Druss, Waylander, and other heroes of the British Empire
I used to be a big fantasy novel fan.
In the mid-Eighties and onward, I voraciously consumed the big series by the big names, people like Eddings, Robert Jordan, Brooks, and others.
Then, for some reason, the well began to dry. New volumes in series I had once held in high regard left me disappointed. New authors I tried were poor enough that I couldn’t bring myself even to finish books for which I had actually paid money. The fantasy genre had taken a right turn while I, it seemed, had turned left, fallen into a ditch, and broken my ankle.
Years passed. The sands of time spilled grain by grain through the hourglass. Occasionally, with the longing of what once was, I would wander through the fantasy section, wistful, occasionally stroking reprints of great books I had already read and loved. More occasionally still, I would pluck a mass-market paperback from the shelf, plunk down two platinum pieces, and try anew the genre which had once been such a favorite. Most of the time, I failed to find something to renew my love of the genre. There were occasional breakthroughs, as with Elaine Cunningham’s first few installments in her Forgotten Realms books, which are very good. But the breakthroughs didn’t come very often.
But the magic moment, the moment when the prodigal returned to the fold, the moment where the lost traveller at long last saw the light of the welcoming inn through the darkness of the trees, happened a couple years ago when I chanced upon a new name (for me), David Gemmell.
David Gemmell brought the magic of the fantasy fiction genre back to me, and he did it in about fifteen pages. I started with Legend, his first book, and the first book any new reader should begin with, and knew within something like ten minutes that I’d found someone who could restore my faith in a genre I’d long since given up for dead.
Restore it he did. Not just with Legend (originally published in 1984 — and no, it has nothing to do with that weird Tom Cruise movie), but with every novel I’ve read since, all of which are in the same fictional setting as the first (he’s written novels in other settings, I just haven’t read them yet). These loosely-connected novels, which Del Rey term “The Drenai Saga”, take place up to a millennium apart from one another, vary in terms of their ties to events in the other novels, and can be read in any order you choose (I recommend reading in publication order).
Some, but not all, of them have recurring characters: Druss the Legend, Waylander the Assassin, Skilgannon the Damned. Many of these heroes die a hideous death at the end of one novel, only to be revisited down the road in a “prequel” novel chronicling events which occur before the events of the previous novel. Or something; that last sentence confuses even me.
In Gemmell’s world, life is brutal and harsh, violence has severe consequences (like actually causing pain and death), and people try to be good and sometimes fail. Guilt and loss are permanent, not fleeting, and revenge, though frequently practiced, is not always sweet. Magic is rare, mysterious, frightening, and very spiritual. Evil is present in human beings, and it’s present in fell creatures who live in shadowy, malignant places. There’s a Mongolia-type desert nomad race, and there’s a China-like decadent, sophisticated race (remember playing AD&D in the Eighties with all those Far Eastern lands? Yeah, it’s like that). There are no elves and dwarves. Indeed, Gemmell’s fantasies are what you might describe as Sword and Sorcery, in that they follow the tradition of authors like Michael Moorcock (a great favorite of Gemmell’s). Sort of; all these sub-genre things always confuse me.
Regardless of how you define them, you can find Gemmell’s books in the fantasy/sci-fi (yeah, that’s right, I said sci-fi, not SF, which excludes me from the true über-SF geek club, who are too snooty to use a term like “sci-fi”) section of your local bookstore, or here (pretty please click? I get a little commission and I love you for it). Go on. Give it a try. You’ll be glad you did. I’m the guy who recommended Gamma Ray, remember? I’d never steer you wrong.
As a kind of aside, one of the things for which I admire Gemmell is his remarkable consistency. He’s written a bazillion books, and I have yet to find one which seems dashed off, or stuffed with filler, or rambles on or seems like it needs lots of editing. Partly I think this is thanks to his journalistic background, which helped give him that most desirable of all author’s skills: self-criticism. He has the capacity to evaluate his work, pull out the knife, and chop it to smithereens. His books almost never ramble beyond four hundred pages, they almost never sidetrack into interminable characters’ inner-voice thoughts or endless pages of worthless dialogue. They stay on the straight and narrow like an episode of Lost, and they’re lean as Tom Hanks after he got rescued off that island.
Consistency leads to trust, and Gemmell has spent the entirety of his novel-writing career building a hell of a lot of trust.
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