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More Favorite Series: Scavenger by KJ Parker (Reviewed by Liviu Suciu)

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Written by Ares

Sunday, 23 May 2010 05:10

KJ Parker at Wikipedia
Order Shadow HERE
Order Pattern HERE
Order Memory HERE
Read FBC Rv of The Folding Knife
Read FBC Rv of Purple & Black
Read FBC Rv of A Rich Full Week

INTRODUCTION: In addition to reviews of new books, I have decided to do some posts about my favorite series and books written by contemporary authors. Recently I reviewed the mainstream/sfnal Cloud Atlas by David Mitchell and then I did a short overview of the "essential core-sf" Commonwealth/Void series by Peter F Hamilton where we already have some reviews here at FBC, so I decided to do a fantasy post next and I chose Scavenger by KJ Parker which is my second favorite finished fantasy series after the superb six volume Kushiel's Legacy by Jacqueline Carey.

After this I plan to do another "mainstream books" post either with one of my two top non-sff series Roma Sub Rosa by Steven Saylor or Masters of Rome by Colleen McCullough or a top novel like The Kindly Ones by Jonathan Littell or The Dream of Scipio by Iain Pears.

OVERVIEW/STRUCTURE: One of the reasons Scavenger has climbed so high in my estimation is its "affinity" with my top all time standalone sff novel Use of Weapons by Iain M. Banks, both having at their core a ruthless soldier/killer with a mysterious past who wants nothing more but to "do good" or at least be left alone and in peace but whom mayhem and destruction follow. Of course the style and world building of the two authors are quite different and here we will focus on Shadow, Pattern and Memory who comprise the Scavenger trilogy. In a global overview like this there will be some spoilers but I will try to keep them at a minimum.

The setting of the series is a fraying empire at a pre-industrial level which is beset by civil conflict, bands of mercenaries and mysterious pirates who have been raiding for some tens of years with overwhelming success, burning cities and villages and leaving no survivors behind. In addition there is the famous "Order" of assassin/philosopher monks theoretically subordinate to the dominant religion of the Empire, subtle magic and mysterious Gods, one of whom Poldarn signifying the end of the world in fire and ashes and who is prophesied to appear in a cart and not know he is Poldarn until the apocalypse...

In addition there is a completely different culture, agricultural and patriarchal who developed in isolation on some islands far away which are almost devoid of metals, so the people there became telepathic and almost hive like farmers who cherish uniformity and tradition before all and need to get their iron and steel from somewhere else; the main geographical feature there is a dormant volcano who echoes Poldarn's myth...

Shadow is a book about the mystery of the main character who finds himself a memory-less sole survivor on a small battlefield and who seems to have an affinity with crows. Violence follows him from the beginning and while he soon finds he is very good at killing, he wants nothing more than to distance himself from all that and try and start a new life. Our mystery pov encounters a cart with a woman who cons small villages by pretending to be the priestess of Poldarn and since he kills her so-called "God" companion in a scuffle, the woman recruits him as con-God and names him Poldarn...

Numerous twists and turns, tons of violence from battles to assassinations, flashbacks, encounters with lots of people who know him but somehow or another do not get to tell him whom he was, climax in a sequence of battles that end with our narrator finding out his birth name, Ciartan and his mixed islander/imperial heritage, though without recovering his memory in the least. Shadow is end to end dark action fantasy of the highest caliber.

While ostensibly Pattern explores the different culture of the Islanders and allows Poldarn/Ciartan to present us a view of a telepathic society from a sort of "regular" human, it is also about exploring the layers of Poldarn's childhood and teen years and about how his mixed heritage slowly made him a stranger in a society that values uniformity and predictability before all else. Very different in pace and ultimately even darker than Shadow, Pattern was the best novel of the series for me since it mixed action with "sense of wonder" and while seemingly "lateral" to the series to a large extent, it is actually crucial in the formation of both the early Ciartan/Poldarn and the new older and still partly memory-less one.

And of course Memory comes full circle and explores both Ciartan/Poldarn of the early Imperial/Order years and his rise to the sort of "dark lord" status implied by all in the first volume as well as continuing the tale with the "new" Poldarn who is inexorably pulled back into the thick of things however much he wants to be just a simple blacksmith. Tying up most of the novel threads, Memory is a superb trilogy ending.

ANALYSIS: "You'd like to know, I bet. That way, you'd have a clue, you'd finally be able to figure out who you are. Sorry, no chance, but I'll tell you this much. This is an imperfect world, and most people are partly bad. Sometimes, depending on the way things happen, they find themselves in circumstances where the bad part of them comes to the top and they do terrible things, because they have to, or because it's safer or easier. You can't really blame them, because you can imagine circumstances where you'd do the same yourself, they're a mirror you can see yourself in, and all you can do is hope that you'll never end up in their shoes, do the things they found themselves doing. But you aren't like that. You're a core of evil with a few layers of flesh and skin, just for show. Everything you did you did because you wanted to, and that's where I can't even begin to understand you, because you didn't stop at greed or ambition or advantage, you just kept on going, like you wanted to be the end of the world."

While the above may or may not be true of the early Ciartan/Poldarn - Pattern and Memory explore the question in detail - this paragraph defines the essence of the novel. If a man with good intentions creates mayhem and destruction wherever he goes, by accident, by self-defense, by refusing to die if you want, is he evil because of the results of his actions, or is he not because of his sincere intentions and beliefs? Because with the dark irony of the author, the new memory-less Poldarn will commit - mostly unintentionally and unknowingly or in seemingly legitimate self-defense - acts that are more terrible than the ones in the past...

As content goes, the series is just one twist and turn after another, frenetic action in the first and last novel, with a more "sense of wonder" exploration of a seemingly familiar but strange culture in the second book, while all the main characters both Islanders and Imperial from the women in Ciartan/Poldarn's life to his friends and classmates in the Order, to the power brokers of both cultures are just memorable. There are prophetic dreams and visions and of course crows everywhere, while fire and sword run rampant.

The only small negative I found in the series are some continuity errors especially between the first two volumes (some minor characters that we are told are dead in Shadow appear in Pattern and there are some age discrepancies) but on balance there is nothing essential that a little edit cannot fix it.

While not for everyone both for its dark and brutal content and for its somewhat unusual structure that I appreciated a lot but I easily see how it can put off readers used with a more conventional narrative, Scavenger is masterpiece core-fantasy that shows how the genre can grow and evolve if not subject to the constraints of traditional tropes and storytelling modes.

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A judge in a small city was hearing a drunk-driving case and the defendant, who had both a record and a reputation for driving under the influence, demanded a jury trial. It was nearly 4:30 p.m. and getting a jury would take time, so the judge called a recess and went out in the hall looking to impanel anyone available for jury duty. He found a dozen lawyers in the main lobby and told them that they were a jury. The lawyers thought this would be a novel experience and so followed the judge back to the courtroom. The trial was over in about 10 minutes and it was very clear that the defendant was guilty. The jury went into the jury-room, the judge started getting ready to go home, and everyone waited. After nearly three hours, the judge was totally out of patience and sent the bailiff into the jury-room to see what was holding up the verdict. When the bailiff returned, the judge said, "Well have the y got a verdict yet?" The bailiff shook his head and said, "Verdict? Hell, they're still doing nominating speeches for the foreman's position!"