Paul Magrs

When I was in my teens I loved fantasy novels that took you straight into an invented world and completely convinced you of their existence. All their minute particulars were conjured on the page – you got to know about their religions, their eating habits, their seasons and histories and legends. I’m thinking about reading those huge books and series of books by people like Anne McCaffrey, Frank Herbert and David and Leigh Eddings. I was a school prefect at that time and all school prefects had to do was sit indoors on rainy lunchtimes and that was the time I spent living in other, made-up worlds.

Only a few fantasy reading experiences have come that close to transporting me elsewhere in more recent years. Probably Guy Gavriel Kaye’s ‘Tigana’ did. But it seems to get harder to capture that feeling of helpless addiction to the spicy alienness of fantasy planets.

Anyway, the point of all this is that I spent almost a week inside the first volume of Glenda Larke’s new Stormlord series and I really feel like I’ve visited an arid and frightening and wholly convincing land… and I’ve loved very minute of it. This is a world of cities in tiers, doing their best to make the most of water that comes to them. It’s a rough existence of shanty towns, palaces, whorehouses and blistering desserts. The rain is brought to them by the magic powers of their ruling classes, who can manipulate clouds and draw fresh water out of the seas. The trilogy kicks off with the ailing of the last of the Stormlords and the very real threat of no more controlled weather systems and a possible return to anarchy.

This is a splendid set up. A large cast is assembled: lords and ladies, peasants, painters, warriors and orphans. We move so easily from one to the next and – unlike in so many unwieldy fantasy novels – we’re never in any doubt who we’re with and why. We always know what’s at stake for the characters and there are – even in 600 pages – no long, dull stretches of exposition. This book keeps moving and tumbling from one fantastic set-piece to another. We’re saving the lives of giant millipedes in flashfloods… or we’re standing appalled as a whole village is wiped out by the barbaric horde under instructions from our lead villain… or we’re watching as the whole city crumbles under the final onslaught and our heroes prepare to flee… It’s all vast, fantastic, beautifully evoked spectacle… but at the heart of it are characters that we quickly come to love. The girl from the ‘Snuggery’, who hopes to escape to better things – Terelle – is our point of focus for much of the book. It is through her that we view most of the weird rituals and rigmaroles of this antipodean fantasy world. I love all the textures and close-up details of this… the vividness of all that red dust, and the deliciousness of the prized drinking water… the evil chittering and buzzing of the deadly insects – the Ziggers…!

Our other hero is Shale – the boy from nowhere, who is discovered to have the most amazing, unexpected powers. He is the boy born to save the whole world – or so everyone hopes. And everyone sets out to kidnap, steal and manipulate him. A lovely job is done here in showing him growing up – from the boy who witnesses the horrible death of his sister – into someone we could imagine saving the whole of this world through his developing magical powers. We feel his struggle every step of the way. Parallels have been drawn between this series and the Dune novels by Frank Herbert in the Sixties, and I guess that’s inevitable – given the dustbowl world, the scarcity of water, the complexity and the jumbo-sized centipedes. But with Paul Atreides in that series, his ascent into something superhuman seemed to happen in a flash: he evolved too suddenly and abruptly. I never quite believed in him  - or Dune – after he went all mystical.

But, I think, with the saga of this Stormlord, Glenda Larke is writing a material world I can believe in whole-heartedly. I can’t wait for the next volume – when is it?

This first vol comes out in March, from Orbit. Thanks for sending it!