http://speculiction.blogspot.com/2022/09/review-of-kingdoms-of-death-by.html ( )

Fantasy, myth and imagination are integral parts of the human psyche; to try and reject them even as fictions is the sign of a mind that wants to suppress its true nature in order to appear "better" based on societal norms - hence the opprobrium levelled at Fantasy. What I am saying is that magic, commercialism and fantasy are alike in that the motivation behind them all is to deceive (either for good or evil). Consequently they are shallow - like the facades in a film set - and a common environment for those who wish to profit from deceiving. That is not to say that they can not be entertaining, each, after all, relies upon it's allure. To which I would not count myself immune - I enjoy magician's performances, I smile at chimpanzee removal men playing pianos and I think the Gormenghast trilogy is fantastic. But what they do not have is depth. People are mistaken when they assign intellectual heft to them, they are confectioneries not sustaining rich stews. Take “Alice's Adventures in Wonderland” say. Because this has depth, it can not be fantasy. Alice has much to say about childhood experience, education at the time and so on. “Gormenghast” has not depth, it has sophistication, cohesion and complexity, but only as a consequence of its fully realised fantasy. A picture of a naked woman is art or pornography because of its purpose, not because the observer views it as art or pornography. Sorry to be so deluded. What about the 4th installment of the Sun Eater? Almost as good as the other three (but not quite there).

For me Fantasy (Urban or not, Space Opera or not) should be about modern-day fabulation, and not about "rebooting" old stories; like any truly great interpretation of past works, there is something more than just rehashing and feature-spotting. Even genre authors should be challenging this "world-building" novel trope; we are no longer dominated by the Salvatores, Eddings and Jordans with their endless glossaries of fantasy terms. Do we have modern fabulists? Not sure. I'd say Ruocchio, Mieville and Gaiman and suchlike are very much taking the fabulist approach, even if not slavishly rewriting fairytales. Too bad this time round, Roucchio decided to go down the torture porn path…not necessary. Let’s hope the next novel is better than this one.

Book Review SF = Speculative Fiction ( )