Paperback Release: “Sea of Ghosts” by Alan Campbell (Tor)

The superb beginning to Campbell’s second series

Thrown out of the Graveyard corps by a corrupt and weak emperor, Granger has to turn to running his own prison. It’s not a lucrative business but if he keeps his head down, doesn't succumb to pity or morals then he may just survive.

But when two unexpected prisoners enter his life then his world is turned upside down. Ianthe is young, blind and deaf – she can only see or hear through other people’s senses. This makes her unique in a world held to ransom by the powerful Haurstaf – a sisterhood of telepaths who consider the young girl a threat to their power. She’s also Granger's daughter...

Just a quick news post, which is also an opportunity to mention this fantastic novel again. I reviewed Sea of Ghosts last March, and I thought it was superb – an opinion I stand by today. At the time, and in my enthusiasm, I said it was “easily one of the best [novels] I’ve read in years” and “almost indescribably good”. That’s certainly more enthusiastic language than I normally use in my reviews, so I hope that gives you some indication as to just how much I enjoyed the novel.

So, with the paperback now available (in the UK and for UK Kindle, at least…), if you will indulge me for a moment, here are some more snippets from the review:

“The Sea of Ghosts is a novel of honour, revenge, loyalty and perseverance, set in a world ravaged by unfathomable science and magic.”

The plot is tight and quickly paced… the world-building is expertly interwoven into the plot… a world so full of weird, wonderful, and sometimes horrifying invention, it’s captivating.”

“Campbell’s prose is sublime, possessing that indescribable quality that sucks you in, envelopes your imagination and pulls you happily along for the ride; insistently readable and compelling. The novel kept me up until 4am on three occasions, as ‘one more chapter’ turned into three or four.”

“Campbell’s knack for atmospherics is almost peerless, and his innate storytelling ability is awe-inspiring.”

I said it then, and I’ll say it again today: Sea of Ghosts is absolutely superb and I think Campbell is an author every fantasy fan must read, and I’d highly recommend his work to everyone. I really can’t wait for the next novel in the series. I also can’t understand why on Earth I haven’t finished his Deepgate Codex series. I’ve read the prequel short story, Lye Street, but not the rest of the series: Scar Night, Iron Angel, and God of Clocks (the latter two novels were reviewed by Emma).

Learn more about Campbell’s novels at his website and his blog. Alan’s latest available work is Damnation for Beginners, a special edition novella published by Subterranean Press. Like Lye Street before it, this story is set in the world of Campbell’s Deepgate Codex, further expanding on that series and world. Here’s the synopsis:

“The story begins in the beleaguered city of Cog. The protagonist, Jack Aviso, is himself a cog, a functionary in the soulless, profit-obsessed enterprise known as the Henry Sill Banking Corporation. When a routinely corrupt business transaction shatters both his marriage and his well-ordered life, Jack finds himself — quite literally — in Hell, where he embarks on a perilous, unprecedented journey of revenge.”

Capsule Review: “Lye Street” by Alan Campbell

Novella prequel to Deepgate Codex

The Greene family is cursed. Every fifty years Deepgate’s scarred angel, Carnival, returns to murder another descendant. Now, five hundred years after the first victim’s death, Sal Greene is facing his own doom. His time has almost run out. In a desperate attempt to break the chain of violence and save his family, he summons a demon to the chained city: a warrior he hopes is powerful enough to stand against the angel.

Yet the creature which arrives in Deepgate is not quite the legendary mercenary Sal Greene was expecting.

This prequel to Alan Campbell’s first trilogy, The Deepgate Codex, offers a perfect, bargain-priced introduction to the author’s work, and certainly whet my appetite for more story set in this world.

While I’ve only read one of Campbell’s books (this year’s excellent Sea of Ghosts), he has a reputation for superb writing. In Lye Street, this skill is certainly on display. The author evokes his gothic, dark and original world perfectly. Reading this novella left me very eager to get stuck in to The Deepgate Codex.

His prose flows very well, and his writing is wonderful to read. The dialogue is always realistic and engaging, and often witty. Passages of description (be it of the city, characters or atmosphere) are great, but never feel over-done. There are some original, quirky takes on some classic fantasy tropes (demons, in particular), and the characters are all well-rounded and realistic, not to mention often sympathetic. Carnival in particular is a complex and tragic figure, suffering from amnesia yet stuck in a cycle of violence that appears never-ending. The Spine (this world’s religious sect) is only really introduced, so I assume the novels will contain far more information and description – it will be interesting to see what Campbell does with the religion and its agents in the novels.

As a novella, this is only a taster of this world, but Campbell does a great job of bringing it to life on the page (or Kindle screen, really), and we are given vivid descriptions of the world and its characters. The description is never too much, which helps keep the pace of the story going. It’s perhaps become cliché to mention Mervyn Peake in a review of Alan Campbell’s work, but there is an air of Gormenghast-ian gothic wonder about the story.

The novella is not wholly satisfying, I must admit – this is not a complaint about Campbell’s writing or plotting, rather the length of the novella. I have always found full-length novels more satisfying than shorter works, so there is a natural lack of exposition and expansiveness in Lye Street that would not be lacking (I assume) in Scar Night, Iron Angel and God of Clocks. Knowing that there are three novels that follow this, however, certainly took away the majority of my concerns.

Lye Street should make anyone hungry for more. The characters, story, world, and magic (thaumaturgy – very important in this novella) are all great and one is left with a sense of great things to come in the full-length novels. There is a great, if bloody and brutal, ending, which brought this story to a very satisfying conclusion.

(The lengthy sample of Sea of Ghosts will also give new readers a great taste of Campbell’s latest novel as well.)

Highly recommended for all fantasy fans (with Kindles).

[An interview with Alan Campbell]

Buy the Novella: Amazon UK & US

News: Alan Campbell’s LYE STREET…

… is now available as Kindling! The novella, which forms a prequel to Campbell’s first trilogy, the Deepgate Codex, was originally a limited edition release.

Here’s what Alan wrote about the release on his blog:

“A lot of people have asked me how they can get hold of my novella, LYE STREET, which was published by Subterranean Press as a limited edition. The simple answer is, unfortunately, that you can't unless you spend a lot of money. Copies of this little book are now selling for crazy prices.

An Interview with Alan Campbell

Alan Campbell’s latest novel, The Sea of Ghosts is easily one of the best novels I’ve read in a good number of years. It had everything – superb characters, great plotting, a vivid and interesting world, and of course exceptional writing. In order to find out a little more about Campbell’s books and writing, I contacted him with a handful of questions, and he was kind enough to answer them.

“God of Clocks”, by Alan Campbell (Tor/Macmillan)

War, rebellion, betrayal… But the worst is still to come.

Scar Night introduced us to the dark and decaying world in which the city of Deepgate hangs in chains over the abyss in which dwelled the god Ulcis. Iron Angel detailed the protagonists’ difficult journey away from the ruined city, across a dangerous wilderness. God Of Clocks continues the story, as Dill and Rachel rush towards a final confrontation with King Menoa, Lord of the Maze. Rachel has rejoined the blood magician Mina Greene and her demonic dog Basilis. Carried in the jaw of a debased angel, they race to the defensive stronghold of the god of clocks, pursued by the twelve arconites – Menoa’s merciless automatons (the iron angels of the previous book). Meanwhile, John Anchor pulls Cospinol’s skyship into Hell itself to meet Menoa on his own ground. But neither Heaven nor Hell is anything they could have expected…

For this final installment to the series, Campbell’s writing has become even darker. His previous occupation as a video-game designer really comes through, as his writing is incredibly atmospheric and evocative – it’s clear that creating a complete picture for the reader is very important to him. He creates a dark and disturbing world, and as the characters journey into Hell, they find ever-more twisted and debased creatures. Campbell blurs the lines between good and evil: even relatively benevolent characters, such as Cospinol, deal in casual cruelty. This is a world in which no one can be trusted: neither gods, nor men, and certainly not any of the demons who inhabit Hell. Nothing is as it seems, keeping the characters, and the reader, guessing throughout.

The wide cast of diverse characters, well-created, does sometimes become a little unwieldy, as we try to keep track of the various story-threads. This is not, however, too much of a problem – and one that might be mitigated by reading the series in one go, rather than having to wait a year between books (something a lot of fantasy fans do, with trilogies). Another slight problem was the ending, which didn’t tie up nearly as many loose-ends as it perhaps should. Sure, not everything can be tied off, but it does make me wonder if this is actually the last in the series… (anyone?) It would also have been nice to know a little more about the Deepgate Codex, which is only alluded to a couple of times, but never in too much detail.

Rachel is a great, strong female character (she kicks ass, basically). The god Hasp is a complex yet appealing character. I liked the way the author subverts the traditional ‘bad-guy’ tropes of fantasy; for example, both Mina Greene and Alice Harper are morally dubious, but even they turn out to be psychologically rounded characters – it’s clear why they do what they do, playing the hand they’ve been dealt.

Comparisons with Mervyn Peake (author of Gormenghast) are certainly justified, but Campbell brings a contemporary twist to a Peake-style gothic world – it’s certainly something new, strange and compelling.

Overall, an excellent series, but I would love to know if this is, in fact, going to be the last volume. I shall be watching eagerly for Campbell’s next book.

Highly recommended.

Reviewed by Emma

Series Chronology: Scar Night (2007), Iron Angel (2008), God of Clocks (2009)

For Fans of: Joe Abercrombie, Patrick Rothfuss, Brent Weeks, Mervyn Peake, George R.R. Martin, Richard Morgan

www.alanmcampbell.co.uk

“Iron Angel”, by Alan Campbell (Tor)

A dark, brooding and thoroughly haunting sequel to Scar Night

In the aftermath of the destruction of the chained city of Deepgate, the Spine militia struggle to halt the exodus of panicking citizens with brutal force. Rachel and the young angel Dill are captured and taken to the Temple torture chambers, but they are in greater danger from what lurks in the shadows outside the Temple stronghold.

The god Ulcis’ death has left the gates to hell unguarded, and all manner of foul things are rising from the abyss below the ruined city. In the skies above, the god of brine and fog is coming to join forces with his remaining brothers to avenge Ulcis, and Rachel and Dill will find themselves caught between two opposing forces, as men and gods, archons and slaves are forced into desperate alliances in a battle they cannot hope to win.

Scar Night was a magnificent debut, and Campbell doesn’t disappoint with the sequel. Iron Angel is an utterly spellbinding, richly Gothic tale of angels, gods and demons. We catch up with Rachel and Dill, fleeing for their lives, and are introduced to a host of new characters: Cospinol, the decaying god of brine and fog, and John Anchor, the giant who hauls his skyship across the land; handsome Rys, the god of flowers and knives; Silister Trench, the dead archon; Alice Harper, dead engineer and reluctant servant of King Menoa, lord of hell (and easily the most terrifying creature yet encountered); and the mysterious Mina Greene.

Campbell’s characters are dark, sinister, frequently grotesque, and always complex. For example, Alice Harper would seem to be nothing more than Menoa’s faithful, if reluctant servant, but the author shows us that Alice’s reasons for obeying Menoa are multi-layered and completely human, no matter what monstrous form he has currently forced her into. Cospinol is a very human god: capable of human emotions, such as fear. Ultimately, everyone in Campbell’s world is flawed.

The plot tears along, teeming with infernal machines, grotesque experimental creatures, warped humans and tattered angels. The author brings his world vividly to life; at once squalid and magnificent in its decay.

Despite the undoubted darkness and repellent nature of much of his creation, he succeeds in making us really care about what happens to his characters: from Dill, the young and damaged angel; to Carnival, the scarred angel who is just as much a victim of others’ machinations as Dill is. No one in Campbell’s world can ever really be labeled absolutely good or utterly evil, and that is, in part, what keeps his writing so gripping: it is almost impossible to predict what will happen next, or how a character will evolve.

A beautifully written, darkly realized, mesmerising read. The wait for God of Clocks will be unbearable!

Very highly recommended. Not a typical fantasy, Iron Angel is a must-read for absolutely everyone.

Series Chronology: Scar Night, Iron Angel, God of Clocks (Already available in the US, it is released July 3rd, 2009 in the UK)

For Fans of: Scott Lynch, Joe Abercrombie, Patrick Rothfuss, Mark Charan Newton, Nick Harkaway, China Mieville

Reviewed by Emma