u20ac\u009d for me. Hunt hits so many of my buttons that it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s almost as if he cut into my head and realised so much of the stuff I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ve always wanted and then overlaid it with things I never knew I was even allowed to want. Look at it like this: it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s kind of like Indiana Jones<\/em> in a fantasy setting with crabs and robots. Mix this in with a traditional Atlantis\/Laputa<\/em> quest, add disgraced royalty reduced to swashbuckling beneath the sea<\/em> and then season with an eccentric man of high standing who has a thousand false faces and one \u00e2\u20ac\u0153true\u00e2\u20ac\u009d one, and you have a great book. There are eventually three plot threads running at a time, and every time I reached a new one I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122d be cursing because I wanted to know what was going to happen next in the last one. It\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s a particularly vicious cycle, and one that can only be solved by continuing to read.<\/p>\n

What does fantasy have to offer us? Lost technology is one of the greatest lynchpins: people operating machinery and other devices that they simply do not have the wherewithal to produce in their own context: relics of ages long gone. Hunt offers that here with the oil powered car of \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Diesela-Khan\u00e2\u20ac\u009d, not to mention the pure excellence that abides in the steammen and their feral siltempter enemies.<\/p>\n

You also have people who \u00e2\u20ac\u0153aren\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t what they seem to be\u00e2\u20ac\u009d and who, under Hunt\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s tutelage, manage to be both exciting and surprising despite their obvious mystery: early in the book a blind man with awesome power manifests his awesome powers. Soon thereafter a blind man with uncanny sonar ability joins the u-boat\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s crew. Coincidence? Perhaps. Perhaps not<\/em>!<\/p>\n

I should also mention that not only are we treated to steam powered robots, but steam powered robots who have made mortal enemies of thunder lizards. Yes, dinosaurs versus robots<\/em>. I realise I sound like I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122m being flippant here but all of this material works very well together and achieves precisely what it should do: it captured my imagination in a way that forced me to run to the final destination and find out precisely what was going on.<\/p>\n

Hunt takes many old ideas, blends them together and creates something that is at once both compelling and familiar. I think that the reason a lot of people stick with genre writing of any sort is because they\u00e2\u20ac\u2122re given something that is reassuring but hopefully also invigorating, something that reminds them why they follow whatever it is they follow in the first place (for crime, for instance see Ian Rankin\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s Rebus<\/em> books). Even now, reading through Terry Pratchett\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s books again, I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122m frequently floored by paragraphs of insight or turns of phrase that resonate deep in my core, and have for the twelve years that I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ve been reading his work.
\nThe Kingdom Beyond the Waves<\/em> is the second of what presently stands at three books. I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ve only just barely touched on what makes the book so good, but I think it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s clear that I wholeheartedly recommend it.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The craynarbians drank freely of their caffeel, spliced with slipsharp oil, for Circle\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s sake … I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122m not normally much of a one to read fantasy or science fiction, with my toes only dipping as deep as Neil Gaiman and Terry Pratchett \u00e2\u20ac\u201c special men, and special exceptions. It\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s not a failing of the genre so much as it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s a failing of the self: I find so much of the material I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ve tried so dry that I haven\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t been able to immerse myself much further than a few pages. Combine that with the authors\u00e2\u20ac\u2122 tendencies to prolificacy, which makes it dang <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[4,47],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-621","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-books","category-sci-fifantasy"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p1HLZ6-a1","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/batrock.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/621","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/batrock.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/batrock.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/batrock.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/batrock.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=621"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/batrock.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/621\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":718,"href":"https:\/\/batrock.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/621\/revisions\/718"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/batrock.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=621"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/batrock.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=621"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/batrock.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=621"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}