The Aldabreshin Compass
As Read By Other Writers
Joanne Harris
author of Chocolat, Blackberry Wine, Five Quarters of the Orange, Coastliners and Holy Fools.
I went through the last series of her books with increasing joy and anticipation, and from the first, I was convinced that she was going to be one of the emerging bright stars of the intelligent fantasy genre.
I am delighted to see that with Southern Fire this author has managed to improve still further on an already winning formula. Her alternate realities are as original, fresh and painstakingly detailed as a Breughel painting (even down to the various dialects, clothing, sounds, stenches and regional dishes). Her many characters are thoroughly engaging and her plots tight, well-paced and gripping. I look forward to her next book (and the next) with the same enthusiasm I have had for the others (if not more).
Juliet McKenna is too intelligent to deliver a dour extruded plot-coupon quest, the type of series to which the deathly phrase 'in the grand tradition of The Lord of the Rings is applied in a desperate attempt to conceal its essential lack of ideas. She's the thinking fantasy reader's writer, and the stuff she writes is dangerously addictive.'
Juliet McKenna's world creation is deeply textured and strongly resonant of the Middle Ages without sounding like Tolkien rehashed. Her characters are well-developed, strongly motivated, admirable, and yet have a normal array of human weaknesses. I find her work engrossing.
When a talented writer makes fiction seem like history, the book becomes an event. The world Juliet McKenna has created within the Aldabreshin Archipelago is carefully developed, layer upon layer, giving it the reality which is the hallmark of outstanding fantasy. She writes very visual prose, enabling the reader to see every scene in great detail. Her characters are colorful and believable; love them or hate them, you won't forget them. I certainly won't. Kheda, Risala, Dev, and many others linger in my mind, awaiting the continuation of their story.
Chaz Brenchley
author of the Outremer series.
Too many fantasy writers stumble over scale, asking us to believe that the one continent or the one archipelago is all there is, or all that matters. The best think in terms of a world. In Southern Fire, Juliet McKenna moves us away from the lands described in The Tales of Einarinn: not so far as to lose touch, but far enough to bring us into a very different culture. Here, half a dozen squabbling warlords govern a run of islands, looking to omens and divination to guide them in their wars, their marriages, their trades. Whether this is science or superstition has yet to be determined. At the same time, these people abominate magic. They have no answer to an invasion of savages led by sorcerers, until one of their warlords risks his position, his family, his soul to seek out a wizard able to fight back.
Which brings us to Juliet McKenna's other great skill, at the further end of the scale. After all the world-building, the stretch, the imagination, the research, a land has to be peopled. For the best fantasy writers, like the best of any writers, stories are driven by their characters; plot is only what people do. Behind the pace and thrill of the adventure, behind the tensions and the suspicions and the sudden explosive action, her books are inhabited by characters who are not so much believable as simply real. Everything works, in a McKenna novel: from the breadth of the world to the intimacies of relationships to the alien depths of the supernatural, there is a rare solidity here. It's no package holiday she offers, no superficial visit to a tourist-trap exoticism; this is true travelling, in deep and up close and highly personal.
Stan Nicholls
author of the Orcs and Quicksilver trilogies.
It’s always a pleasure seeing an author vault into the hierarchy of fantasy notables. Juliet McKenna did that with debut series The Tales of Einarinn. Now she consolidates her status, and ups the ante, with Southern Fire, first in The Aldabreshin Compass sequence.
Warlord Daish Kheda benevolently rules one of a number of “domains” among the isles of the Aldabreshin archipelago. All have a worldview based on forms of divination, assiduously noting portents and omens, but see magic as a corrupting force. Kheda’s current preoccupations are domestic. One of his wives, Sain, will soon deliver her firstborn; and his son, Sirket, needs grooming for leadership. But an external threat suddenly looms. Outlying domains are attacked, and the invaders are from the south, where there’s nothing but ocean. Accompanied by faithful slave Telouet, Kheda sails to investigate. He finds pitiful survivors who tell of mysterious savages in unknown boats, slaughtering all before them. Strangers who can summon rains of fire ...
McKenna has a wonderful gift for world-building. The culture here - faintly reminiscent of Mayan or Tahitian civilisations - is meticulous conceived and vividly depicted. Fully rounded characters, exceptional storytelling ability and quality writing make for a rich, entertaining read.
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