Darren over at The Genre Files, a rad SFF blog that you should all be reading, recently had the luck to get a copy of Richard Morgan’s upcoming fantasy The Steel Remains and took the time to do a nice, detailed review of why it kicks so much ass.
This is easily one of my most anticipated novels of this year (despite the fact that I’ve yet even to read any of Morgan’s novels) and I’m intensely jealous of Darren for getting to read a manuscript copy of Morgan’s first try at Fantasy. From all accounts, it sounds like Morgan’s going to bring the same violent, gritty and readable style to fantasy as he did to SF. My frothing anticipation for The Steel Remains grows ever stronger.
Here’s a quote from Darren’s review:
In conclusion, then: The Steel Remains is one of the darkest, most intense epic fantasy novels I’ve read to-date. I also think it’s a fantasy novel that doesn’t so much transcend as extend the genre, into the sort of thematic territory that the majority of fantasy writers wouldn’t even consider going anywhere near. As a result, it could just turn out to be one of the most important fantasy novels, epic or otherwise, to have been written in the last ten or twenty years, if only because it could provide an additional impetus for the growing number of similarly-minded writers to think even harder about how far they can actually push their own ideas.
Anyone with a hankering for the sort of intensely interesting fantasy fiction that the likes of Steven Erikson, Joe Abercrombie, Glen Cook China Miéville, Scott Lynch, Alan Campbell and co. have been writing recently, or even a glimpse of what might have been if the likes of George R.R. Martin, Paul Kearney, Greg Keyes, or even David Gemmell had teamed up with Quentin Tarantino for a novel or two, then this is definitely a story you should seriously consider reading.
If, like me, your interest in the novel just skyrocketed to even higher heights, you can check out the full review HERE.
Darren, indeed, does rock — as does his blog. I’m looking forward to reading this one as well. It looks like a winner in the making.
Have only just started Altered Carbon and loving that so can’t wait to see what he does with Fantasy.