Swords-and-sorcery fantasy is hot right now. Anyone who’s anyone in the cool science-fiction crowd is writing at least one fantasy book, if not a trilogy. Richard K. Morgan’s THE STEEL REMAINS is on the forefront of this fantasy resurgence, and it’s near the top of the heap, though it’s obvious by about the halfway point that this novel is merely the setup to a much more epic story, part of a planned trilogy.
The trifurcated story follows a trio of veterans — Ringil, Archeth and Egar — from an epic and terrible war that scarred each of them in multiple ways, and has left their empire exhausted, yet slowly recovering. Egar has returned to his nomadic people to lead them in their simple lives on the steppes; Ringil, as a peripheral member of the Yeltheth Empire’s royal family, doesn’t do much but lay low and seduce as many pretty young men as he can; and Archeth, a mixed-race woman with ancient, almost alien blood running through her veins, runs errands for the Emperor and takes far too many drugs for her own good.
As their lives and the effects of the war on their psyches are mapped out, they are drawn into intrigue. Ringil is tasked with finding a cousin who’d been sold into slavery; Egar faces a threat to his role as clan leader; and Archeth is sent on an expedition to figure out how exactly a coastal village was totally wiped out under the army’s nose. It doesn’t take a genius to figure out that these stores eventually intersect and involve Forces Beyond Our Comprehension, but Morgan doesn’t rush each individual tale — he’s not nearly as concerned with the immense threat that a magical race of creatures poses to the world than either the protagonists or the readers are.
Ringil gets pulled into a magical dimension for the Magical Dimension Sex Olympics with a creature who’s basically the bad guy, and about 50 pages of plot-padding come into view. Unlike most books, however, it’s worth it — the stories converge in a great, satisfying way, and there’s tons of excitement and sword fighting and magical crap popping up as the book winds down.
Morgan made his name with noir sci-fi classics like ALTERED CARBON and BROKEN ANGELS, and that dark sensibility is always evident. The theme of veterans dealing with crisis after an epic war is really relevant in today’s world and brings to mind an all-time classic in Joe Haldeman’s THE FOREVER WAR. His characters are again all-too-real and flawed, but still heroic. THE STEEL REMAINS definitely isn’t for the faint-hearted — it’s got lots of graphic blood, guts, torture and tremendous amounts of man-on-man sex, described in all of its sloppy detail.
While everyone might be hopping on the fantasy bandwagon, THE STEEL REMAINS is no whim for Morgan. This novel adds some spunk to a genre that tends toward staleness, and it leaves creates serious optimism for the rest of the trilogy. —Ryun Patterson
OTHER BOOKGASM REVIEWS OF THIS AUTHOR:
• THIRTEEN by Richard K. Morgan
• WOKEN FURIES by Richard K. Morgan
Related posts:
- Remains
- 30 Days of Night: Immortal Remains
- The Quest for the Trilogy
- The Accidental Sorcerer
- The Books of the South: Tales of the Black Company
