by
Michael Shea
ISBN: 0-87997-783-3 Order from: Amazon.com Barnes & Noble.com
A collection describing the adventures of a thief in a ancient world of dark sorceries, demonic torments, human greed and purple prose.
Reviewed by David on August 12, 1998
Genre: Fantasy (Sword and Sorcery, Gothic)
Synopsis: This is a collection of stories featuring the thief Nifft the Lean, and a few of his colleagues in a world grown ancient and haunted by its own past of awsome magics and lost achievements.
Full Review: This book is structured as a collection of four stories,
framed by introductions by a friend of Nifft—the scholar Shag Margold.
The character of Nifft himself is unremarkable—he is skilled in theft, and is not against a spot of murder or kidnapping for monetary gain. His courage and pride in his professional skills allow him to survive dangers that would have left others dead or insane.
And dangers there are in plenty in this world of Shea's devising. Old sorceries vie with demons and gods in casual brutality towards mortals. A mine shaft continued a yeard too long breaks into a demonic subworld, and the denizens have a picnic using the miners and nearby residents as food.
It is difficult to describe the over-the-top, deliberately purple gothic prose without resorting to comparisons. Lovecraft's sense of immense, ancient and malevalent forces comes to mind. Vance's The Dying Earth has a similar sense of layers upon layers of civilization and magic decaying in place. And Howard was perhaps the creator of the sword-and-sorcery adventurer series.
In most cases, the style is deliberately victorian gothic, as in describing remains of a chair, designed to "hold unimaginable shapes in inconceivable positions". In breaking tradition, many of the horrors are described in surrealistic and intimate detail, especially the torment of humans in the worlds of Death and Demons.
Body transformation and perversion of feeding and procreation is used in endless, hopeless torment. The depiction of eternal hunger and pain invite comparisons to Dante's Inferno.
The major characters are not particulraly attractive: there is neither heroism nor sense of humor to involve the reader. The world description is highly imaginative but superficial: there is little of the depth of imagined history that made Tolkien the reference for world-building.
The style of the book is remarkable. The tone remains exceptionally consistent. The unimaginable horrors, which are, nevertheless, imagined and described in detail by the author, create an almost palpable atmosphere for which the weak plot is mearly a vehicle.
However, the stylistic achievement is not sufficient to make this book a satisfying read. It lacks in entertainment value, and that is a serious enough flaw that I am surprised that it won the World Fantasy Award in 1983.
Overall: 5; Plot: 4; Characters: 4; Style: 5.5; World-building: 5.5; Originality: 5.5;
Copyright date 1982, Donald A. Wollheim (DAW Books), December 1982, Mass-market, 304 pages
ISBN: 0-87997-783-3 Order from: Amazon.com Barnes & Noble.com