I was busy translating today, and then I was busy catching up on things I neglected so I could do the translating. So what to post tonight?
My latest default seems to be finding Andrew Klavan videos, because nobody does the writing job better in our time.
The clip above concerns his novel Another Kingdom, so it’s a few years old. I remember the period when he was writing it particularly, because at the time I was enjoying a brief period of personal contact with him. I’d written a glowing review of the Weiss-Bishop novels for The American Spectator, and he e-mailed me to thank me. About the same time he made a request, on the blog he was doing at the time, for recommendations on good Christian fantasies to read, saying he was writing his own first Christian fantasy and wanted to check the field out. I sent him a file of my e-book, Troll Valley.
I never heard another word from him. Ah, well. Maybe I should have sent him Death’s Doors. Or The Year of the Warrior. Or just kept silent. One never knows.
I could tell just by looking at their faces that they were awed by the genius of my writing. At least, I could tell they were pretending to be awed by the genius of my writing – and really, this was Hollywood, so what was the difference? In this town, to be admired and to be in a position where people had to pretend to admire you were pretty much the same thing. In fact, the latter might’ve been a little tastier than the former, when you came right down to it.
I’d been waiting for the third and final volume of Andrew Klavan’s Another World fantasy series, but somehow I missed its release. I have remedied that omission now.
The Emperor’s Sword opens on a world in some ways far weirder than the fantasy world to and from which its hero has been shuttling. That weird world is Hollywood. Austin Lively has made it to the big time. He’s sold a screenplay to a major studio, he goes to the best parties, and he’s being hailed as an “important new talent.” He has an expensive car, an expensive home, and his pick of eager starlets to share his bed. However, like Hamlet, he has dreams, dreams that remind him of places and adventures he just can’t remember and doesn’t want to believe in.
But when his neglected girlfriend Jane is framed for murder, the memories come back in a storm. He has an unfinished job to do in the Other Kingdom, and he can’t save Jane unless he completes that job. He returns to the Other Kingdom, only to find it’s too late. The Emperor to whom he was to bring a message is dead. And Austin now needs to fight a duel he can’t win to save innocent people from death.
Fortunately, in the Other Kingdom, death sometimes works differently than it does here.
Nobody, but nobody, knows how to build plot tension like Andrew Klavan. The Emperor’s Sword puts you on a roller coaster like those old movie serials tried to, but failed. The roller coaster works here. The reader accompanies the hero from the depths of despair to the peaks of triumph and back, with barely a moment to catch his breath.
There’s also a lot of (no doubt semi-autobiographical) realism about Hollywood, and how truly evil and soul-destroying the industry and its culture can be. I do not recommend this book for younger readers, because there’s some very sordid stuff going on here. It pleases me, on the other hand, that top-grade fantasy is being written for an adult audience.
I’m a harsh critic of fantasy – I compare everything to a) Tolkien, or b) the things I imagine my own work to be. In terms of fantastic imagination, I wouldn’t say this book climbs the heights. Some of it seems kind of boiler-plate medieval to me. But in terms of storytelling and plotting – mixed in an uplifting way with brutal spiritual honesty – it would be hard to do better. Highly recommended for adults.
He was smiling in that friendly way friendly fascists smile in California. I guess the sunshine makes our fascists mellow.
Andrew Klavan continues his Another Kingdom fantasy series with The Nightmare Feast.
If you recall the plot of the previous book, Another Kingdom, Austin Lively is a pretty unremarkable Hollywood loser, working as a studio script reader. All that really distinguishes him is his dysfunctional background – neglectful academic parents who ignored him and his little sister but heaped attention on his golden boy older brother. Only recently has he learned the full extent of their betrayal – they are part of a world-wide conspiracy organized by a power-hungry multibillionaire, Serge Orosgo.
But Austin has chanced to get a look at a rare manuscript, a book called Another Kingdom, which Orosgo will go to any lengths to get his hands on. Austin’s brief reading of it somehow bestows on him the power to pass through portals into a medieval world called Galiana. In Galiana, Austin has become a knight and been sent on a quest to deliver a plea for aid to the distant Emperor. On the way he must fight monsters and magicians and sinister illusions (interrupted, of course, by unexpected forays back into our own world, generally just at the moment someone is trying to kill him). In our own world, after somehow eluding multiple assassination attempts, Austin comes face to face with Orosgo himself, and draws closer to locating his sister, who is in hiding with the manuscript.
Andrew Klavan is a past master at plotting an exciting story – readers of The Nightmare Feast will need to make time to catch their breath, because the author gives them none. Granted, as a fantasy snob who approves very few authors besides Tolkien, Howard, and myself, I found the fantasy elements just a little thin, though at least the horse gets a rubdown this time out. Anyway, stuff keeps happening so fast, who has time to nitpick details?
I got a kick out of The Nightmare Feast, and eagerly await the next volume. Not for younger kids.
I’d been told that Hollywood was where you went if you wanted to sell your soul to make movies. I went, but I never sold my soul. No one would buy it. I just got tired of carrying it around.
As a fantasy writer myself, I resent the way an interloper, like thriller writer Andrew Klavan, can just waltz in and write a compelling fantasy without (apparently) breaking a sweat or learning the secret handshake.
I comfort myself by finding a few nitpicks in my generally
enthusiastic reception.
The hero of Another Kingdom is Austin Lively, a lowly Hollywood “story analyst.” A story analyst reads unsolicited scripts, and novels under consideration for script development, for Hollywood studios. Austin wrote a very good script once, but it died in development purgatory. Now he just gets by, a Hollywood drone, the despair of his high-achieving family.
But one day he has an impulse to re-read a book he “analyzed”
a while back. The author withdrew it from consideration, but it stuck in his
mind. He can’t find it on Amazon, and no bookseller seems to have it. On his
way to check out another possibility, he walks through a doorway…
And finds himself in a tall castle window, teetering over the edge. He has a bloody dagger in his hand, and a beautiful woman lies dead, stabbed to death, on the floor behind him. Armed men break in and arrest him, dragging him off to a dungeon. There he nearly loses his mind with fear, until the guards come to take him away for torture. As he passes through the door again, he is transported back to Los Angeles…
Where he soon finds himself being hunted by a sexually
ambiguous hit man, who works for a billionaire – who just happens to be the man
who employs his father, his mother, and his brother. Who also owns the studio
where Austin works.
Somebody will be killed, and Austin will be blamed. And all
the while, at uncontrollable intervals, when he least expects it, Austin will
be dropped back into the world of Another Kingdom, where he is now part of the
resistance to a tyrannical government, fighting to bring back the rightful
queen.
Each time he passes into Another Kingdom, he learns
something – something that helps him survive in the “real world” of Los
Angeles. And gradually he matures, becoming the man he always wanted to be, but
never believed he could be.
Because this is Klavan, I assume Another Kingdom is Christian fantasy. But it’s not like your ordinary Christian fantasy (not even mine). There’s foul language, and sex scenes without any reference to Christian morality. I’m expecting the lessons to be deeper, and to become apparent later in the trilogy.
I had a few quibbles, as I mentioned. The medieval fantasy world of Another Kingdom seems to me pretty much pro forma, a city boy’s imagination. It lacked verisimilitude, for me. I don’t expect a medieval manor house to have glass doors (too expensive and fragile). A horse is lent to the hero, and all he does with it is ride it – he doesn’t feed it or unsaddle it or rub it down or check its feet. It’s just there for his use, like a car.
But the trademark Klavan storytelling delights are all here –
the action never lets up, and one deadly peril follows the other in breathtaking
style. This book will not bore you, not for one moment. I recommend it (with
cautions for adult stuff) and look forward to the rest of the trilogy.
