Subject: Review: The Siege of Arrandin by Marcus Herniman

From: "Aaron M. Renn" <[email-masked]>
Date: 15 Sep 1999 14:09:17 -0400

The Siege of Arrandin by Marcus Herniman
	Review Copyright (c) 1999 Aaron M. Renn

Conclusion: I Don't Know Yet

While I was over at amazon.co.uk buying Ken MacLeod novels, I decided to
pick up a couple of others that weren't available in the US.  This was one
of them.  I'm having a great deal of difficulty deciding what I think of
it.  Clearly I know that it's good enough to be worth reading, but I can't
figure out if it should be rated better than that.

On the down side, the plot was pretty standard.  There's a good kingdom
that gets invaded by a bad kingdom.  The good kingdom is suffering from
some internal strife, which weakens its ability to fight back.  There's
some deep, dark, ancient evil waiting to return.  Et cetera.  But the book
also has a lot of complexity.  There's a glossary of people and places in
the back that runs nearly 25 pages.  Herniman clearly put a lot of thought
into the background for this series.  All of the places, characters, and
events have a long and detailed history behind them.  At first read, this
is almost a minus since the book is hard to get your hands around.  There
are so many longish names tossed about that I despaired of ever figuring
out who was who.  But by the end I understood most of them and things got
a lot more interesting for me.  This strikes me as the kind of book you'll
get more out of the second time you read it than the first.  It's sort of
like the Lord of the Rings.  There's just so much world and complexity
there that it's overwhelming the first time you read it.  Now I don't
suggest that this book is in the same league as Tolkien, but it does have
that good high fantasy overload that can be a bit difficult to get past.

The main characters are all magi.  There appear to be several types of
them, arranged by the element that dominates their technique.  It's rare
to see a fantasy novel that so revolves around wizards as the main
characters.  Very few of the key players are non-magi.  This works to some
extent, especially since most of the battles and key events are driven by
magic, but is also has some failings.  In particular, the magical
traditions of this world appear to be very scientific/ritualistic versus
mystical.  Yet we don't really get a good idea of how magic really works
there.  Perhaps subsequent volumes will shed more light on this.  Some of
the minor characters are priests of the gods.  Their magic is clearly
mystical in origin, deriving from the answering of prayers to a patron
god.  This proved to be more comprehensible to me than the powers of the
magi.  I just don't like it when I don't understand a major component of a
main character's life.

Herniman makes us like the lead characters, the magi Rhysana and Torkhaal
and their associates.  But our empathy with them is really the source of
our caring about the good kindgom of Lautun.  As is all too common in
fantasy, the good guys mostly appear good due to the badness of the bad
guys.  In this story the Souther empire engages in the slave trade, a
business which we are treated to several brutal episodes of.  The
Easterners are known for summoning powerful evil spirits into the world.
The Lautunites look like saints by default.  Other than the evil of the
other kingdoms and the general likeability of the main characters though,
we aren't given any reasons why we should care one way or the other what
happens to Lautun.

The ancient evil I mentioned earlier actually comes into play only as a
sidelight.  There is much rumor that it is on the verge of returning, but
little direct evidence of it.  The conflicts we are treated to in this
volume supposedly relate to this ancient power somehow, but the exact way
is never revealed to us.  This book appears to be mere setup for
subsequent volumes.  Though in a move I very much approved of, Herniman
made this self-contained.  It can be read as a standalone, though the
battles of real importance take place later (I assume).

Another good thing Herniman did was to kill off a few of the good guys
early.  Our protagonists are not superhumans who slay thousands while
surviving every battle without a scratch.  Instead, they are humans who
can die as easily as anyone.  And no matter how much we like them, they
aren't too important to die.  Indeed, Heriman kills off the character I
liked best at the end.  I suspect that Rhysana and Torkhaal are sacred
cows, but anybody else could be killed at any time.  That was a great way
to make things seem more realistic.  After all, lots of people die in
wars.  That includes a lot of good people as well as bad ones.

The negatives of this book are right in plain view for anyone to see.  The
positives I suspect will take a bit longer to appreciate, and perhaps even
repeat reads.  That's not necessarily a bad thing, but it does tend to
bias impressions downward in a review written right after the first read
like this one.  So I'm going to have to defer a definitive judgement at
this time.  Though I will say that even now I know this one is definitely
worth picking up, if not special ordering from the UK.

%A Herniman, Marcus
%T The Siege of Arrandin
%S The Arrandin Triolgy
%V Book One
%I Earthlight
%D 1999
%G ISBN 0-671-02189-3
%P 494 pp.
%0 mass market paperback, £5.99

Reviewed on 1999-09-11

Aaron M. Renn ([email-masked]) http://www.urbanophile.com/arenn/