Graeme Is Comfort Reading (Again!), ‘The Briar King’ – Greg Keyes (Tor UK/Del Rey)

Because as awesome as 'Heroes Die' is... Bloody hell it's dark! :o) Anyway...

Has it really been almost ten years since I first read ‘The Briar King’? That’s a rhetorical question by the way so don’t feel like you have to answer that one ;o) Time always moves on but a good book will last forever; ‘The Briar King’ is very much one of those for me and has become a book that has a permanent home on my shelves, a book that I will come back and dip into every year or so (the first book that I went to after ‘reading burn out’ killed the old blog). An excellent series opener which makes it more of a shame that the series didn’t end well at all; more on that another time as and when I get round to reading the other three books. Let’s just say that I’ve always said that Keyes can’t end a series…

Here’s some blurb to get you started,

In the kingdom of Crotheny, two young girls play in the tangled gardens of the sacred city of the dead where, fleeing an imaginary attacker, they discover the unknown crypt of a legendary, ancestral queen. In the wilds of the forest, while investigating the mass slaughter of an innocent family, the king's forester comes face-to-face with a monstrous beast found only in folk tales and nightmares.

Meanwhile, travelling the same road, a scholarly young priest begins his education in the nature of the evil that festers just beneath the surface of a seemingly peaceful realm. For the royal family is facing a betrayal that only sorcery can accomplish. And now, for three beautiful sisters, for a young man elevated to knighthood, and for countless others, a darkness is emerging to shatter all that once seemed certain, familiar, and good.

Numerous separate destinies will become entangled as malevolent forces stalk the land -- and the Briar King, that primeval harbinger of death, has awakened from his slumber.

‘The Briar King’ is a book that has detailed world-building leaking from every paragraph; a little bit Fae but touching our own world just enough to give readers enough of a hook to get into it. The fact that this hook eventually amounts to nothing does nothing to lessen the impact of ‘The Briar King’ overall. You’re already in the middle of a world where humanity thinks it has won the war but is living on borrowed time, down to its own politicking as much as an ancient curse hanging over the land. It’s a world rich in detail that I still find myself getting lost in (Keyes’ descriptions of the kingdom of Crotheny are lush) and it’s also a world where the shadows under the trees not only have teeth but can hurt you just by looking at you. There is plenty to see here and that’s before the story itself kicks off.

The plot, it has to be said, is nothing new with an ancient prophecy steadily coming to fruition while rival kingdoms bicker and a young princess starts to slowly move towards her destiny. Heard it before? Yep me too. Keyes lays it all out very well with moments of action acting as dramatic punctuation to the politicking, and setting up tense cliff-hangers , but it’s nothing new. Where Keyes does shine though is with the characters acting all of this out. They’re quite simply a pleasure to spend time with (Cazio and z’Acatto in particular), being drawn so well that even after several re-reads I still find myself with heart in mouth reading about Aspar White and Winna being chased through the forest by… Well, you’ll have to read that for yourself.

It’s funny then that while ‘The Briar King’ is a long term comfort read (and highly recommended by me) the same cannot be said for the three books that follow it. Maybe the rot set into the series a little earlier than I’m prepared to admit; I suspect the cause is the world building lessening over time and the reader just being left with the plot to contend with. I don’t know, I’ll have to read on and find out all over again, it’s a good journey to take.

Graeme does Comfort Reading: ‘The Mark of the Demons’ (John Jakes)

Just look at that cover :o) We might moan about cover art these days but back in the day, this was all our parents had and they just got on with it. Maybe it's time to stop moaning?

My comfort reading is in danger of becoming a regular feature on this blog; there’s certainly something about Fridays, just recently, where all I’ve been good for reading-wise is picking up old favourites from my childhood. All you can do is go with it and let the reading take care of itself, and it’s always good to stop and take a look back every now and then.

Today’s comfort read features possibly the most derivative barbarian warrior in fantasy fiction; Brak is a shameless Conan rip off (albeit perhaps a little more thoughtful and with a fear of heights) who is bound on a quest to reach the fabled lands of Khurdisan and the riches that lie there. Sounds familiar? That’s because it is and that’s what makes ‘The Mark of the Demons’ (and the other book in the series that I have read) such a comfort read. You don’t really have to think about the plot because you know it already, just go along with the story and watch Brak conquer all before him... Well, eventually, after he’s taken one too many knocks to the head and someone else has had to rescue him. Brak is derivative then but there’s just enough of his innate ability to cock up going on to keep things interesting (even though you know it will all turn out ok in the end). I’m going to shut up for a sec though and give you some blurb…

We go to the dark. We ride to the awful dark. A stranger leads us, a savage man. His presence brings the evil down!"
The soothsayer's grim words chilled the hearts of the travellers. Even the iron nerves of Brak the Barbarian twanged with foreboding. For in the traders' caravan as it crossed the wasteland of Logol he was the savage, the stranger. Though his strength and swordsmanship might protect the caravan from attacks by brigands or wild beasts, even from the ruby-eyed warriors of Quran, he was as helpless as any against the menace of supernatural powers.
And as first one, then another of the travellers fell prey to the horror that stalked them, Brak knew that he must find a weapon more powerful than his sword if he too was not to be discovered drained of blood and bones, a dry husk bearing the three black marks, the triangular Mark of the Demons.

A lot of my childhood genre reading came out of markets and old second hand bookshops that I used to hang out in while on holiday; it was a mixed bag in terms of quality but at 50p a book (or something like that) I never complained, just carried on reading. ‘Brak the Barbarian’ and ‘The Mark of the Demons’ were first read while holidaying in Norfolk and I’ve been revisiting them ever since. ‘The Mark of the Demons’ in particular is worth a quick read if you ever come across it. Yes, Brak can come across as hapless and the outcome of the story is never really in doubt but there’s also a rich vein of horror running through the story that is worth the price of entry (which may well be only a penny if you get the book on Amazon but you know what I mean).

Unlike his more illustrious counterpart, Brak scares easily and I mean very easily… Brak is a barbarian who really can’t get his head around the fact that dark gods and their minions are very much a part of his world; they scare him and this fear rubs off onto the reader. This is especially the case when you the true nature of the evil stalking the caravan becomes apparent; Jakes really strikes that discordant note you get when pure evil and great beauty inhabit the same body and this works to great effect, especially when that evil starts singing (seriously, a very powerful moment in the book)

‘The Mark of the Demons’ will always be a comfort read for me. Derivative enough not to be too taxing, bloody and scary enough to be gripping; it also takes place in a world well drawn enough to get lost in very easily. I don’t know if Brak ever found Khurdisan in the end (I’d guess that he didn’t, given how clueless he can be sometimes); I hope he did.

Graeme does Comfort Reading - 'Doctor Who and the Dalek Invasion of Earth' (Terrance Dicks)

So I’ve spent most of this week trying to get one daughter to settle whilst hoping the other doesn’t wake up (changing nappies in the dark is not a good thing at all…) and trying to get all my coursework in order for college (handed the folder in and hoping that it doesn’t need any more work on it) whilst also trying my hardest to look like I know what the hell I’m doing at work. Absolutely shattered is the phrase of the day then and I am so looking forward to going to bed tonight and sleeping until Sunday night.
With all that in mind then, did I spend the commute into work reading something new and trying to get my had round the plot? Or… Did I opt for some good old fashioned comfort reading and give my brain a rest? Okay, I know what the title of the post says but pretend you didn’t read it…
Here’s the answer,

Sometimes comfort reading is the only thing to do. Something familiar and easy just to help your brain tick over, something where you can let the plot just flow round you if you’re not up to paying too much attention to what is going on. Something very much like ‘The Dalek Invasion of Earth’, a book that I’ve had on my shelves for a good thirty years at least (maybe a little bit more). The plot is very simple (as is the case with most Doctor Who books and shows); there is an alien threat and the Doctor defeats it. It’s the Daleks though and that always adds a little extra urgency to the proceedings even if you just know that the Doctor will take care of business. They’re cold blooded killers after all and there is plenty of that going on here with Daleks merrily exterminating the human rebels whether they keep fighting or surrender.

Terrance Dicks is the man most people automatically think of when talking about the ‘Doctor Who’ Target novelisations and I’ve got to say that he’s done a really good job here; I must have read this book hundreds of times but he still keeps me hooked by focussing on the aforementioned evil of the Daleks. Their seeming invincibility is also emphasised as well with a couple of really powerful moments where human fighters think they have destroyed a Dalek, only for it come rolling out of the smoke just as deadly as ever.

What really struck me on this read though is the element of horror that Terrance Dicks brings to this novelisation. We have a chase through a work camp where characters are being hunted by the Slyther, a monster that the Daleks brought with them from the planet Skaro. You don’t actually see the Slyther for most of this chase, you only see the reactions to its howl but that is more than enough to get the blood pumping and share in the fear of those being chased. Really suspenseful stuff here.

It wasn’t these moments that really got me though. Dicks opens ‘The Dalek Invasion of Earth’ with a Robo-Man (essentially a lobotomised human) committing suicide and that is really powerful stuff coming from what is essentially a kids book. A human being altered to such a degree that the pain and despair have driven him to kill himself; it was this passage that really drove it home…

‘He fell, like a log or a stone, making no attempt to save himself. Dragged down by the weight of the helmet, his head sank beneath the grimy waters. There was something inhuman about the manner of his death – but then, he had not been truly human for a very long time.’

Imagine reading that when you were only six or seven years old… Funnily enough, at the time it didn’t make that much of an impression on me (I was pretty good at reading but not quite so hot with what they actually meant sometimes) but now I look at that and think, “Wow, that’s strong stuff…”

Having seen what I’ve written then, you wouldn’t think that ‘The Dalek Invasion of Earth’ is much of a comfort read then but I’d have to disagree. Like I said, familiarity breeds comfort and so does the message running throughout these books, the Doctor always defeats evil. It’s also a book that lets me escape to more comfortable (for comfortable, read ‘nostalgic’) memories in my head, times when pressing concerns generally involved whether I could bolt my dinner fast enough to be able to get down and watch Doctor Who on the TV. Maybe not easier times but definitely comfortable times. That’s why I love the occasional comfort read and would heartily recommend you do something similar every now and then. What are your comfort reads?